Christopher Everett’s new film Wilmington On Fire
By Dennis LeRoy Kangalee
“Wilmington on Fire” is a stunning movie about the racist massacre that took place in Wilmington, North Carolina when in 1898 a mob of whites burned down Black businesses in downtown Wilmington and either killed or exiled its Black citizens, threatening death to some of the Black property owners if they even thought about returning.
With a passionate cast of interviewees (including actual descendants of victims of the atrocity) Wolly McNair’s intermittent arresting visual reproductions of some of the events, a stellar soundtrack produced by Sean ‘Oneson’ Washington, and a jam-packed history and humanities lesson in a sobering 90 minutes, this is a wholly personal and consciousness-expanding documentary told in a direct and moving way about a genocidal act whose impact still reverberates today…
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Christopher Everett’s directorial debut is an un-pretentious, direct, and minimalist portrait of the terrifying coup d’état created by the white North Carolina Democratic Party in an attempt to broker the lives and future of Wilmington and eventually the entire state on November 10, 1898– ensuring the legacy and rebirth of a rekindled and acknowledged form of legally sanctioned racism, 35 years after the civil war and the USA’s official outlaw of slavery. As Dr. Umar Johnson fluently explains, after the Civil War in 1865 – a cloud hung over the Ex-Confederate Southern white men who couldn’t bring themselves to accept the fact that they had lost a war – not to President Lincoln or the Yankees up North but to their own former slaves! The Union never would have won the Civil War had it not been for the Black soldiers who fought for themselves and on behalf of the Union.
In retaliation and exasperation, white supremacists who governed the Democratic Party in North Carolina sough to retaliate and officially instill a racist system that had been supposedly eradicated some 30 years prior as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation. The confederates’ dream to restore White unity and Black servitude reached such a grizzled mania that an impassioned yet calculated plot to excise the Black businesses and citizens of Wilmington completely. Independent researcher Kent Chatfield shows us copies of WB McKoy’s pamphlet of 1897 of The White Government Union constitution and bylaws created by the North Carolina Democratic Party whose sole aim was to instill white supremacy government.
We learn in Wilmington On Fire that the White Government Union was a more urbane and far more treacherous terrorist organization than its backyard cousin the Ku Klux Klan for example. These were men who were out for blood, had serious connections and money, and were not going to stop until they removed all Black powerbrokers, cultural influence, and existence in Wilmington, North Carolina. The White Government Union’s de-facto militias – known as the “redshirts” – once again, unlike the Klan did not hide their faces and acted like savage storm-troopers upon the African-American community and, as the Nazis did, acted in accordance with some of the most strategic and wicked propaganda put forth by white racists in Wilmington in order to stir up hate and fear against the Blacks.
The film opens with Ness Lee’s powerful track, “Voice of The Regular People” produced by Illastrate with sampled echoes of Curtis Mayfield’s inimitable falsetto heard wailing, “I’m going to war to find my brother!” is well used here and the closing number of the film has one of the best uses of anthemic protest music that I can think of in any movie since Children of Men’s closing with John Lennon’s “Free The People.” The closing number by James Diallo (produced by Michael ‘Sarkastix’ Harris) in this case is the original and haunting, “It’s a Massacre” – an atmospheric hip hop tune that is as defiant and soulful as the film itself. Matthew Head sparsely and confidently scores the rest of the music.
Wilmington On Fire was made to enlighten, inform, and arouse interest in not only a slice of American history, but also a deeply troubling event that has been swept under the carpet and seldom mentioned.
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“Outsider Artist” and independent art advocate Dennis LeRoy Kangalee is a screenwriter, poet, and human rights activist. He is best known as the director of the cult film As an Act of Protest. His recent short avant-garde films include Endless Shards of Jazz for a Brutal World and Timbre of The Hour.
He can be reached at www.dennisleroykangalee.wordpress.com
4 Comments
Greetings all. I’d like to offer some “food for action”, which is very much related to the Article mentioning a political party. Any capital words are not internet disrespect of shouting, just for emphasis. Getting to the point:
1. Black folks who know the basic history of their relationship to White America…and White American political parties… know that, in their relationship to Black folks, the Republicans of today’s post Civil rights era are the Democrats of YESTERDAY’s pre-civil rights era.
2. That the history of both the Democratic parties and republican parties show that, at best, they pander to the “hope” of equality for Black folks long enough to achieve their own political ends, but like the Republicans at the end of Reconstruction Era America…abandon Black folks when their goals were realized!
3. That anti-Black racists White Americans like David Duke, Lee Atwater, and Newt Gingrich all had their part to play in orchestrating this current situation…the most recent trading of places between the racists of the Democratic and Republican parties, to the extent that the most OVERT and VISIBLE anti-Black racists in American politics are members of the Republican party!
4. Consequently..and this is constructive criticism…mentioning how racist the Democrats were in the past, and even in the present…without mentioning the above situation…is doing a disservice to Black folks in general. Especially to our Black youth whom we encourage to be are politically active.
What happened in Wilmington, NC in November of 1898 would have happened with our without the existence of Democratic party. White supremacy transcends political and even religious beliefs in this society.
We Black folks are too often encouraged to proverbially jump from the political frying pan into the fire…between mainstream political parties that really could care less about us. We need a bold, forward thinking methodology designed to bring us to our RIGHTFUL place in this so-called “nation of immigrants”: reciprocal/proportional OWNERSHIP of wealth producing assets, the organized power to hold the criminal “just us” system accountable to us, the resources to educate our children to the extent that they are no longer prey for the predatory society they live in, the resources to employ our own people by the millions, etc, in a country our ancestors were worked to death to create.
There’s a movement of Black folks who realize that the items in the paragraph above will not come from our loyalty to White-owned and-controlled political parties, regardless of how many Black folks are allowed to join, vote, and hold office in them! Instead, the DEMANDS above will come when Black folks are more loyal to OUR needs. THE One Million Conscious & Conscientious Black Contributors & Voters…the movement I speak of, understand this. It’s time we all do. I am one of the million (www.iamoneofthemillion.com)! What about you?
Many years ago in the City of Chicago an organization called, Protest at the Polls, published a pamphlet entitled, “Intra-Party Independence”. The main theme was that people of African descent should work for the cause of Black liberation in any and all political parties of which they were members,
Good afternoon, Bennett Johnson. From a “best practices” perspective of “THE One Million…”, I say that’s a good plan. My personal opinion, however, is that a “best” plan is “No Party Affiliation” membership, whenever and wherever it’s practical to do so. My rationale is based upon the following, and also some of it on our website:
1. Political parties receive money, in part, based upon their membership rolls. When members drop off, that’s an instant “economic boycott” (at least at the National and State level).
2. Folks who have to fight to get the money..whoops…I mean the “party member” back, are more apt to take whatever demands you have more seriously.
3. Since under 2% of the vote makes a difference in tons of local, state, and even national elections…if roughly 1 million Black folks (roughly 2% of the Black population) registered as ” No party Affiliation” (or equivalent in their region)…we would automatically represent a permanent “swing voter” population.
4. Since voting is the weakest thing one can do in a capitalist “democracy”, with economics being the largest “king maker” in political offices across the country…the strategy that I echo makes even more sense..especially when these 1 million Black folks could theoretically take $1, $2, $5, etc. to the campaign of whichever political candidate is willing to support what that group’s most pressing issues are.
Well, the rest is on the website. Just my opinion of “best practices”.
YES!