CAN A PLACE REMEMBER? Native Wilmington author Lauren Collins talks 1898 at Writers' Week
“Places try to make people remember.”
This was one of the many memorable statements delivered by Lauren Collins, a native Wilmingtonian and bestselling author, at UNCW’s Writers' Week this year.
Collins recently released “They Stole a City,” a nonfiction novel chronicling the 1898 massacre that took place in Wilmington on November 10, 1898. It’s fitting that, on the 128th anniversary of the coup d’état, Collins served as UNCW’s Writers' Week Keynote Speaker.
In conversation with Kimi Faxon Hemingway—a senior lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing and a former 1898 Legacies and Futures Research Collective Fellow—Collins discusses “They Stole a City” and the importance of her research about a time in Wilmington’s history that has been purposely buried for years.
The 1898 massacre is the only known successful coup d’état in the history of the United States. After Reconstruction, many Black people flourished in Wilmington, gaining important roles in government, as business owners, and holding significant political positions that challenged the white status quo.
A group of white supremacists lashed out against this change, leading to a concentrated effort to dismantle the Black people in charge and in Wilmington as a whole. This culminated into the destruction of The Daily Record, the Black newspaper in Wilmington, an unknown number of Black people killed and murdered, and white supremacists forcefully running out the democratically elected leaders to install white men in their place.
Collins explores the fate of four prominent families during the 1898 massacre: the Bellamy/MacRaes, the Halseys, the Howes, and the Moores, exploring their ancestors’ roles in the coup and how the survivors reconciled with the massacre that took the lives of an untold number of Black Americans. Through her talk with Faxon Hemingway, she brings up several important questions, one of the most prominent being: “Can a place remember?”
With Writers’ Week theme this week focused on sentience—the raw, human experience as opposed to generative AI—Collins shows the poignancy and importance of human experiences and narratives. She reflects on the Black families who refused to speak about 1898 in their households, looking to move on from one of the darkest moments in Wilmington (and America’s) history. Conversely, Collins also discusses the Black families that purposely spoke of the massacre to their children and following generations, taking the history that white supremacists warped to instead expose the raw—but very real—truth.
In an age of misinformation and attempts to bury history, such as book bans—it's refreshing to hear Collins talk about the importance of telling the truth of 1898. Despite being a native Wilmingtonian, Collins—like me—never grew up hearing about 1898 in high school. It was only years after that she heard about it, and even then, she had to do more digging to discover hidden facts, find the people from generations who were there firsthand, and separate fact from fiction from propaganda perpetuated by white supremacists who wanted to paint the coup as a victory rather than the tragedy and attack on democracy that it was.
And in moments where Collins could not find the truth in the buried history, she’s transparent to the audience about there being so much she still doesn’t know. She talks with Hemingway about the “what-ifs” that many writers, including nonfiction writers, must engage in when it comes to the unknowns, speculating and admitting there are many possibilities ready to be explored. Exploring possibilities and admitting that you can’t know everything. That transparency and room for creativity, to explore what ifs, is inherent to all writers.
Collins also directs us to the present, showing how 1898 didn’t exist in a vacuum but was a part of a larger backlash against Black people that continues to happen when progress is made in equity and equality. From Jim Crow laws of 1877 through 1950s and ‘60s, to the 2016 and 2024 elections and insurrection attempt in between, Collins expertly shows how history repeats itself as a result of the people, perpetually against progress, willing to dismantle democracy for control.
There is still a sense of hope that both Collins and Hemingway inject into their discussion. Through the natural, easy, and compassionate flow of conversation she has with Hemingway, Collins talks about the positive reception she’s gotten for “They Stole a City,” both from the Wilmington community and outside of it. There’s a subtle but noticeable shift from even when I was growing up, going from no one talking about 1898 and calling it a “race riot” to people naming it a massacre, openly discussing it and writing books about it.
That sense of hope and resilience is especially profound at the end of Collins’ talk with Hemingway. She encourages the audience to heed the lessons of 1898—but also to hold onto the hope of the Black “mecca” she described in 1897. She talks about the importance of education and teaching children history, no matter how ugly or uncomfortable it is, and to elect people who will ensure children get the comprehensive, fact-based education they need to know about the past (and better understand the present).
Finally, Collins talks about working toward restorative justice, including reparations. She looks at the lessons not just from the tragedy of 1898, but also the flourishing Black community before that time. With the recent election results bringing in the first Black and POC policymakers in different roles across the country, that future feels a little closer than it has.
Collins talks about the importance of truth. In a time where misinformation abounds and people try to distort the truth, Collins' story and work shows that there are still people who care about the truth and are willing to fight for it. It’s a moment and evening of feeling both somber and hopeful at once.
Throughout the event, I couldn’t help but think, again, about how connected I felt to all of this. I’m a native Black Wilmingtonian; I’m also an author. While I will never compare myself to the likes of The Daily Record editor Alexander Manley, I can’t help but feel a kinship with the fact that there was someone in a similar profession to mine all those years ago. Someone who lived in this very city, had the same passion for the truth, who believed and supported our community as I seek to do.
The history of 1898, as Collins says, is connected to all of us—here in America, and here in Wilmington. That experience is uniquely human, community focused, and nothing you could get from a prompt to Chat GPT or summary request to Gemini. It reflects back on the theme of Writers’ Week, focused on the human experiences and perspectives, being in community and building empathy with one another through the unique intimacy that is the (human) written word.
I left this talk with a renewed sense of hope and appreciation for the work that Collins has done, as well as Hemingway, the Creative Writing Department, and the Wilmington community as a whole.
We have a lot of work to do as a city and country; we always do. But sitting in this room I felt a profound connection with hundreds of people who came to this event for the same reasons as I did: a desire to seek truth, to hear from others who have done the research, and to celebrate the importance and beauty of writing about deeply human experiences—and finding a way to move forward.
UNCW Creative Writing’s annual Writers’ Week: Sent(i)ence runs from November 9-13. You can find a list of full events here.
