UNCW film grad Brendon Murphy’s docudrama, “The Red Cape,” is making history out of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 after surpassing his Kickstarter goal of $30,000 by $566.

Kickstarter is a fundraising website made exclusively to help people with creative projects like Murphy’s film. Murphy’s Kickstarter offers 14 options for donors, which currently has a total of 192 backers. The packages range from a contribution of $5 to $10,000 or more. However, Murphy and his team have funded most of the project on their own.

“We’ve used out credit cards and savings,” said Murphy.

Murphy tells a story that most North Carolinians have never heard. The Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 happened when a white male mob seized the reins of government in the Port City and, in so doing, destroyed the local black-owned newspaper office and terrorized the African American community, according to the 1898 Wilmington Race Riots commission.

The race riots stand out as the only coup d’état against the United States government in national history but are largely unknown. Murphy stands to change this.

“This is an important piece of our state’s and country’s history and not nearly enough people are even aware of it,” said Murphy.

Murphy first found out about the riots through Nelson Oliver, his friend and co-producer and director of the film. Oliver was equally shocked to discover something of this magnitude happened in his state and he never knew about it.

The docudrama follows the riots as seen through the lives of the film’s two protagonists, a young black boy and his father. Murphy said that in using this technique he could more accurately portray what it was like to be living through the 1898 riots.

“Chronicling the lives of these characters made it easier to meet my main goal, which was to tell a factual and accurate account of what these riots were all about,” said Murphy.

Murphy plans for the film to be used as an educational tool. He wants it to be shown in schools and colleges.

The 1898 Wilmington Race Riots Commission cites the event as a turning point for North Carolina in the area of politics and race relations.

“The riots and the events that took place during them were a huge contributor to the Jim Crowe era,” said Murphy, “an era that would not end until the 1960s.”

“The Red Cape” is now in post-production. Now it’s a matter of compiling and editing everything, and adding visual effects, according to Murphy.

“The project is very close to being done, we plan to wrap it up this summer,” said Murphy.

“The Red Cape” movie seeks to share local Wilmington history with the nation’s classroom. A widely unknown event, the 1898 Wilmington Race Riots changed the course of American history and “The Red Cape” movie hopes to address and eliminate this ignorance.