1898

Rhiannon Giddens is a singer and songwriter.  She plays the banjo and the fiddle.  She’s a storyteller, activist, and musical historian.  She’s also a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops -- inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2016. 

 April 4th, 2018 marks the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior.  The news of King's murder reverberated around the world, but the loss for students, parents, and staff at Williston Senior High School in Wilmington was particularly wrenching.  Dr.

Alicia Inshiradu has been working on a film for 18 years: What the River Knows. This year, Alicia received a grant to produce an excerpt of the work. It's a historical narrative-and a ghost story-inspired by the 1898 coup d'etat in Wilmington, North Carolina. Listen to Alicia talk about the film above; find details about the fundraiser, and an extended conversation, below.  

The recently-published anthology, 27 Views of Wilmington: The Port City in Prose and Poetry, compiles literary pieces from 27 accomplished, local writers – in addition to an introduction by Celia Rivenbark.   It’s produced by Eno Publishers -- a very small non-profit that puts out about two books a year.  27 Views of Wilmington is the last in the 27 Views series, which now has eight different editions, spotlighting Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Ashevil

This broadcast of CoastLine originally aired on February 18, 2015.

It’s February.  And that means that it’s Black History Month.

On this edition of CoastLine, we examine how we're handling this month in 21st century North Carolina and why the discussion of African history is inextricably intertwined with the contemporary issues of race with which we grapple today. 

As February is Black History Month, we turn our attention to the 1898 coup d’état in Wilmington.  WHQR spoke with Philip Gerard, author of Cape Fear Rising.

In 1898, a group of white supremacists overthrew the democratically elected biracial government of Wilmington and replaced it with officials who instituted the first Jim Crow laws in North Carolina.  Philip Gerard, a creative writing professor at UNCW, researched these events for his historical novel: