A massacre’s impact resonates through history
Kieran Haile was about 16 when an uncle handed him a book and mentioned a personal connection.
He said, “one of our granddads got chased out of town,” Halle recalled.
He promptly shrugged it off, as busy teens tend to do. The book told about the Wilmington, N.C., insurrection (shown here) and massacre of 1898, which is profiled in a PBS documentary at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 12. At first, Haile considered that just another nasty footnote to history.
“Part of me was like, ‘Okay, so what?’” he told the Television Critics Association. “’Like, Black people have always suffered … Why should my family be any different?’” But this was very different. His great-great-grandfather ran the newspaper for a thriving Black community that was shattered by a mob. Read more…