In November 1898, an armed White supremacist mob—supported by most White elites in North Carolina—murdered untold Black Wilmington residents and drove the city’s elected Fusionist government from power, installing Democrats in their place. (Fusionists were a biracial coalition of mostly-Black Republicans and mostly-White members of the Populist Party.) The coup in North Carolina’s then-largest city violently snuffed out some of the last flickers of multiracial democracy in post-Civil War America.
Scene on Radio Season 6, Echoes of a Coup, produced by Michael A. Betts, II and John Biewen, with story editor Loretta Williams, tells the story of 1898 and puts these events in historical context, at a time when the United States is once again facing threats of political violence, amid orchestrated attacks on democracy—from within.
English Transcripts
Season Six, Episode 1: What Was Lost – Download a PDF of the transcript.
Season Six, Episode 2: Crying “Negro Rule” – Download a PDF of the transcript.
Season Six, Episode 3: A Day of Blood – Download a PDF of the transcript.
Season Six, Episode 4: The Forgetting – Download a PDF of the transcript.
Season Six, Episode 5: A Way Forward – Download a PDF of the transcript.
