The Pine Forest Coup

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Cynthia Waddell's great-great-grandmother and great-grandmother hid in Pine Forest for two nights, three days. Colonel Waddell marched the mob to City Hall to finish the coup. They demanded that 10 aldermen resign of their own accord but essentially they forced them at gunpoint to resign. The white mayor and the white police chief were also forced to resign. And then they appointed the mob leaders to those positions.

“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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