The Disinformation and Propaganda Campaign of Josephus Daniels

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The Wilmington Daily Record was reported to be the only daily black newspaper in the country. Josephus Daniels would stay up until two or three in the morning, writing racist editorials that he hoped would incite readers into what he called a fever heat. He published reams of completely false stories of an alleged rape epidemic of white women by black men. There was no epidemic at all, but they just printed false stories or played up incidental contact between a black man and a white woman into rape.

“What I recall most is the way that she grabbed my wrist and, shaking a bit, she said over and over again, ‘If it happens, run. Don’t let that happen to you. Run. If it ever happens, run.’” It was years before Cynthia Brown understood what her great-grandmother, Athalia Howe, was talking about. Athalia Howe grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina in the late 1890s. At the time, Wilmington was called “the freest town in the country” for Black people, and by 1898, Black men had become integral in Wilmington’s government. White Supremacists in the state were determined to stop them, by "ballot or bullet or both.”

David Zucchino's book is Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.

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