State researchers say that, after six years of work, they have uncovered the true story of what happened in Wilmington in 1898. But a group that promotes Confederate history says the state report is a revisionist screed designed to justify reparations.

The League of the South, a group known for opposing civil rights laws and defending the right to display the Confederate flag, has compiled its own research on the violence, based on accounts written decades ago.

They say it's a myth that racist whites trampled the rights of blacks. Instead, they say, the whites who planned the coup d'etat were fighting a corrupt Republican government that was using blacks to its advantage.

Bernhard Thuersam, leader of the Cape Fear chapter of the League of the South, said he and other league members have studied the events of 1898, and there was no planned riot.

He prefers to call it a conflict. And he said some accounts suggest blacks fired the first shots.

"There were white people wounded in that event. You don't hear much about that," said Thuersam, a Wilmington home designer. "It's really a black point of view."

The group's writings, posted at http://1898wilmington.com, also say that white supremacists weren't necessarily the enemies of blacks. Thuersam said white supremacists -- including Josephus Daniels, the former owner of The News & Observer, who published racist cartoons and editorials -- targeted only corrupt blacks. He said Daniels was beloved by many blacks.

The group uses newspaper articles and historical accounts of the time to back up its points.

LeRae Umfleet, the historian who wrote the state report, said she considers the accounts written in the years just after the riot inaccurate.

"The people who were on the winning side of 1898 wrote the story of what happened," Umfleet said this week. "And, of course, when the winners write the history, it's always flattering to them."