Why does the word "fear" appear in the River called "Cape Fear?"

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	• Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy David S. Cecelski The University of North Carolina Press, 1998 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Why does the word "fear" appear in the River called "Cape Fear?"

The 1898 "race riot," of Wilmington, NC, which more correctly should be understood for what it really was, "an ongoing white pogrom against blacks," or "a white supremacist insurrection against a legitimately elected interracial government," remains an enduring metaphor for how, "at every appropriate opportunity throughout American history," white Americans have, even today, found ways to betray democracy in the name of the dying ideology of white supremacy. America's imperceptibly slow evolution towards democracy has been nothing if not an uphill struggle against the reactionary forces of "white resistance" to "true democracy."

Never was the white intent to resist change towards democracy, social and political justice and equality, more raw, open and obvious, never more starkly and conscientiously used to snuff out democracy, nor more brutal, than in the 1898 Wilmington "white vigilante resurrection." And for those who might think that this was but an accident or aberration of American history, the attacks on the duly elected government of Wilmington were typical of the times. As always, they rallied the anti-democratic forces to action in the local churches. Even today, the white instigators of the 1898 riots are still very much revered: taught about in schools as heroes, with statutes of them standing tall in the town square.

Unlike today, when the U.S. has become little more than a "greater co-prosperity sphere" for the "moneyed (mostly) foreign interests of the global economy" such as the Saudi Royal family, Christian and Jewish Zionists, and now for Communist Chinese economic expansion, there was once a time, when "true democracy" was about to break out in America. Never was there a more pregnant time for it to do so than in 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina.

The Story

More than a century ago, in the aftermath of the "race riots" of 1871 in Cape Fear North Carolina, where the river ran red with the blood of its black victims, a historic experiment in interracial democracy blossomed in Wilmington, NC. Although Wilmington was composed of a thriving black majority, one of the few in all of the U.S. at that time (and now at any time), its government nevertheless was composed of a coalition of both races.

This coalition of "working level" blacks and whites, an unheard of democratic oasis in a desert of southern racist reaction, posed a threat not just to white supremacy, but also to the "Southern planter and Northern industrial class" that had traditionally run the Southern slave system that "pitted" white workers against "black slaves." [The global economy now carries out a similar program, writ large.]

In the 1898 elections, when these conservative forces failed to undo the interracial coalition at the ballot box, they sought to do so by "the gun." (giving a paradoxical twist and echo to Malcolm X's refrain: The Ballot or the Bullet). And out of the ashes of the ensuing coup d'etat was born a century of Jim Crow and Apartheid, American style.

And as Paul Harvey would say "the rest of the story" is that even today, when we have both a "Black man" and a "White woman" running for the U.S. Presidency, just beneath the veneer of racial tranquility, America remains more like "post riot Wilmington" than like the interracial coalition that the reactionary vigilante forces overthrew in 1898.

As the authors noted so carefully in the preface: " the past seems not to have receded significantly, even today. In some very fundamental ways, change [towards democracy] has come slowly, sometimes almost imperceptibly [so]."

An important book with many perceptive and cautionary lessons for our still racially tense and constipated times. A true five star effort.

An important book with many perceptive and cautionary lessons for our still racially tense and constipated times. A true five star effort.

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Excellent Book

First let me say that I rarely read non-fiction and even when I do, I rarely manage to finish an entire book of it. Democracy Betrayed is an exception. The writing was clear, precise, right-on, and interesting. And, perhaps most importantly, educational. I was born and raised in North Carolina and knew nothing--absolutely nothing--about the Wilmington Race Riots or the subject of Cecelski's essay Abraham Galloway. I am female and was a victim of gender based racial violence myself so I was aware of the issues raised in Gilmore's essay and White's essay, but I have never seen the issues written about so well. What I most like about this book is that it destroys stereotypes about class and race. After all isn't it the most well-to-do who most benefit from race violence so why should we be surprised to learn that it was not the so-called "white trash" who began the racial massacre in 1898, but the rich, the ones who were most likely to benefit from forcing the elected fusionist party officials out of office and placing themselves in their offices. I never knew--it certainly wasn't taught in my public school--that in 1896 every office in North Carolina was held by a progressive fusionist party member, elected by the fusion of lower class whites and blacks. Imagine how different this state would be, how advanced in talent and intelligence, if the massacre hadn't occurred, if black doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, newspaper editors and writers, etc, hadn't been forced from the state and if the elected officials had been allowed to remain in office. Perhaps what is most important is the book succeeds in "drawing public attention to the tragedy", a tragedy that is apparantly very much in the consciousness of Black Wilmington citizens and very much needs to be in the consciousness of all humans.

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At the close of the nineteenth century, the Democratic Party in North Carolina engineered a white supremacy revolution. Frustrated by decades of African American self-assertion and threatened by an interracial coalition advocating democratic reforms, white conservatives used violence, demagoguery, and fraud to seize political power and disenfranchise black citizens. The most notorious episode of the campaign was the Wilmington "race riot" of 1898, which claimed the lives of many black residents and rolled back decades of progress for African Americans in the state.

Published on the centennial of the Wilmington race riot, Democracy Betrayed draws together the best new scholarship on the events of 1898 and their aftermath. Contributors to this important book hope to draw public attention to the tragedy, to honor its victims, and to bring a clear and timely historical voice to the debate over its legacy.

The contributors are David S. Cecelski, William H. Chafe, Laura F. Edwards, Raymond Gavins, Glenda E. Gilmore, John Haley, Michael Honey, Stephen Kantrowitz, H. Leon Prather Sr., Timothy B. Tyson, LeeAnn Whites, and Richard Yarborough.

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