David Zucchino > Quotes

“A new voter registration law gave registrars authority to ask a potential voter any “material” question regarding identity and qualifications. To help identify blacks for disqualification, the law required registrars to write down applicants’ race.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The killings in Wilmington inspired whites across the South. The white supremacy campaign demonstrated that determined whites could whittle down the black vote and black officeholders, first through terror and violence and then by legislation. Wilmington’s whites had proved that the federal government would reproach them but not stop them. Inspired by the sweeping success of North Carolina’s grandfather clause, other Southern states adopted variations of the law—Alabama in 1901, Virginia in 1902, Georgia in 1908, and Oklahoma in 1910. Even Charles Aycock was awed. “It’s a glorious victory that we have won,” he said. “And the very extent of it frightens me.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Teach your men purity. Let virtue be something more than an excuse for them to intimidate and torture a helpless people. Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Manly decided that he had no choice but to defend what he called “defamed colored men.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Felton could”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Under the subhead: IT WAS ALL PLANNED IN ADVANCE, the Charleston reporter detailed the secret white strategy in Wilmington:”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The campaign had decisively snatched control of the state legislature from Republicans and Populists, who had won a two-thirds majority in 1896. Democrats now held ninety-four seats in the state’s”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“They welcomed the return of what they regarded as the natural order in America—whites ruling blacks. They seemed aggrieved only by the way Wilmington’s whites went about it.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“on an equal footing with white men—not only politically, but socially.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“White politicians claimed there had been massive voter fraud. They demanded that the election results be invalidated.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Collier’s Weekly was a useful tool for disseminating the white narrative that the killings were necessary to remove a corrupt government dominated by blacks plotting an armed insurrection.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Russell’s decision was pivotal: he gave a committed white supremacist unchecked authority to unleash state troops against black citizens—the very men whose votes had put Russell in office.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The whole thing was with the object of striking terror to the man’s heart, so that he would never vote again,” she wrote. “For this was the object of the whole persecution; to make Nov. 10th a day to be remembered by the whole race for all time.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Daniels and Simmons focused on the well-refined strategy of racist demagoguery perfected by white supremacists of previous generations. For years, those white men had used a crude phrase for the time-tested tactic of frightening white voters by warning of the twin menace of black suffrage and black beast rapists: “Crying nigger.” And that was precisely what Daniels and Simmons intended to do.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“white night riders fanned out into the countryside. Many wore red shirts or vests, along with distinctive white caps, evocative of the hoods once worn by Klansmen. Scores of black farmers and laborers were roused from their beds and threatened with death if they”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“There has not been a single illegal act committed in the change of government. Simply, the old board went out, and the new board came in—strictly according to law.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“the Charleston News and Courier, whose correspondent had shared drinks and meals with Wilmington’s white supremacists in the days leading up to the killings.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“summon the courage to lynch any black man caught with a white woman.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“registered to vote. Many were beaten or whipped—attacks that came to be known as “white-capping.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“the women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the womans infatuation or the mans boldness bring attention to them and the man is lynched for rape.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“unleashed a terrifying new menace in the eastern counties—the majority black vote.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The shotgun and the Bible have never been separated by the Caucasian … It is not the Christianity that makes the Negro forgiving, it is two hundred and fifty years of forced coercion, cowardice and damaging instructions to play into the favor of the white man. Better get a gun for Christmas. Insure your lives Negroes, and then you are in line of equality.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Simmons was the state chairman of the Democratic Party, the party of white supremacy. With white dominance challenged by blacks at the ballot box, Simmons was the man most directly responsible for leading the white fight to eliminate the threat.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“Manly had placed the blame for sex between black men and white women on white men—for failing to properly protect their supposedly cherished and virtuous women, reduced in Manly’s view to mere “property.” He upended the core white conviction that any sex act between a black man and a white woman could only be rape.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“She blamed black men’s right to vote; it led them to believe they stood”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“In a matter of months, their campaign had intimidated and terrified thousands of black men into staying home from the polls; of the state’s roughly one hundred thousand eligible black voters, fewer than half had voted.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“If the papers and speakers of the other race would condemn the commission of crime because it is crime and not try to make it appear that the Negroes were the only criminals, they would find their strongest allies in the intelligent Negroes themselves …”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“with a white woman, than for a white man to be intimate with a colored woman.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“He watched them return from the war unbowed, full of rage, and more committed than ever to white supremacy.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

“The New York Journal correspondent on the scene equated the killings of November 10 to mass murder: The 10th was a bloody day in this one-horse town. They talk of culture and refinement. But could you have seen them on Thursday you would have thought them the bloodhounds of hell turned loose. There was no riot; simply the strong slaying the weak and helpless. The negroes had no firearms of any kind but every white man from 12 to seventy was handling guns … From every town around the whites poured in to exterminate the Negroes.”
― David Zucchino, Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy