Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, December 7th, 1898, President William McKinley gives a joint address to Congress,

sort of State of the Nation's speech, and no surprise, he talks about the Spanish-American

War, which would soon come to a close, he talks about the Spanish-American War which would soon come to a close

he talked about trade agreements with Germany talked a little bit about Westward expansion

one thing he didn't mention was that less than a month earlier in Wilmington, North Carolina, a group of the state's white Southern Democrats led a mob of 2,000 white men to overthrow a legitimately elected local government, one that was notably biracial. So look I'm

gonna let you listeners in on a secret here. We wanted to do this back in early

November when this happened November 10thth, we missed that hook.

And so here's our weird hook of McKinley

didn't mention it in a speech about a month later.

But you know what?

Like that hook actually sort of gets to the big point which is like from the beginning this story

seemed to have gotten memory hold and forgotten and has just not been part of the history of

this country until maybe a little more recently but you know that is a huge part of

this and this is and so we've been wanting to do an episode on the

Wilmington insurrection and this is that episode thanks to all the the people, by the way, who have suggested

that we do this very, very interesting and important topic.

So here to do that, as always, are Nicole Hammer of Columbia

and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there. Hello, dirty.

Hey there.

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