Researching the Wilmington 1898 Massacre and Coup: Literary Works

At three o'clock sharp the streets were filled, as if by magic, with armed white men. The negroes, going about, had noted, with uneasy curiosity, that the stores and places of business, many of which closed at noon, were unduly late in opening for the afternoon, though no one suspected the reason for the delay; but at three o'clock every passing colored man was ordered, by the first white man he met, to throw up his hands. If he complied, he was searched, more or less roughly, for firearms, and then warned to get off the street. When he met another group of white men the scene was repeated. The man thus summarily held up seldom encountered more than two groups before disappearing across lots to his own home or some convenient hiding-place. If he resisted any demand of those who halted him - But the records of the day are historical; they may be found in the newspapers of the following date, but they are more firmly engraved upon the hearts and memories of the people of Wellington. For many months there were negro families in the town whose children screamed with fear and ran to their mothers for protection at the mere sight of a white man.

-- from The Storm Breaks, chapter 32 in The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Waddell Chesnutt

The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Boston : Houghton, Mifflin, 1901. 

• Full transcription via Documenting the American South
• Copy to download from internet Archive
• Works authored by Chesnutt in the UNC-Chapel Hill collections

The Leopard's Spots : a romance of the white man's burden--1865-1900 by Thomas Dixon ; illustrated by C.D. Williams. New York : Grosset & Dunlap, c1902.

• Content warning: racist language and racist violence
• Full transcription via Documenting the American South - commentary about the Dixon "Klan Trilogy"

Hanover; or, The Persecution of the Lowly. Story of the Wilmington Massacre by Jack Thorne, Published by M. C. L. Hill. [18-?]

• Full transcription via Documenting the American South
• David Bryant Fulton (1863?-1941) wrote Hanover under the pen name Jack Thorne. He was born in Fayetteville and grew up in Wilmington, completing his education at the segregated Williston School and Gregory Normal Institute. Fulton began his writing career as a correspondent for the Wilmington Record.