By james art 
November 10 marks the 126th anniversary of a dark day in Wilmington’s history: the coup and massacre of 1898, when armed white supremacists organized by some of the city’s leading citizens killed dozens of blacks, drove about 2,000 others from the city under death threats and forced the resignation of several local elected officials who were part of a biracial coalition.
Information about the coup was suppressed for decades, but the story is now well known in Wilmington. It will reach a much wider audience at 9:00 PM on November 12 when the documentary American Coup: Wilmington 1898 premieres on PBS stations nationwide as part of the long-running American Experience series. The film will also be available on PBS.org and the PBS app.
“American Coup” will have its North Carolina premiere on November 7 at Thalian Hall, where it will be screened to a sold-out audience of invited guests.
Many of the interviews in the documentary were filmed at Thalian Hall, where white citizens gathered in the days before the 1898 coup to hear racist speeches encouraging violence against their black neighbors.
Other interviews were conducted at locations associated with 1898, including the Wilmington Light Infantry building on Market Street, where groups of armed white men gathered at the start of the violence.
American Coup is written, produced and directed by award-winning documentary filmmakers Yoruba Richen and Brad Lichtenstein. Richen is a four-time Emmy nominee whose 2020 film The Killing of Breona Taylor won an NAACP Image Award. Lichtenstein was nominated for an Emmy for his 2022 gun violence documentary When Claude Was Shot.
“I’m always interested in telling stories that need to be better known and making them compelling, engaging and relevant to today, which this story is,” Richen said.
Lichtenstein said that “125 years, that’s really not that long ago. We’re trying to bring this truth that if you don’t know your history, you’re bound to repeat it.”
After the violence, Wilmington’s population went from majority black to majority white almost overnight, and 1898 remains the only known violent overthrow of a local government in American history. Wilmington would not elect another black to office until 1972.
Wilmington filmmaker Christopher Everett’s 2015 film Wilmington on Fire is the first feature-length documentary since 1898.
A number of books have been written about 1898, including LeRae Sykes Umfleet’s A Day of Blood: The Wilmington Riot of 1898 and David Zucchino’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Wilmington Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of white supremacy’. Both authors are involved in the film.
Lichtenstein called American Coup a “comprehensive, journalistic approach” to the events of 1898, saying the film was “thoroughly fact-checked” and used all kinds of historical documents and photographs, as well as interviews with historians, scholars and descendants. to tell the story.
The film also features striking black-and-white animation by Carol Walker, as well as original songs by Grammy-winning North Carolina singer Rhiannon Giddens. For years, Giddens has been working with Wilmington writer John Jeremiah Sullivan on a possible musical or opera based on the events of 1898. Giddens also narrated some passages in “American Coup.”
Sullivan, whose third-person project has been working to uncover the story since 1898, is one of several Wilmington residents or locals who appear in the film.
There is also Inez Campbell Eason, the great-great-granddaughter of Isham Quick, whose businesses, including a black-owned bank, were stolen by white racists, and Meg McRae, whose great-grandfather, Hugh McRae, was on the committee that drafted the White Declaration of independence’ during meetings at his house at 715 Market St. MacRae also became a councilor after the mayor and other councillors, some of them black, were forced to resign.
Prominent in American Coup is Kieran Hale, great-great-grandson of Alex Manley, editor and publisher of The Daily Record, Wilmington’s only black-owned newspaper in 1898. Manley’s editorial challenged wild but widely circulated stories about the epidemic of “big black beasts” raping white women, while calling out white men for raping black women, was reprinted in white-owned newspapers of the time, including the predecessor StarNews, and used to incite racial hatred.
Manley left the city before November 10 to avoid being killed, but a white mob burned down the offices of The Daily Record. One of the strongest moments in the film is how Haile reads with great emotion the words of his great-great-grandfather.
Haile, who is from Los Angeles, came to Wilmington for last year’s 125th anniversary celebration of 1898 and will attend the premiere at Thalian Hall with other family members.
Hale said that for the most part, his family’s connection to 1898 was “known but not talked about” when he was young. When he was in college, Hale said he began studying black history and psychology and wrote articles about 1898.
He said he sees his involvement in the film as “setting the record straight. Part of me is glad we took the time to visit this history that is not widely known, not taught, not talked about.”
However, he said, when it comes to his family’s connection to 1898, “I wouldn’t say I’m at peace with it.”
Hale said he was troubled that “to this day nothing has been offered in the way of payment to the families,” although he recognizes that “the general consensus is that the government and the justice system are not set up to deal with crimes of this magnitude.
“I would like to find a way to pay the families. We have to come up with a mechanism. I don’t know how it will work, but I would like to see it happen.”
The filmmakers noted that violence against blacks was common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with about 170 documented massacres occurring between the Civil War and the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.
“Wilmington was not in isolation. It’s not a part of American history that’s really talked about,” Richen said, adding that he hopes “American Coup” inspires people “to learn more. There’s so much history and we obviously can’t tell it all in one film.”
This article originally appeared on the Wilmington StarNews: New documentary on 1898 Wilmington coup and massacre to appeal to nationwide audience