Editor's note: American history is repeatedly portrayed as a history containing a deep racism of white towards blacks. The following article claims that the incident said to mark the origin of a long post-slavery era of racism called "Jim Crow" was not really motivated by race, however, but by manipulation and propaganda designed to break black-white unity against the local capitalist class. If this story is true, it represents a necessary and significant revision of American history.
Special to The Observer
On Nov. 10, 1898, heavily armed columns of white men marched into the black neighborhoods of Wilmington [a town in the U.S. state of North Carolina - eds]. In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned the offices of the local black newspaper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents -- the precise number isn't known -- and banished many successful black citizens and their so-called "white nigger" allies. A new social order was born in the blood and the flames, rooted in what The News and Observer's publisher, Josephus Daniels, heralded as "permanent good government by the party of the White Man."
