This February, join BPR for Black History Month specials that explore a historic moment right here in our state, and celebrate groundbreaking Black composers, 9 to 10 AM, on Monday, February 12.
Echoes of a Coup
Monday, February 12, 9 to 10 AM on BPR News
In November 1898, an armed White supremacist mob—supported by most White elites in North Carolina—murdered untold Black Wilmington residents and drove the city’s elected Fusionist government from power, installing Democrats in their place. (Fusionists were a biracial coalition of mostly-Black Republicans and mostly-White members of the Populist Party.)
The coup in North Carolina’s then-largest city violently snuffed out some of the last flickers of multiracial democracy in post-Civil War America.
Echoes of a Coup, produced by Michael A. Betts, II and John Biewen, with story editor Loretta Williams, tells the story of 1898 and puts these events in historical context, at a time when the United States is once again facing threats of political violence, amid orchestrated attacks on democracy—from within.
Crossings
Monday, February 12, 9 to 10 AM on BPR Classic
Pianist Lara Downes, Classical California Host and Resident Artist, hosts an hour of music by innovative Black composers in honor of Black History Month.
Hear how Duke Ellington, William Grant Still, Scott Joplin, Kris Bowers, Florence Price, Adolphus Hailstork, Wynton Marsalis, and Jon Batiste have helped define American classical music.
