Race, Place, and Memory

In Race, Place, and Memory Margaret M. Mulrooney adopts Manning Marable's dictum that fostering a “historically-grounded conversation” about race and racialization processes is central to understanding America's past (p. 7). Mulrooney's case study of Wilmington, North Carolina, also sheds light on the difficulties of pursuing these conversations. The city's celebratory narrative of good race relations in a progressive city belies its heritage of racial violence. Mulrooney writes: “On the surface, the city possesses a tranquil appearance and a timeless quality, but these traits have, in fact, been carefully constructed to hide deeper truths” (p. 11). The “Wilmington Revolution of 1898,” alternately identified and contested as a race riot, a massacre, and a municipal coup d'état, lies at the center of conflicting understandings of Wilmington's past and present. White supremacists torched a black newspaper office, marched on city hall, and overthrew the lawfully elected Republican-fusion government by forcing black and white officials to resign in the only coup d'état in American history. Carefully planned and executed by powerful elites, the insurgency restored elite white Democrats to political power and economic dominance. The massacre, exile, and intimidation of African Americans disrupted a thriving black middle class and decimated the population of what had been North Carolina's largest city. Deeper truths about these events surfaced twenty years ago, surrounding public commemoration activities related to the centennial of the 1898 coup. City leaders, who championed Wilmington's twentieth-century redevelopment and promoted the city as a destination for tourists and transplanted retirees, found themselves navigating contested ideas about the past and disagreements about a suitable commemoration. Descendants of white elite families disavowed any project that cast their forefathers in a negative light, and descendants of marginalized black working-class families wanted their stories told, complicating efforts at telling the full story and working toward justice and healing. Mulrooney argues: “We must understand how place-based memories shaped racial and civic identities in the past and how representations of those identities in public continue to influence race relations in the present” (p. 6

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