0:00

Hey, John. Hey, Michael. You're

0:03

gonna laugh, but I couldn't shake the idea

0:05

that Wilmington of the 19th century was sort

0:07

of like Wakanda. Okay,

0:10

you were right. Well, I'm smiling,

0:13

but tell me more. Okay,

0:15

so our last episode made me think of

0:18

that scene from Black Panther where Andy

0:20

Serkis' character, Klaw, is being interrogated by

0:22

the CIA guy, and he's like, what

0:26

do you actually know about Wakanda? You

0:28

actually know about Wakanda. Um...

0:32

Shepherds, textiles, cool outfits. It's

0:35

all a front. Explore

0:37

research for it for centuries. Elder

0:39

Ardor, the Golden City. They

0:42

thought they could find it in South America, but

0:44

it was in Africa the whole time.

0:47

I'm the only outsider who's seen it and

0:49

got out there alive. All

0:52

right, I see what you're getting at. The

0:54

difference, of course, is that those

0:57

characters are talking about a place,

0:59

Wakanda, that in the story exists

1:01

in the present, but

1:03

it's deliberately hidden by

1:05

Wakandans themselves. Exactly. And

1:08

in the case of Wilmington,

1:10

North Carolina, obviously it's not

1:12

fictional or fantastical like Wakanda.

1:15

We're talking about a very real non-comic

1:17

book world that existed more than 125

1:19

years ago. The

1:21

Wilmington we explored in episode one. And

1:24

it's hidden to most of us

1:26

by a century or two of

1:28

incomplete and frankly racist history. But

1:30

importantly, in both cases, the

1:33

picture of the place seems kind of hard to

1:35

believe. In Black Panther,

1:37

the CIA guy is incredulous because

1:39

of the stereotyped image he carries

1:42

about Africa. Wakanda

1:44

couldn't possibly be this rich,

1:46

technologically advanced place that the

1:48

guy's describing. And in the case

1:50

of 19th century Wilmington, we

1:53

are all the CIA guy, even you

1:55

and me, as we talked

1:57

about last time. Abraham

2:00

Galloway, in Wilmington as a 19th

2:02

century southern town with black people

2:05

moving relatively freely and achieving great

2:07

things even before and during

2:09

the Civil War. And

2:11

we want to say, really? Because

2:14

our shared history as a country

2:16

doesn't tell us about places where

2:19

black people lived interesting three-dimensional lives

2:21

in that time period. The

2:23

fact is we have a story to tell

2:25

here about a massacre and coup d'etat. Because

2:28

black people in Wilmington, North Carolina

2:30

were doing far too well in

2:33

the 1890s as far

2:35

as the state's most powerful white

2:37

people were concerned. Exactly. And

2:39

I'm really glad you said powerful people.

2:42

What happened in November 1898 is sometimes described as an

2:46

unplanned explosion with lower-class

2:48

white men in particular

2:50

getting carried away. But

2:53

that's not how it went down. From

3:00

the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke

3:02

University, this is Seen on Radio Season

3:04

6, Echoes of a Coup.

3:07

Episode 2. I'm John Biewe.

3:10

And I'm Michael Betts. In this

3:12

episode, The Run-Up. The conspiracy

3:14

and the propaganda campaign that set

3:16

the stage for the Wilmington massacre

3:19

and coup. Hi.

3:21

Hi. I'm LeRae. Nice to meet you. I'm

3:24

Shannon Vaughn. Nice to meet you. Hi. What

3:26

are we doing? We spent a day in

3:28

Wilmington with LeRae Umfleet. At

3:30

the moment, she's chatting with a couple

3:33

of research librarians at the New Hanover

3:35

County Library. They're gushing over

3:37

this rare visit by LeRae because

3:39

she's arguably the leading historian on

3:41

Wilmington 1898. When I began doing

3:43

the research on 1898, I began immediately to realize

3:49

that this is

3:51

a contentious topic and that

3:53

there are competing narratives of

3:56

what happened. Umfleet is

3:58

a manager and research historian with

4:00

the North Carolina Department of Cultural

4:02

Resources. When the state

4:05

legislature, the General Assembly, created what

4:07

it called the Wilmington Race Riot

4:09

Commission in 2003, it

4:11

assigned Loray to produce an official state

4:13

report. She completed it in 2005. My

4:16

book came out in 2009. The

4:19

book is called A Day of Blood, the 1898 Wilmington

4:22

Race Riot. The

4:25

push to create a commission started after the 100-year

4:27

anniversary of the coup in 1998. Some

4:30

Wilmington community leaders realized that not enough

4:33

people knew about this event that changed

4:35

the course of their city. Wilmington's

4:38

two black state lawmakers, Senator

4:41

Luther Jordan and state Assemblyman Thomas

4:43

Wright, worked for several years to

4:45

get the commission going. The

4:48

commission wanted us to create a more

4:50

solid, cohesive narrative

4:53

of the causes and the

4:55

effects, particularly those effects for

4:57

the black community in Wilmington.

5:00

And it was my charge

5:02

to look at the economic impact,

5:05

the social impact, and the cultural

5:07

impact of the violence. And

5:10

I took it and ran with it. Books,

5:13

articles, and documentary films that have

5:15

been made since its release have

5:17

relied heavily on Loray's work, and

5:19

some have built on it. Her

5:22

report includes a portrait of Wilmington before

5:24

it all happened in the 1890s. Wilmington

5:30

was the largest city in North Carolina at the time.

5:33

Population about 20,000. It's a

5:35

little bit larger population in the

5:37

black community than the white. Wilmington

5:40

was an example of what the

5:42

turn of the 20th century could

5:44

be for the South with

5:48

everyone prospering regardless of your

5:50

race or your status

5:53

prior to freedom in the Civil

5:56

War. Not to say it was a wonderful place

5:58

to live for everyone and that it was a wonderful place the

6:00

utopia, but of

6:02

the southern states, Wilmington residents

6:05

had a higher rate

6:07

of home ownership among African

6:09

Americans. Wages and

6:11

education levels for black people were higher

6:13

in Wilmington than elsewhere in North Carolina

6:15

too. In 1897,

6:18

black people owned 20% of the

6:20

city's businesses. Black people

6:22

held jobs as lawyers, bankers,

6:24

architects, school teachers and principals,

6:27

firemen, policemen and mail carriers.

6:30

Three of the nine city alderman were black.

6:33

So was the collector of customs at the

6:35

Wilmington port, a prestigious federally

6:38

appointed position. So if

6:40

you were an African American and you wanted

6:42

to prosper and you had the ability, you

6:44

might would consider coming to Wilmington to begin

6:46

to make it in the new

6:48

world that we were looking at at the turn of

6:50

the 20th century. As

6:53

we described in episode one, North Carolina's political

6:55

climate stood out from the rest of the

6:57

south by the late 1890s. It

7:01

was still a thriving multiracial democracy. The

7:04

Democrats, the conservative openly white supremacist party at

7:06

the time, had been out of power for

7:08

a few years and were hungry to get

7:10

back in. A fusionist

7:12

coalition was winning elections, drawing votes from

7:14

most black North Carolinians and a good

7:16

number of whites. Two parties

7:18

made up the fusion coalition. The

7:21

Republicans, most of them black and the

7:23

populist party made up mostly of rural

7:25

and working class white people who had

7:27

soured on the Democrats. Fusionist

7:30

had dominated the state elections of 1894 and 1896. Going

7:36

into 1898, they held the

7:38

governor's office and controlled the state assembly. They

7:40

held both of the state's US Senate

7:43

seats and seven of eight seats in

7:45

the United States House of Representatives. One

7:47

of those congressmen was black, George

7:49

H. White. year.

8:00

Wilmington was a prime target for

8:02

Democrats determined to make the South

8:05

great again. They promised

8:07

to end what they called Negro

8:09

rule. From the Wilmington Morning Star,

8:12

October 30th 1898. The proof cited of the

8:15

progress of Negro

8:17

rule. The counties and cities named

8:20

where they do rule and

8:22

the offices they hold. In reality,

8:24

of course, there was never any

8:26

Negro rule. Just black people exercising

8:29

their rights as citizens and sometimes

8:31

getting elected to office. But

8:33

historian David Siselsky told us that

8:36

the planning to extinguish black political

8:38

power and to restore

8:40

unchallenged white supremacy began

8:42

quietly well before the fall

8:44

of 1898. The leaders of

8:46

the Democratic Party had met

8:49

at the Chautauqua Hotel in early December

8:51

1897. They had gotten support from

8:56

banking and railroad interest primarily

8:58

to fund the campaign.

9:00

They would go back to them repeatedly

9:02

over the next two years and

9:05

they devised a policy, a program that would reach

9:07

into every part of it. A

9:13

pivotal figure was the chairman of the

9:16

Democratic Party, Fernifold Simmons. He

9:18

realized that Democrats could not win elections

9:21

on the issues. So instead

9:23

they would turn to race. Under

9:25

his leadership, the party's executive committee put out

9:28

a campaign handbook in 1898 that declared, this

9:30

is a white

9:32

man's country and white men

9:34

must control and govern it. Historian

9:37

Laree Umfleet. Fernifold Simmons

9:39

and the statewide Democratic Party committee

9:42

used the white supremacy concept

9:44

as their basis for all

9:47

parts of the framework to win

9:49

the election plans for 1898-1900. And there

9:51

were county committees

9:56

at each county level that would

9:58

Receive sort of. A

10:01

basic kit of how to run

10:03

a campaign Based on this news

10:05

White Supremacy campaign platform. Simmons would

10:08

later serve in the Us Senate

10:10

for thirty years. He was the

10:12

longest serving Sen in North Carolina

10:15

history. A noteworthy artifact from his

10:17

son: A campaign of nineteen hundred.

10:19

A campaign button with Simmons is

10:22

photo and words. The. Chieftain

10:24

of white supremacy. In

10:26

Eighty Ninety Eight, Simmons work closely

10:28

with Josephus Daniels, the editor of

10:30

a leading newspaper in the state,

10:33

the Raleigh News and Observer. Daniels

10:35

had joined with a wealthy industrialist

10:37

by the paper. In Eighty Ninety

10:39

Four. And run it as a

10:41

mouthpiece for the Democrats. Starting.

10:43

Months before the November elections and

10:45

eighty muddied democrats and their allies

10:48

in the press kept up a

10:50

drumbeat of outrage in fear mongering

10:52

about Negro rule. Daniels, the newspaper

10:55

editor would later both that one

10:57

is is most effective moves was

10:59

hiring a man named Norman He

11:02

Jeanette, who produced a series of

11:04

vividly drawn and flagrantly racist editorial

11:06

cartoons. One showed a huge foot

11:09

labeled negro stepping on a small

11:11

prostrate white man with. The caption,

11:13

serious question, How long will

11:15

this last Another cartoon published

11:17

on the front page of

11:20

The News and Observer six

11:22

weeks before the election was

11:24

titled the Vampire Then Hovers

11:26

over know Tell On it

11:28

depicted a monstrous black figure

11:30

with bulging eyes, sharp teeth,

11:32

and bat like wings labeled

11:34

Negro Rule. The black

11:36

vampire is stepping onto a fusion

11:38

as ballot box as it reaches

11:41

was clawed hands to scoop up

11:43

terrified fleeing white women and men.

11:59

The. kids for a white supremacist

12:01

victory in 1898 was a statewide

12:03

effort, but Wilmington was a

12:05

top priority for the Democrats as

12:08

the center of black success and

12:10

political participation. Some

12:12

prominent local businessmen formed committees to

12:14

push for the end of Negro

12:16

rule in their city. One

12:18

group called itself the Secret Nine. The

12:21

Secret Nine were men

12:23

who were deeply involved in all

12:25

of those planning meetings

12:28

that were already happening because

12:30

of the catalyst of furniture and

12:33

the white supremacy platform that

12:35

was being spread across the state. We're

12:37

talking about pillars of the community. So

12:39

men like Hugh McCrae who had his

12:41

hands in lots of business opportunities. Walter

12:44

Parsley was very much

12:46

involved in the railroad

12:49

system and Jay Allen

12:51

Taylor he's another very wealthy upper

12:54

leadership kind of man not only

12:56

financially but their family had been

12:58

in Wilmington for a very long

13:01

time. Those white city leaders in

13:03

Wilmington coordinated their efforts with leaders

13:05

of the statewide campaign. The

13:08

Raleigh newspaper, the News & Observer,

13:10

covered Wilmington closely and editor Josephus

13:13

Daniels declared in the fall of 1898 that the cause of

13:17

Wilmington had become the cause of

13:19

all. Another leading

13:22

Democratic politician and a future

13:24

governor Charles Acock called

13:26

Wilmington the center of the white

13:28

supremacy movement. Although

13:30

that movement was planned and led by

13:33

elites the Ray Umfleet says

13:35

one of their central strategies was using

13:37

race to appeal to poor white people.

13:40

Some lower-income white folks had been attracted

13:43

to the fusionist movement in its effort

13:45

to lift working-class people of all races.

13:48

The Democrats mounted an effort to assure

13:50

even the poorest white men of one

13:52

thing. They Were still

13:54

better than the black workers because

13:56

they were white in the white

13:58

supremacy campaign. Rhetoric making

14:01

them feel included an

14:03

important three rallies and

14:05

speeches and things like

14:07

that on the Secret

14:09

Nine, and the county

14:11

committee leadership were able

14:13

to. Manipulate these white

14:15

voters in Wilmington and bring them

14:17

into the fold of making sure

14:20

that the white Democratic party candidates

14:22

got every says that they could

14:24

get. Another recurring

14:26

theme of the White Supremacist

14:28

campaign? The racist claims that

14:31

rapacious black man posed a

14:33

threat to wait womanhood. And

14:35

a white men were complicit if

14:37

they supported the presence of black

14:39

man in public life. The idea

14:41

that men are not been namely

14:43

by protecting their families. Or

14:46

that kissing even an inch

14:48

is going to. Cause.

14:51

A disruption of Black me in

14:53

pursuing white women. It's the oldest

14:55

trick in the book. Historian Glinda

14:58

Gilmore, professor emeritus at You Is

15:00

in North Carolina native. she's written

15:02

several books and White supremacy in

15:05

the lives of Southern women. Glenda

15:07

appeared in our Season Three series

15:09

Man in Our Episode on Intersectionality

15:12

where she brought up the propaganda

15:14

campaign in Wilmington and Eighty Ninety

15:16

Eight as a glaring example of

15:19

this ploy. She. Pointed

15:21

out in case it needs

15:23

to be said that details

15:25

about rampaging black rapists were

15:27

ally. Was constantly pointed

15:29

out in the campaign's family. we

15:31

construction three the turn of the

15:34

century that there was it. The

15:36

problem with black men waiting White

15:38

women that does occur. It says

15:40

if they happened at all were

15:42

extremely rare, but it was. Fairly

15:45

common for white men to

15:47

write black women in the

15:50

sun and to have haven't

15:52

lost families. So the hypocrisy

15:54

us ah, that equation has

15:56

always been there. But.

15:59

those facts didn't stop the fear

16:01

mongering at all. If

16:03

it needs lynching to protect

16:05

a woman's dearest possession from

16:07

the raven and human beasts, then

16:10

I say lynch a thousand times

16:12

a week if necessary. That's

16:14

from a speech that a woman named Rebecca Latimer

16:17

Felton gave in Georgia in 1897. She

16:21

was a writer and an activist in the

16:23

women's suffrage movement and a

16:25

pro-Confederate former slaveholder. It

16:27

was common then to reprint popular

16:29

speeches in the newspaper, since

16:31

you couldn't watch them on YouTube. A

16:34

Wilmington newspaper, The Morning Star, printed the

16:36

text of Felton's speech a year after

16:38

she gave it and three

16:40

months before the election in August 1898. Wilmington

16:44

was the only populated town that

16:46

actually had black political power at

16:49

that time and so... Cedric Harrison,

16:51

who runs those tours teaching folks

16:53

about Wilmington's black history, points

16:56

out that Wilmington also boasted a

16:58

black-owned newspaper, The Daily Record. It

17:01

was popular with both black and white readers. Its

17:04

owner, 32-year-old Alexander Manley, was not

17:07

going to let the Rebecca Felton

17:09

speech go unanswered. And he responded

17:12

to this article by saying that

17:14

the interracial couples that he had

17:16

seen grown over the South were

17:19

very passionate and willingly and

17:21

consensual on both sides. Our

17:23

experience among poor white people in the

17:25

country teaches us that the women of

17:28

that race are not any more particular

17:30

in the matter of clandestine meetings

17:32

with colored men than other white

17:34

men with colored women. Meetings

17:37

of this kind go on for some

17:39

time until the woman's infatuation or the

17:41

man's boldness bring attention to them and

17:43

the man is lynched for rape. Tell

17:47

your men that it is no worse for

17:49

a black man to be intimate with a

17:51

white woman than for a white man to

17:53

be intimate with a colored woman. It's

17:56

unclear whether Manley himself or one of

17:58

his editors wrote the article. but,

18:00

as owner and publisher, manly took the

18:02

heat. For all its

18:05

truth-telling, the piece was an unintended gift

18:07

to the white supremacists. The

18:09

white press, in Wilmington and across the

18:12

state, reprinted it in the lead-up to

18:14

the election. Some papers

18:16

published it day after day, using

18:19

it to rouse white men, to

18:21

go to the polls and to commit

18:23

violence if necessary, to disenfranchise

18:25

black people and their white allies.

18:28

Here's LeRae on Fleet again. One of

18:30

the major tools of the white supremacy campaign

18:33

was speech makers. One

18:36

of the leading speech makers was Alfred

18:38

Moore Waddell, a native of Wilmington, a

18:41

Confederate veteran and a

18:44

very fiery speaker that could

18:46

inflame the hearts and

18:48

minds of his audience. In

18:51

one speech that Waddell gave many

18:53

times, he said this. We

18:56

shall never surrender to a ragged rabble of

18:58

Negroes if we have to choke the Cape

19:00

Fear River with the carcasses of dead bodies.

19:03

And that became a rallying cry

19:05

for the white elements of the

19:08

town, but it became a point

19:10

of fear and intimidation within the

19:12

black community. This

19:15

is from a speech Waddell gave the day

19:17

before the election on November 7. Go

19:19

to the polls tomorrow, and if you find

19:21

the Negro out-voting, tell him to leave the

19:24

polls and if he refuses, kill him. Shoot

19:26

him down in his tracks. We shall

19:29

win tomorrow if we have to do it with

19:31

guns. Almost

19:39

guaranteeing that things would turn violent,

19:41

Democrats and the Secret Nine formed

19:43

an alliance with a vigilante organization,

19:45

the Red Shirts. They'd

19:48

been active elsewhere in North and South

19:50

Carolina, much like the

19:52

Proud Boys and Oath Keepers of today. The

19:55

Red Shirts became the enforcement arm

19:57

of the conservative political movement in A

20:01

red shirt and white supremacy campaign

20:03

leadership watched to make sure that

20:05

they voted the correct way which

20:07

was the way as the white

20:09

supremacy democratic party and to keep

20:11

African Americans away from the polls

20:13

and Republicans away from the polls.

20:15

A lot of work was also

20:17

join for intimidation, but that. Bump

20:20

weeks as this work started months prior

20:22

to the Lexus, preventing people from going

20:24

to register for this, Rousing the list

20:26

of approved voters are moving people from

20:29

the voter rolls, threats to people's safety

20:31

and livelihood, carries on to the polling

20:33

places on election Day and. It was

20:36

an extremely brave thing to do to go

20:38

to the polls and vote for republican candidate.

20:40

It didn't matter if you're white or black,

20:42

it was putting your name out there as

20:44

someone who is willing to stand. Up to the

20:46

whites from. The

20:56

fact is a White supremacy campaign of

20:58

eighteen Ninety Eight was carried out for

21:00

the most part in public. What

21:03

was about to happen or some of

21:05

it anyway, was not a well kept

21:07

secret. Historian team itself.

21:09

I remember reading the journal

21:11

of a Cargo newspaper reporter

21:14

The got on the train

21:16

two weeks earlier to go

21:18

see the election beings moment.

21:24

Of on his calendar he had time to

21:26

going on a train chicago and make the

21:28

trip On his way down he says letter

21:30

saying I'm going down this is not and

21:32

women too much to see the coup. Like.

21:47

Before we unpack this episode any

21:49

further, there's an important thing we

21:51

should clarify for folks listening. this

21:54

whole business about the eighteen ninety

21:57

eight statewide election and the Democratic

21:59

Party's push to make sure it

22:01

wins that election at any cost,

22:03

that is not the coup d'etat

22:05

that the title of this series

22:07

refers to. Exactly.

22:11

This is what we're going to get into

22:13

in episode three, but the actual literal coup,

22:15

the sudden overthrow of a

22:17

government using threat of violence, that

22:19

happens just in Wilmington at

22:21

the level of city leadership. Those

22:23

elected officials who would be pushed out

22:25

of their jobs at gunpoint were not

22:27

even on the ballot in November of

22:30

1898. But the context we've laid out

22:32

here is essential to understanding the political

22:34

moment in North Carolina and

22:36

what is about to happen. So

22:38

yeah, it's important to make that distinction. At

22:41

the same time, it's interesting to

22:43

point out that we don't use the

22:45

word coup to describe what the Democrats

22:47

were planning for that statewide election. Right,

22:50

because if we did, we'd have to

22:52

say that there've been a whole bunch

22:54

of coups in US history, not just

22:57

one. Elections rigged and

22:59

really stolen through violence, intimidation,

23:01

voter suppression, ballot stuffing. We

23:03

talked about this in our

23:05

Reconstruction episode in season four,

23:08

but yes, just in that post-Civil War period alone,

23:10

especially in the late 1860s through the 1870s in

23:12

the deep south, there was rampant

23:16

violence and use of terroristic threats

23:19

to keep black people and their

23:21

allies from voting in various states

23:23

across the south, not

23:25

to mention political assassinations to

23:27

take out candidates. Don't

23:30

even get me started on the

23:32

hundreds and thousands of elections that

23:34

were undemocratic and basically guaranteed to

23:36

enshrine white supremacy by the centuries

23:38

of mass disenfranchisement of black people

23:40

both before the passage of the

23:42

15th Amendment and after up to

23:46

1965, or of course the century-plus

23:48

of US history in which no woman

23:51

had voting rights. What if

23:53

we use the word coup to describe

23:55

the elections right up to the president

23:57

that are skewed by intense Doraemandering, racial.

24:00

or partisan. How about the

24:02

disenfranchisement of people in prison or with

24:04

a criminal record, disproportionately black and brown

24:06

people? If that practice tips

24:08

an election, is that a coup? Having

24:11

said all this, I think it's

24:13

okay that we reserve the C

24:15

word for something more specific, the

24:17

sudden overthrow of a government. But

24:21

just saying, we need

24:23

to recognize that in America's deeply

24:25

flawed democracy, a whole lot

24:27

of elections have been decided in a whole

24:29

lot of ways besides a legit

24:32

choice by citizens voting on a

24:34

fair playing field. Taking

24:36

us back to Wilmington and the story we've been

24:38

telling, you made a really good point, I think,

24:40

one day when we were driving back from our

24:42

reporting trip to Wilmington. Oh yeah? I

24:45

thought I made several, but... which one

24:48

are you thinking of? But

24:51

what about white supremacy and how weird

24:53

it's been to do

24:55

this research and look at those newspaper

24:57

headlines and campaign literature and

25:00

the speech transcripts all from

25:02

the turn of the 20th century where people just

25:04

said it loud and proud. We're

25:06

all about white supremacy. Yes. And

25:10

we talked about how that changed. So

25:12

for a long time, say from the

25:14

1970s on, most people

25:16

tried super hard to not be seen

25:18

as racist. So now

25:21

that phrase is used only as an

25:23

accusation towards somebody else. So

25:25

and so is a white supremacist with

25:27

so and so guaranteed to

25:29

deny it while expressing outrage

25:31

at the accusation. Even

25:33

some claim members claim they're not racist.

25:36

We don't hate anybody. We're just standing

25:38

up for us overlooked victimized white people.

25:40

Yes. At the same time

25:42

though, quite a few people in the last,

25:45

oh, let's say since

25:47

2015, 16, around that time for

25:49

some reason, some white folks

25:51

started feeling free to go beyond the

25:53

old dog whistles and embrace

25:55

more blatant displays of white supremacy.

25:59

You know what this conversation... The comedian

26:26

Aziz Ansari on SNL the night

26:28

after Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017.

26:31

If you want these people, please go back

26:34

to pretending. You gotta go back to pretending.

26:36

I'm so sorry we never thanked you for

26:38

your service. We never realized

26:40

how much effort you were putting into the

26:42

pretending, but you gotta go back to

26:45

pretending. Hey. Hey.

26:49

I gotta say, I'm with Aziz. I

26:51

do wish people would go back to keeping

26:54

racism to themselves. Yeah, no points for honesty

26:56

when it comes to expressing your bigotry. Anyway,

26:59

there is something instructive about the fact that

27:01

a lot of white Americans 125 years

27:04

ago openly embraced white

27:06

supremacy and even that phrase. Because

27:10

a lot of people who insist there's no

27:12

white supremacy in America today also often

27:14

deny that it ever was a major

27:16

force in the country. Think

27:19

of people like Tucker Carlson who

27:21

claimed a few years ago that white

27:23

supremacy is a hoax and not a

27:25

real problem in America. But

27:27

only four or five generations ago, a lot

27:30

of people who, let's be real,

27:32

were the political and ideological forebears

27:34

of Mr. Carlson. Even though they

27:36

were big D Democrats, don't let

27:38

that confuse you. Right. They

27:41

were the conservatives of their time fighting

27:44

against the interest of non-white people and

27:46

against the progressive white folks who supported

27:48

those interests. They called themselves

27:50

white supremacists. As we said, loud

27:53

and proud. There's

27:56

a pretty direct line that's not hard

27:58

to see between the people. who worked

28:01

so hard at the turn of the

28:03

20th century to disenfranchise black people and

28:05

protect systems of white dominance and control,

28:08

and the people doing that same work today. I

28:12

guess it's progress that it's become unacceptable

28:14

to declare yourself a white supremacist, but

28:18

you know what would be real progress? If

28:21

we could make it less acceptable to behave like one.

28:26

Next time, November 1898, the massacre and

28:28

the coup. Echoes

28:34

of a Coup is an initiative of

28:36

America's Hallowed Ground, a project of the

28:38

Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.

28:41

It's written and produced by Michael A. Betts II

28:43

and me. Our

28:46

script editor for the series is Loretta Williams.

28:49

Voice actor, Mr. Mike Wiley. Music

28:52

in this episode by Kieran

28:54

Hale, Blue Dot Sessions, Lee

28:56

Rosevear, Okaya, Jamison Nathan-Jones, and

28:58

Lucas Bewin. Our

29:00

website is senonradio.org. The

29:03

show is distributed by our friends at

29:05

PRX. Senon Radio comes

29:07

to you from the Kenan Institute

29:09

for Ethics at Duke University. From

29:15

PRX.