David Zucchino’s engaging and disturbing book, Wilmington’s Lie, not only vividly reconstructs the events of 1898 but reveals the mountain of lies that has stood in the way of a truer, if not a reconciled, history. All those in America who do not understand the old and festering foundation of contemporary voter suppression should read this book ... Zucchino’s writing is crisp and declarative. Some of the book reads like in-depth reporting, yet he also expresses a careful level of moral indignation against the blunt racism he uncovers. His portraits of the three principal leaders of the white supremacy campaign in 1898 are particularly skillful ... Zucchino is at his best as he builds the historical infrastructure of lies from which the story of Wilmington emerged ... Zucchino’s work is both enlightening and painful. At times the reader feels some whiplash from being pushed back and forth through history. His explanation of the election of 1876 as an end of Reconstruction is a bit simplistic ... But Zucchino is a marvelous writer. Only at the end of the book does he draw any direct comparison to today’s voter suppression in North Carolina and elsewhere, but one feels that treacherous legacy on nearly every page.
... brilliant ... Zucchino does not overwrite the scenes. His moral judgment stands at a distance. He simply describes what happened and the lies told to justify it all ... The details contained in the last part of the book are heart-wrenching. With economy and a cinematic touch, Zucchino recounts the brutal assault on black Wilmington ... Zucchino pulls the story into our present moment ... What becomes clear, at least to me, is that memory and trauma look different depending on which side of the tracks you stand.
Zucchino offers a gripping account of one of the most disturbing, though virtually unknown, political events in American history ... a grim but fascinating story, and an instructive one ... Mr. Zucchino welds probing research and a crisp writing style into a dramatic rendering of events, and he goes on to show their ramifications for African-Americans across the South ... Mr. Zucchino’s narrative toggles skillfully between the city’s black community and the activities of the white insurrectionists ... Thanks to Mr. Zucchino’s unflinching account, we now have the full, appalling story. As befits a serious journalist, he avoids polemics and lets events speak for themselves ... it is books such as these, not least Wilmington’s Lie, that have redeemed the truth of post-Civil War history from the tenacious mythology of racism.
In Wilmington’s Lie, David Zucchino...punctures the myths surrounding the insurrection and provides a dynamic and detailed account of the lives of perpetrators and victims ... Deeply researched and relevant, Wilmington’s Lie explains how [Wilmington became a 'bastion of white supremacy'] and suggests how much work remains to be done to come to terms with what took place.
... a judicious and riveting new history ... It’s all but impossible to reconstruct the sequence of the violence...though Zucchino marshals the evidence expertly.
Mr. Zucchino tells the story of Wilmington like a longform reporter rather than a historian, carefully cataloguing the small details and chilling individual stories of this atrocity. He makes the terror black residents of the city felt over those few days palpable ... Mr. Zucchino has done a great service in unearthing this appalling national discourse ... Mr. Zucchino’s carefully researched book makes it clear that controlling the narrative—telling the story of Wilmington so that it served the interest of white supremacy across the nation—was likely the most powerful and enduring achievement of Waddell, and of the journalists and historians who spent the next century spreading that fiction.
... so lacerating, so appalling you often can’t believe what you’re reading. I hope this powerful book helps preserve this bad memory for a long time ... Zucchino is your ideal guide. The Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Inquirer staffer is a tireless, resourceful reporter, an incisive social analyst, and a direct, often elegant writer ... Zucchino skillfully builds suspense as the insurrection is coordinated and manned ... The middle third of the book covers a few days when the streets brim with blood; it’s so well told, so eloquently illustrated, that it seems to take only minutes to read ... Wilmington 1898 may seem like an exaggerated case, an outlier, a jungle spasm in an otherwise well-ordered democracy. Read Wilmington’s Lie, though, and you may come to see it as more like America than unlike.
...brilliant ... Through painstaking, well-documented research, Zucchino — a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter — revisits the Wilmington insurrection of 1898 ... What flowed from New Bern down the coast to Wilmington was an election-year chaos that Zucchino brings to vividly terrifying light through the real lives of the people affected ... Zucchino reports his way through the action and the personal stories with great care ... Through this act of documenting, he brings truth to the lie.
... explores in gripping detail the efforts of white supremacists to overturn black political and social power in Wilmington and to eliminate black citizens by any means necessary ... With dramatic opening sentences Zucchino creates a suspenseful atmosphere as he unfolds the stories of white supremacist Democrats who would stop at nothing to, as they saw it, take back Wilmington ... a riveting and mesmerizing page turner, with lessons about racial violence that echo loudly today.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Zucchino cuts through a century of propaganda, myth, and big white lies to unmask the stunning history of the Wilmington coup ... Zucchino introduces a cast of fascinating and remarkably well-drawn characters that populate his narrative ... vivd ... Wilmington’s Lie proves equally revelatory in Zucchino’s portrayal of the aftermath of the bloody coup, in which the implications of the book’s title become frightfully clear.
Zucchino illuminates a harrowing historical incident, the Wilmington coup of 1898, that is long forgotten by most. In doing so, he does a lot to explain our own interesting times ... riveting.
... [a] searing narrative ... Zucchino brings a journalist’s immediacy to Wilmington’s Lie, while also laying out the historical background for the 1898 terror, as well as the incomplete efforts in the city today to come to terms with this grim past ... Zucchino’s account makes for harrowing but can’t-turn-away reading; he basically describes an armed overthrow of a lawfully elected government and open murder of innocent people ... one of the most disturbing and frightening books I’ve ever read. It should be required reading for whites who scoff at the idea of white privilege.
... a remarkable account of a distinctive historical moment ... demonstrates that an appetite for violence was stoked and then carefully directed to align with Democratic electoral objectives ... Zucchino's account of the terror and violence that accompanied the Wilmington coup unfolds in horrifying detail ... Zucchino emphasizes how what might seem like random violence in fact served practical political aims ... Some of Zucchino's most provocative reflections come in the epilogue, where he draws comparisons between the voter suppression methods of the 19th century and the recent efforts of North Carolina's Republican politicians to limit black, and therefore Democratic, voting. He also writes about the disputed memories of the coup, still a contentious issue after more than a century. Zucchino never needs to stretch to find connections between the 1898 coup and the present day. The trauma--as well as political and economic consequences--still linger.
Zucchino shines his reporter’s spotlight on what he aptly calls a murderous coup as well as exploring its background and long-term consequences. He details how cynical operatives fanned racial hatred among Wilmington’s white working class, the vibrancy of the African American community, whose very existence was threatened by the coup, and the passive federal response that helped to entrench white supremacy and terror throughout the South, using the stories of figures like crusading Black newspaper editor Alex Manly and Democratic leader Josephus Daniels (whose reputation as a prudish but generally progressive politician takes a well-deserved hit) to add depth and nuance. The result is both a page-turner and a sobering reminder of democracy’s fragility.
The story has been told before, by many fine historians...Zucchino, however, finds new relevance for it in his book-length account ... There’s not that much new material here in the way of historic facts, but in telling the story, Zucchino finds some fresh nuances and insights ... Zucchino does a fair job of outlining the background of the coup, which dates back to Reconstruction ... Zucchino keeps his focus tightly on North Carolina, which might be its main weakness. What happened in Wilmington in 1898 was part of a growing trend of white supremacy that swept most of the states of the former Confederacy for a decade or more.
Zucchino uses personal diaries and testimonies from those present to engage readers. He also aims to illustrate the context of the coup and its repercussions on the following century of disenfranchisement; his account is extremely compelling and convincing ... Even astute readers of history and civil rights will be alarmed by this story, which is why it should be read. For fans of American history, politics, and civil rights.
A searing and still-relevant tale of racial injustice at the turn of the 20th century ... The complexities of racial division and party politics in a time before the Republicans and Democrats effectively switched sides are sometimes challenging to follow, but Zucchino’s narrative is clear and appropriately outraged without being strident ... A book that does history a service by uncovering a shameful episode, one that resonates strongly today.
... searing ... Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Zucchino paints a disturbing portrait of the massacre and how it was covered up by being described as a 'race riot' sparked by African-Americans. This masterful account reveals a shameful chapter in American history.
