S6 E2: Crying "Negro Rule"

Scene on Radio: Capitalism

Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

Society & Culture, Audiodoc, Radio, Documentary, Stories

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

By 1898, two decades after the end of Reconstruction, white elites, backed by violent terror groups, have installed Jim Crow across most of the South. North Carolina, led by its largest city, Wilmington, is different. A Fusion coalition, made up of mostly-Black Republicans and mostly-White members of the Populist Party, controls the city and state governments. White supremacist Democrats are frustrated and plot to gain power by any means necessary.

By Michael A. Betts, II, and John Biewen. Interviews with LeRae Umfleet, David Cecelski, and Cedric Harrison. The series story editor is Loretta Williams. Music in this episode by Kieran Haile, Blue Dot Sessions, Okaya, Jameson Nathan Jones, and Lucas Biewen. Art by Zaire MacPhearson. “Echoes of a Coup” is an initiative of America’s Hallowed Ground, a project of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Michael.
0:02.0	You're gonna laugh, but I couldn't shake the idea that Wilmington of the 19th century was sort of like Wakanda?
0:09.0	Okay, you were right? Well, I'm smiling, but tell me more.
0:15.0	Okay, so our last episode made me think of that scene from Black Panther where Andy Sarkiss's character,
0:21.0	Claw, is being interrogated by the CIA guy, and he's like,
0:25.0	what do you actually know about Wakanda?
0:27.0	What do you actually know about Wakanda?
0:30.0	Um, Shepherds, textiles, cool outfits.
0:35.0	It's all affront.
0:36.0	Explorers search for it for centuries.
0:39.0	Elderada, the golden city.
0:42.0	They thought they could find it in South America, but it was in Africa the whole time.
0:47.0	I'm the only outsider who's seen it and got out there alive.
0:51.0	All right, I see what you're getting at.
0:54.4	The difference, of course, is that those characters
0:57.0	are talking about a place, Wakanda,
0:59.4	that in the story exists in the present, but it's deliberately hidden by Wakandans themselves.
1:07.0	Exactly, and in the case of Wilmington North Carolina, obviously it's not fictional or fantastical like Wakanda. We're talking about a very real non-comic book world that existed more than 125 years ago.
1:21.0	The Wilmington we explored in episode one. And it's hidden to most of us by a century
1:26.6	or two of incomplete and frankly racist history. But importantly in both cases, the picture of the place seems kind of hard to believe in Black Panther the CIA guy is incredulous because of the stereotyped image he carries about Africa.
1:43.0	Wokanda couldn't possibly be this rich, technologically advanced place that the guy's describing.
1:50.0	And in the case of 19th century Wilmington, we are all the CIA guy, even you and me, as we talked about last time.
	...

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