Lisa Buchanan, associate professor in the Watts Williams School of Education, coauthored an article that examines the historical and modern treatment of the Wilmington Coup of 1898, in the international journal Whiteness and Education.
Lisa Buchanan, associate professor of education in the Watts Williams School of Education, recently co-authored an article on the treatment of the Coup of 1898 in Wilmington, N.C., and racial violence in North Carolina state social studies standards and local history.
This article is part of a larger body of teaching and research scholarship on 1898 with Cara Ward, in the Watson College of Education at University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Ward and Buchanan conducted data analysis using the N.C. K-12 social studies standards and primary and secondary historical documents (e.g., news articles, photographs) related to the coup and events leading up to 1898. The full article, Memorializing whiteness in state standards and local history: A critical sociohistorical consciousness analysis of The Coup of 1898 and Southern racial violence, was published in August in the international journal “Whiteness and Education.”
The paper examines the historical and modern treatment of the Wilmington Coup of 1898, a series of acts of Southern racialized violence that occurred in a coastal city in the Southern United States in fall of 1898. Using a critical sociohistorical consciousness framework, the authors analyse state standards and historical documents to identify the underpinnings of racism in the dominant narratives of the event, local commemoration of conspirators, and resulting economic inequalities. The authors then discussed how whiteness has influenced standards writing and the erection of community memorials related to 1898. Implications for curriculum standards, teacher education, and K-12 classrooms are provided.