Fellow #WatchmenHBO fans: there’s so many more stories like the Tulsa Massacre. Here’s one from my neck of the woods. It’s the only successful over throw of a duly elected government on American soil. It was by white supremacists and left 60 people dead. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/wilmington-massacre/536457/

For years growing up this was referred to as the “Wilmington Race Riots” which framed black citizens as the instigators. Similar to the “Tulsa Race Riots” framing blacks for burning down their own town.

This massacre burned down the black owned Daily Record and forced the recently elected Republican Populist fusion party to resign. The leaders of the coup were prominent Wilmingtonians. One of the leaders was Charles Aycock who would a few years later become governor.

The largest park in Wilmington is named after Hugh Macrae. A member of “The Secret Nine” who planned the coup that kept African Americans from elected office in the area for the next 60 years.They used a Gatling Gun and over 400 personal arms.

This was not an isolated incident. Black owned newspapers were destroyed all throughout the state systematically. But it was definitely a turning point for the rise of the Jim Crow South.

It was always framed to me growing up that it was instigated by the black community. It was primarily glossed over but when it did come up it was not without the same air that the Lost Cause and “States Right’s” would be discussed.

The perpetrators and leaders of the massacre, their legacies, have not had their comeuppance. They still get discussed in flow long historical terms for their “business” or “political” acumen. Things they wouldn’t have had if not for the atrocities they planned and executed.

Glowing*