This is an updated version of a short essay that I first published two years ago. To write this version, I drew on additional research that I did in preparation for giving a special lecture last week to mark the New Bern Historical Society’s 100th anniversary.
White Supremacy Campaign of 1898
“Laws Are Silent Amid Arms:” Remembering Elizabeth City, N.C., in 1898
On the 30th of Sept. 1898, North Carolina newspaper publisher Richard Benbury Creecy wrote, “We are standing on the edge of a race conflict that will shock humanity.” He was not talking about Wilmington, N.C., though, as we might expect, but about another coastal town, Elizabeth City.
The Other Coup D’Etat: Remembering New Bern, N.C., in 1898
A friend in New Bern, N.C., recently sent me an issue of the Raleigh News & Observer that he found in his family's old papers. The newspaper's date was November 5, 1898. A front-page article was about a large white supremacy meeting at the Craven County Courthouse in New Bern.
Reaping the Whirlwind
Many Americans are searching for historical context in order to make sense of what happened at the U.S. Capitol. Again and again, they look to the racial massacre and coup d'etat in Wilmington in 1898, when white supremacists overthrew a duly elected government and took power.
David Cecelski 