Democracy betrayed : the Wilmington race riot of 1898 and its legacy

At the close of the nineteenth century, the Democratic Party in North Carolina engineered a white supremacy revolution. Frustrated by decades of African American self-assertion and threatened by an interracial coalition advocating democratic reforms, white conservatives used violence, demagoguery, and fraud to seize political power and disenfranchise black citizens. The most notorious episode of the campaign was the Wilmington "race riot" of 1898, which claimed the lives of many black residents and rolled back decades of progress for African Americans in the state.

Published on the centennial of the Wilmington race riot, Democracy Betrayed draws together the best new scholarship on the events of 1898 and their aftermath. Contributors to this important book hope to draw public attention to the tragedy, to honor its victims, and to bring a clear and timely historical voice to the debate over its legacy.

The contributors are David S. Cecelski, William H. Chafe, Laura F. Edwards, Raymond Gavins, Glenda E. Gilmore, John Haley, Michael Honey, Stephen Kantrowitz, H. Leon Prather Sr., Timothy B. Tyson, LeeAnn Whites, and Richard Yarborough.

• Foreword p. ix John Hope Franklin
• Preface p. xiii
• Introduction p. 3 Timothy B. Tyson and David S. Cecelski
• We Have Taken a City: A Centennial Essay p. 15 H. Leon Prather Sr.
• Abraham H. Galloway: Wilmington's Lost Prophet and the Rise of Black Radicalism in the American South p. 43 David S. Cecelski
• Murder, Memory, and the Flight of the Incubus p. 73 Glenda E. Gilmore
• The Two Faces of Domination in North Carolina, 1800-1898 p. 95 Stephen Kantrowitz
• Captives of Wilmington: The Riot and Historical Memories of Political Conflict, 1865-1898 p. 113 Laura F. Edwards
• Love, Hate, Rape, Lynching: Rebecca Latimer Felton and the Gender Politics of Racial Violence p. 143 LeeAnn Whites
• Class, Race, and Power in the New South: Racial Violence and the Delusions of White Supremacy p. 163 Michael Honey
• Fear, Hope, and Struggle: Recasting Black North Carolina in the Age of Jim Crow p. 185 Raymond Gavins
• Race, Rhetoric, and Revolution p. 207 John Haley
• Violence, Manhood, and Black Heroism: The Wilmington Riot in Two Turn-of-the-Century African American Novels p. 225 Richard Varborough
• Wars for Democracy: African American Militancy and Interracial Violence in North Carolina during World War II p. 253 Timothy B. Tyson
• Epilogue from Greensboro, North Carolina: Race and the Possibilities of American Democracy p. 277 William H. Chafe
• Acknowledgments p. 287
• Contributors p. 289
• Index p. 291