From last week's “Talk of the Town” section in The New Yorker:

On November 10, 1898, a coup d’état took place on United States soil. It was perpetrated by a gang of white-supremacist Democrats in Wilmington, N.C., who were intent on reclaiming power from the recently elected, biracial Republican government, even if, as one of the leaders vowed, “we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses.” They had a Colt machine gun capable of firing 420 .23-calibre bullets a minute. They had the local élite and the press on their side. By the end of the day, they had killed somewhere between 14 and 60 black men and banished 20 more, meanwhile forcing the mayor, the police chief, and the members of the board of aldermen to resign.

The new government remained in control, of both the town and the story. Subsequent generations of white residents knew about the events of 1898 as a “revolution” or a “race riot,” if they knew about them at all. In the black community, the episode remained a suppressed trauma. 

A new documentary about the masscare will be available (on Amazon) on its anniversary, Nov. 10, two days after the presidential election.