Recollecting Racism

David S. Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson, eds. Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. xvi + 301 pp. Index. $45.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

[A] part of the American past we would prefer for various reasons to forget we need very much to remember. It is part of our history, part of our heritage. The lynchings and terrorism carried out in the name of racial supremacy cannot be put to rest, if only because the issues they raise about the fragility of freedom and the pervasiveness of racism in American society are still very much with us.

Leon Litwack, "Hellhounds"
in catalog to Without Sanctuary (1)

White America seems never to confront its genocidal past, only to fabricate better rationalizations for repressing its memory. . . . [T]he past and the present have to be segregated as severely today as Jim Crow socially segregated Blacks from whites before the Civil Rights Movement.

Lou Turner, "1921 Tulsa Race Riot Revisited" (2)

Coming to grips with the history of racism in our nation has been an intensely debated topic of late. How should we remember, analyze, memorialize, and even make amends for hundreds of years of exploitation, domination, and abuse? In recent years, Americans of all races and regions have debated: Should President Clinton "apologize" for slavery? Should South Carolina fly the Confederate flag over its state capitol? Are reparations a "debt"--according to Randall Robinson--owed to African Americans, and, if so, by whom? Should the descendants of victims of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, race "riot" (and similar pogroms in Sherman, Texas; Elaine, Arkansas; Springfield, Illinois; and Rosewood, Florida) receive some sort of compensation? Is it appropriate to stage a museum exhibit of lynching photographs? Should the National Park Service develop a series of interpretations and re-enactments of the Underground Railroad? Should a museum depicting slavery be built on the Mall in Washington, D.C.? (p. 3) This is a good time for readers of this journal to ask: What constructive roles can historians play in these discussions?

In 1998, a diverse group of scholars, many with personal, familial, and professional connections to Wilmington, North Carolina, came together in that city for a conference exploring a series of events central to its history, the "race riot" of November 10, 1898. White and black, women and men, youthful and senior, these historians offered papers which examined not just the "riot" (4) itself, but various dimensions of it, the many decades of history that had led up to it, and its legacy for race relations in that coastal city. The conference was but one of a series of observances of the centennial of this event, including a candlelight vigil, race relations workshops, the dedication of a memorial to its victims, the staging of a new theatrical work about the "riot," interracial study groups, and a number of church, school, and civic events. In the aftermath of the conference, its participants decided to publish their papers in the hopes of reaching an even wider audience than had attended the conference itself. Two of them, David Cecelski and Timothy Tyson, assumed editorial responsibility, John Hope Franklin was recruited to pen a forward, William Chafe an epilogue, and the participants revised their contributions in light of each others' papers. The result is much tighter and more cohesive than typical collections of conference proceedings, though stimulating differences in perspectives and analytical frameworks remain.

Democracy Betrayed makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the roots, place, and consequences of racial violence in U.S. history, not just in Wilmington. Its essays explore such central themes as the role of African American success as a provocation for white violence, the complex ways that gender identities and relationships have interacted with racial and class positions, how paternalism and violence together have underpinned white elite hegemony and how race-baiting has been critical to its maintenance, and how incidents of violence can have long-term impacts on...