David Zucchino

David Zucchino (2016), a Pulitzer -winning newspaper reporter and longtime foreign correspondent, is writing a forgotten chapter of American history. “Proud Caucasians: The Murderous White Riot of 1898” tells the story of the only armed overthrow of an elected government in U.S. history. On November 10, 1898, mobs led by Klansmen and former Confederate officers hunted down, shot and killed dozens of black men on the streets of Wilmington, N.C . The orchestrated murders were the culmination of a year -long White Supremacy campaign designed to restore white dominance and remove a multi -racial government in one of the South’s largest black majority cities. No one was ever prosecuted for the murders or the coup. Mob leaders installed themselves as mayor, city councilmen and policy chief. They instituted Jim Crow laws and imposed voting restrictions on blacks, inspiring racial discrimination across the South.