Summary Of, We Have Taken A City By H. Leon Prather Sr

In, We Have Taken a City, by H. Leon Prather Sr., we learn of the violence that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898. Throughout the paper, Prather writes about the different aspects that ultimately caused the racial massacre. Prather makes an important claim in his short introduction about the events in Wilmington in 1898. He also makes several key points throughout the paper, one being that the racial massacre would not have occurred if it would not have been for the white supremacy campaign. He provides key information in his paper that supports the claim. Also, reading the article written by Prather and LaFrance helps us evaluate the events that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina. In Prather's short introduction,

On page 20 he stated, "The racial massacre in Wilmington almost certainly would not have occurred without the statewide white supremacy campaign of 1898, one unparalleled in American history." Most whites that lived in Wilmington were alarmed by the rise in the Republican-Populist Fusion coalition, the Democratic leaders knew they had to resolve this issue. Furnifold M. Simmons organized the white supremacy campaign and he believed through this he could return the Democrats to power. The campaign was addressed to the issue of blacks' sharing the government which they wanted to

For me, it was easy to see why some of the scholars were labeling the events that occurred a coup d'état rather than a riot. A coup is a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power while a riot is more of a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd. The reason this falls more towards being a coup is because groups of people like the secret nine and Red Shirts gathered in a series of marches and rallies ultimately ready to fight the blacks. The event was planned, and in the article, The Lost History of an American Coup D'état written by Adrienne LaFrance and Vann Newkirk, in paragraph seven it stated, "Not only was it a coup, though, the massacre was arguably the nadir of post-slavery racial