WILMINGTON — Last year, PBS announced it would be filming a documentary about the 1898 coup d’etat that took place in Wilmington on Nov. 10, 1898.
The documentary is rolling production in town according to film permits from the City of Wilmington. Crews are scheduled to capture B roll footage on Seventh Street between Dock and Orange, Greenfield Lake Park, and along the banks of the Cape Fear River on May 21, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. As well, there will be no parking on Seventh Street between Market and Ann streets.
PBS is in partnership with 371 Productions on the film, expected to be two hours and debut this fall on the public TV channel and available for streaming on its app.
According to a release about the project, it will cover what led up to the night that white supremacists killed many Black community members and ran out residents and business owners from town. Many were said to be thrown into the Cape Fear River after being brutalized or killed.
In effect, the mob overturned a multiracial “Fusionist Party” that led the government at the time and is the only successful coup in American history.
White supremacists also burned down the offices of the Black-run newspaper, The Daily Record, published by Alexander Manly. It’s believed an editorial in the paper was the impetus for the massacre.
Manly responded in print to a speech given before a Georgia Agricultural Society that accused Black men of raping white women, thereby supporting lynching the men. Manly countered the argument by claiming there could be a mutual attraction among Black men and white women at the time, to the dismay of many who were against interracial relationships; marriage between the two races was criminalized in 1898.
“The film combines a detailed investigation of the events of 1898 and their broader historical contexts with an examination of present-day efforts to seek justice and correct the historical record,” the film’s press release notes.
Brad Lichtenstein and Yoruba Richen are co-directors, with Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning musician and North Carolina native Rhiannon Giddens scoring the film. Giddens has spoken out about 1898 and even came to Wilmington’s Cucalorus Film Festival in 2019 to perform with local writer, musician and The Paris Review editor John Jeremiah-Sullivan and writer and musician Clyde Edgerton in “When the Battle’s Over: Songs of 1898.”
“It is so hard because things were working,” Giddens said back then. “They weren’t perfect but things were working — and for that to not be knocked down but completely destroyed, stamped out and then forgotten about, that’s just tragic. The people who died, it was tragic — the fact that we don’t even know all who died is tragic.”
She led a march after her performance from Thalian Hall to the 1898 Memorial on Third Street, wherein she did an emotional reading of the known names of those who were killed in the massacre and recognized the unnamed as well.
The Wilmington 1898 Documentary Project is being produced by PBS’s Rachel Raney, with input from a panel of experts — scholars, journalists and descendants — detailing what led up to the massacre and how it changed the projection of Wilmington politics, economic prosperity and the social makeup of the city. At the time of the massacre, half the population in Wilmington consisted of Black people, many of whom had thriving businesses. Today that population is around 16%.
The filmmaking team visited locally operated Working Films last summer, as well as with descendants and others in Wilmington, to engage in a two-day storytelling accountability summit.
“The meeting provided a path forward for us to bring this story to the world and produce meaningful impact and education around the film,” Richen, who founded 371 Productions in 2003, said in the release.
371 Productions is known for storytelling that is otherwise overlooked and for giving voices to marginalized people, including women and people of color. In addition to the film, PBS plans to release materials and training for educators across the state who want to use it in curricula to teach about 1898.
The Wilmington 1898 Documentary Project is being funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Wilmington-based Atlantic Packaging Corporation, and support from Firelight Films and Black Public Media.
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