Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

David Zucchino (1951-) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent 15 years as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times before joining the New York Times as a contributor in 2020. Zucchino has written extensively about racism. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his series “Being Black in South Africa.” His first book Myth of the Welfare Queen (1997) covered the challenges faced by the poor, largely Black population of Philadelphia, countering the Reagan-era myth that low-income people were living lavishly on public benefits. Wilmington’s Lie similarly counters a popularly-held, racist myth: That the events of 1898 were a “race riot.”

Zucchino went to journalism school at the University of North Carolina. His first job in journalism was as a reporter for the Raleigh News & Observer, the paper owned by the Daniels family that was used to whip up racial resentment in the 19th century. Zucchino uses his familiarity with North Carolina news sources to provide color to, and context for, the role of the media in generating public support for the massacre in 1898. In an interview with NPR about Wilmington’s Lie, Zucchino described the events as “‘America’s first and only armed overthrow of a legally elected government’” (“

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