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.

David S. Cecelski is author of The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina.

Timothy B. Tyson is senior scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and adjunct professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story and Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power.

John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) was James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus at Duke University. His many books include Racial Equality in America and From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans.