Read on Twitter
In light of @caleb_crain's excellent @NewYorker piece on the 1898 Wilmington coup & massacre, wanted to say a few things about that event & my favorite American novel (Charles Chesnutt's Marrow of Tradition). https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/27/what-a-white-supremacist-coup-looks-like
First, as I mentioned a bit ago, @atrubek's Belt Publishing has a great recent reissue of Chesnutt's novel, with an intro by Wiley Cash! Only $8 at the moment, so support indie publishing & get your hands on the greatest American novel for 8 bucks. https://beltpublishing.com/products/the-marrow-of-tradition
Second, if you want to learn more about Wilmington (before, during, & after 1898), you can't do better than @MegMulrooney's book: https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813054926
For me, the most vital primary source from the Wilmington massacre is this stunning letter to President McKinley from an anonymous African American woman in the city:
https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/letter-african-american
https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/letter-african-american
The more I've learned about the countless massacres between New Orleans in 1866 and (at least) Detroit in 1943, the more Wilmington has come to seem all too typical of a century of post-Civil War racial terrorism.
https://americanstudier.blogspot.com/2018/09/september-13-2018-massacrestudying.html
https://americanstudier.blogspot.com/2018/09/september-13-2018-massacrestudying.html
Seen in that light, even the Red Summer of 1919 & Tulsa in 1921, horrific as they were, are also just signposts along a long, bloody, very American highway, what we could sum up as the lynching epidemic (since massacres were collective lynchings). https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/06/considering-history-racial-terrorism-and-the-red-summer-of-1919/
But as Crain argues, & as many other sources including Chesnutt's magisterial novel have long made clear, Wilmington does still stand out for the white supremacist coup d'etat that accompanied its racial terrorism. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/wilmington-massacre/536457/
So we need to read Chesnutt (& that anonymous letter, & Mulrooney) both for all that it & Wilmington tragically exemplify about American history, & for their shared warning of white supremacy's ultimate goal: to take & hold power in the most undemocratic ways possible.
I could go on about Wilmington & Marrow, but I'll leave it at this: if there's one novel all Americans should read, it gets my vote. & if there's a moment that opens up the last 150+ yrs of US history better than Wilmington 1898, I haven't encountered it. https://americanwritersmuseum.org/why-we-should-all-read-charles-chesnutt/
PS. Can't believe I wrote a Marrow thread w/out my fav Amer lit quote, from the novel's fictionalization of Wilmington 1898: "a melancholy witness to the fact that our boasted civilization is but a thin veneer, which cracks & scales off at the first impact of primal passions."
