Wilmington's Lie Quotes

“The killings in Wilmington inspired whites across the South. The white supremacy campaign demonstrated that determined whites could whittle down the black vote and black officeholders, first through terror and violence and then by legislation. Wilmington’s whites had proved that the federal government would reproach them but not stop them. Inspired by the sweeping success of North Carolina’s grandfather clause, other Southern states adopted variations of the law—Alabama in 1901, Virginia in 1902, Georgia in 1908, and Oklahoma in 1910. Even Charles Aycock was awed. “It’s a glorious victory that we have won,” he said. “And the very extent of it frightens me.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“A new voter registration law gave registrars authority to ask a potential voter any “material” question regarding identity and qualifications. To help identify blacks for disqualification, the law required registrars to write down applicants’ race.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The New York Journal correspondent on the scene equated the killings of November 10 to mass murder: The 10th was a bloody day in this one-horse town. They talk of culture and refinement. But could you have seen them on Thursday you would have thought them the bloodhounds of hell turned loose. There was no riot; simply the strong slaying the weak and helpless. The negroes had no firearms of any kind but every white man from 12 to seventy was handling guns … From every town around the whites poured in to exterminate the Negroes.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“They welcomed the return of what they regarded as the natural order in America—whites ruling blacks. They seemed aggrieved only by the way Wilmington’s whites went about it.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Northern newspapermen seemed torn between their scorn for Southerners and their widely held contempt for black capabilities. Most deplored the violence in Wilmington but not the outcome.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Collier’s Weekly was a useful tool for disseminating the white narrative that the killings were necessary to remove a corrupt government dominated by blacks plotting an armed insurrection.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Waddell arranged to have his version of events published in Collier’s Weekly,”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Under the subhead: IT WAS ALL PLANNED IN ADVANCE, the Charleston reporter detailed the secret white strategy in Wilmington:”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“the Charleston News and Courier, whose correspondent had shared drinks and meals with Wilmington’s white supremacists in the days leading up to the killings.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“There has not been a single illegal act committed in the change of government. Simply, the old board went out, and the new board came in—strictly according to law.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The whole thing was with the object of striking terror to the man’s heart, so that he would never vote again,” she wrote. “For this was the object of the whole persecution; to make Nov. 10th a day to be remembered by the whole race for all time.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Russell’s decision was pivotal: he gave a committed white supremacist unchecked authority to unleash state troops against black citizens—the very men whose votes had put Russell in office.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Visiting white reporters from New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and elsewhere filed their dispatches by telegraph, providing not only moment-to-moment updates but also a nearly unanimous portrayal of the white supremacy campaign as a welcome corrective to corrupt Negro rule.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Wilmington Declaration of Independence” said the United States Constitution envisioned a government of enlightened men and “did not contemplate for their descendants a subjection to an inferior race.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The campaign had decisively snatched control of the state legislature from Republicans and Populists, who had won a two-thirds majority in 1896. Democrats now held ninety-four seats in the state’s”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“In a matter of months, their campaign had intimidated and terrified thousands of black men into staying home from the polls; of the state’s roughly one hundred thousand eligible black voters, fewer than half had voted.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Negro must either be frightened away from the polls or else (2) he must be forcibly resisted when he undertook to deposit his ballot.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“registered to vote. Many were beaten or whipped—attacks that came to be known as “white-capping.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“white night riders fanned out into the countryside. Many wore red shirts or vests, along with distinctive white caps, evocative of the hoods once worn by Klansmen. Scores of black farmers and laborers were roused from their beds and threatened with death if they”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“armed “vigilance committees” and “citizens’ patrols,” organized block by block.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“was tacitly understood among white supremacists, at both the state and the local level, that violence might well be required to overthrow city government regardless of the election outcome in November.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Manly had placed the blame for sex between black men and white women on white men—for failing to properly protect their supposedly cherished and virtuous women, reduced in Manly’s view to mere “property.” He upended the core white conviction that any sex act between a black man and a white woman could only be rape.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“with a white woman, than for a white man to be intimate with a colored woman.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Teach your men purity. Let virtue be something more than an excuse for them to intimidate and torture a helpless people. Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“the women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the womans infatuation or the mans boldness bring attention to them and the man is lynched for rape.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“If the papers and speakers of the other race would condemn the commission of crime because it is crime and not try to make it appear that the Negroes were the only criminals, they would find their strongest allies in the intelligent Negroes themselves …”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Manly decided that he had no choice but to defend what he called “defamed colored men.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“now, in August 1898, Felton’s declarations on race and rape were useful to Democrats.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“on an equal footing with white men—not only politically, but socially.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“She blamed black men’s right to vote; it led them to believe they stood”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy