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Researching the Wilmington 1898 Massacre and Coup: Secondary Sources

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Monographs

Published Reports and Articles

"The Ghosts of 1898" by Timothy B. Tyson. Published in The News and Observer, November 17, 2006.

Report by LeRae Umfleet, principal researcher, May 31, 2006. 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission.

"University men, social science, and white supremacy in North Carolina" by Gregory P. Downs. Journal of Southern History. Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia, Dept. of History. vol. 75, no. 2 (May 2009)

For many white supremacy leaders in North Carolina, their effort to topple the South's strongest biracial political movement was as much a social and intellectual effort as a political one. Despite scholarly portrayals of its roots in crass ambition or personal neuroses, North Carolina's white supremacy was in fact a mandarin moment led by a newly self-conscious group of public intellectuals. These men were participants, if not leading or systematic ones, in a global project, one in which social scientific theories of progress, race, reproduction, and degeneration inspired new waves of statist reform programs across Europe and the United States. Although their ideas were colored by their particular experiences in North Carolina, they were part of a broad current of what sociologist Edward A. Ross called "selectionist" thought. This statist approach to governance celebrated the role of educated leaders in selecting the proper aspects of society to reproduce in order to drive the nation toward progress and away from degeneration. By placing these intellectual networks at the center of the formation and dissemination of North Carolina white supremacy, this article traces the roles of ideas and of the University of North Carolina in the formation of this thinking class.

"Building a Southern Past, 1885–1915" by Catherine W. Bishir

"Commemorating Wilmington’s Racial Violence of 1898: From Individual to Collective Memory" by Melton Alonza McLaurin Southern Cultures, Vol. 8, No. 2: Summer 2002

"'The Vampire That Hovers Over North Carolina': Gender, White Supremacy, and the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898" by Andrea Meryl Kirshenbaum Southern Cultures, Vol. 4, No. 3: Fall 1998

"What a White-Supremacist Coup Looks Like" By Caleb Crain April 20, 2020, New Yorker

Videos and Films

Wilmington on Fire Speller Street Films presents ; a Christopher Everett film ; producer, Blackhouse Publishing ; director and producer, Christopher Everett  [Durham, NC] : Speller Street Films, [2015]