Wilmington insurrection of 1898

The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington race riot of 1898, began in Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898 and continued for several days. It is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. The event marks an era of more severe racial segregation and effective disenfranchisement of African-Americans throughout the South, a shift already underway since passage by Mississippi of a new constitution in 1890 raising barriers to voter registration. Laura Edwards wrote in Democracy Betrayed (2000), "What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole."

Originally described by white Americans as a race riot caused by blacks, the events are classified by some as a coup d'etat; white Democratic Party insurgents overthrew the legitimately elected local government, expelling black leaders from the city. In addition, a mob of nearly 2,000 white men attacked the only black newspaper in the state, and persons and property in black neighborhoods, killing an estimated 15 to more than 60 victims, and destroying homes and businesses built up since the Civil War.

Two days after the election of a Fusionist white mayor and biracial city council, two-thirds of whose members were white, Democratic Party white supremacists seized power and overturned the elected government. Led by Alfred Waddell, who was defeated in 1878 as the congressional incumbent by Daniel L. Russell (elected a fusionist governor in 1896), more than 2,000 white men participated in an attack on the black newspaper, Daily Record, burning down the building. They ran officials and community leaders out of the city, and killed many blacks in widespread attacks, especially destroying the Brooklyn neighborhood. They took photographs of each other during the events. The Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) and federal Naval Reserves, ordered to quell the riot, became involved with the rioters using rapid-fire weapons and killing several black men in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Both black and white residents later appealed for help after the coup to President William McKinley, but his administration did not respond, as Governor Russell had not requested aid. After the riot, more than 2,100 blacks left the city permanently, having to abandon their businesses and properties, resulting in the formerly black-majority city becoming white-majority. Among those who left were Alex and Frank G. Manly, brothers who had owned the Daily Record.

In the 1990s, a grassroots movement arose in the city to acknowledge and discuss the events more openly, and try to reconcile the different accounts of what had happened. This was similar to efforts in this period in Florida and Oklahoma to recognize the early 20th-century white-led race riots of Rosewood and Tulsa, respectively, in which white mobs had attacked and killed blacks and destroyed their homes, churches, schools, and businesses. The city planned events around the insurrection's centennial in 1998. Numerous residents took part in related discussions and education events.

In 2000 the state legislature authorized a commission to produce a history of the events and to evaluate the economic impact and costs to black residents. This was in consideration of reparation for descendants of victims. Its report was completed in 2006.

Background
In 1860, before the Civil War, Wilmington was majority black and the largest city in the state, with nearly 10,000 people. Numerous slaves and free people of color worked at the port, in households as domestic servants, and in a variety of jobs as artisans and skilled workers.

After the Battle of Fort Fisher, which the Union won in January 1865, Wilmington was taken by Union troops in February. They had worked their way through Confederate defenses up the Cape Fear River. Numerous slaves had escaped to Union lines before this, seeking freedom, and some fought with the Union. With its victory in the Battle of Wilmington, the Union completed its blockade of major southern ports. The Confederate General Braxton Bragg had burned tobacco and cotton stores before leaving the city.

With the end of the war, freedmen in many states left plantation and rural areas for towns and cities, not only to seek work but to gain safety by creating black communities without white supervision. Tensions grew in Wilmington and other areas because of a shortage of supplies; Confederate currency had no value and the South was impoverished at the end of the long war.

Federal constitutional amendments had abolished slavery, and granted citizenship and voting rights to freedmen. Adults and children were pursuing education. Freedmen were eager to vote, tending to support the Republican Party that had emancipated them and achieved their citizenship and suffrage. In North Carolina, state and local races were close, with Republicans winning most of the offices. Their ascendancy to power can be traced to granting the franchise to freedmen, plus the successful formation of a biracial coalition of freedmen, recent black and white migrants from the North, and white Southerners who supported the Union and Reconstruction. For a temporary period Confederate veterans were barred from office and voting. Many white Democrats had been embittered since the Confederacy's defeat, and most veterans were armed. Insurgent veterans joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which started in Tennessee but soon had chapters across the South. It generated considerable violence at elections to suppress the black vote, and Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870. After the KKK was suppressed by the federal government through the Force Act of 1870, new paramilitary groups arose in the South. By 1874, chapters of Red Shirts, a paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party, had formed in North Carolina.

In the years that followed, Wilmington, then the largest city in the state, had a majority-black population. Included were numerous black professionals and businessmen, and a rising middle class. The Republican Party was biracial in membership. Unlike in many other jurisdictions, blacks in Wilmington gained positions as members of the police force and fire department, as well as elected positions.

Election of 1898
In 1871 Democrats took their seats, dominating the state legislature.

After 1875, the white Democratic campaign to reduce voting by freedmen was helped by the Red Shirts, a paramilitary group that openly disrupted Republican and especially black meetings, and intimidated voters to keep them from the polls. The group had started in Mississippi in 1875, and chapters arose in both the Carolinas. In the same period, some 20,000 white men in North Carolina belonged to rifle clubs, who comprised other paramilitary groups. Although Democrats dominated state politics after 1877, both blacks and whites continued to participate in politics and, in the 1890s, the Populists appealed to many former Democratic voters. George Henry White, the last black US Congressman of the 19th century from North Carolina, was elected in 1896; another African-American congressman was not elected from the state until the late 20th century, due to disenfranchisement of blacks in 1899.

In the 1894 and 1896 elections, North Carolina's Populist Party (which drew off some former Democrats) supported fusion candidates in an alliance with the Republican Party; they won enough votes to gain control of the state government and were known as the Fusionists. Governor Daniel L. Russell was elected in 1896, the first Republican in the office since 1877. The Fusionists won enough seats to control the legislature, passing a law increasing the franchise by decreasing property requirements for voters; this benefited the white majority in the state, as well as blacks.

During the 1898 election, the Democratic Party regained control at the state level, in part due to a campaign based on white racial fears and white supremacy, accompanied by widespread violence and intimidation of blacks by the Red Shirts. These actions suppressed black voting. Russell was unable to satisfy both the Populist and Republican parties to keep the Fusion coalition viable.

Because Wilmington was a black-majority city, its election of city officers was followed statewide. Groups of four to eight white men had been patrolling every block in the city for weeks before the election. On November 4, 1898, the Raleigh News & Observer noted that,

"The first Red Shirt parade on horseback ever witnessed in Wilmington electrified the people today. It created enthusiasm among the whites and consternation among the Negroes. The whole town turned out to see it. It was an enthusiastic body of men. Otherwise it was quiet and orderly."

Despite the Democrats' inflammatory rhetoric in support of white supremacy, and the Red Shirt armed display, voters elected a biracial fusionist government to office in Wilmington on November 8; the mayor and 2/3 of the aldermen were white.

Democratic Party white supremacists, led by Alfred Moore Waddell, who as incumbent had lost his congressional seat to Daniel L. Russell (now governor) in 1878, had organized a secret committee of nine. This committee had planned to replace the government if the Democratic Party candidates lost. During the election campaign, whites had criticized Alexander Manly, owner and editor of Wilmington's Daily Record, the state's only black-owned newspaper, and wanted to close him down.

For some time, Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, had used Wilmington as a symbol for "Negro domination" because of its government, although it was biracial and dominated by a two-thirds white majority. Many newspapers published pictures and stories implying that African-American men were sexually attacking white women in the city. Manly denied such charges, saying the stories represented consensual relationships and suggested "white men [should] be more protective of their women against sexual advances from males of all races." White supremacists publicized his words as a catalyst for violence against the black community.

After the election, whites created a Committee of Twenty-Five, all supremacists, and presented their demands to the Committee of Colored Citizens (CCC), a group of politicians and leaders of the African-American community. Specifically, the whites wanted the CCC to promise to evict Manly and his brother Frank, a co-owner of the paper, from the city. They gave the CCC a deadline of November 10, 1898 to respond. When Waddell and the Committee had not received a response by 7:30 a.m., he gathered a large group of white businessmen and veterans at the Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) armory. By 8:00 a.m., Waddell led the armed group of 1,000-1500 men, organized in military formation, to the Daily Record office, where they destroyed the equipment and burned down the building of the only African-American newspaper in the state. By this time, the crowd had swelled to nearly 2,000 men.

By this time, Manly, along with many others, had hidden or fled Wilmington for safety. Waddell tried to get the white group to return to the Armory and disband, but he lost control, and the armed men turned into a mob. Whites rioted and shot guns, attacking blacks throughout Wilmington but especially in Brooklyn, the majority-black neighborhood. The small patrols were spread out over the city and continued until nightfall. Walker Taylor, of the Secret Nine, was authorized by Governor Russell to command the Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) troops, newly returned from the Spanish–American War, and the federal Naval Reserves, taking them into Brooklyn to quell the "riot". They intimidated both black and white crowds with rapid-fire weapons, but the WLI also killed several black men.

Whites drove the opposing political and business leaders from the town. The estimated number of deaths ranges from six to 100, all blacks. Because of incomplete records by the hospital, churches, and coroner's office, the number of people killed remains uncertain, but no whites were reported dead. Some whites were wounded. Hundreds of blacks fled the town to take shelter in nearby swamps. After the violence settled, more than 2100 blacks left Wilmington permanently, sharply reducing its professional and artisan class and changing the demographics to leave a white-majority city. Among those who left were journalist and political appointee John C. Dancy.

Waddell and his mob forced the white Republican Mayor Silas P. Wright and other members of the city government (both black and white) to resign. (Their terms would have lasted until 1899). They installed a new city council that elected Waddell to take over as mayor by 4 p.m. that day.

City residents' appeals to President William McKinley for help to recover from the widespread destruction in Brooklyn were met with no response; the White House said it could not respond without a request from the governor.

Subsequent to Waddell's usurping power, he and his team were re-elected in March 1899 to city offices. More importantly, that year, the Democratic-dominated state legislators (see North Carolina General Assembly of 1899-1900) passed a constitutional suffrage amendment designed to exclude black and poor white voters: it required voters to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test (administered by whites) in order to register to vote, both measures that in practice discriminated against blacks and poor whites. When Democrats had first proposed the measure in 1881, The New York Times estimated that 40,000 black men would be disenfranchised by such action in North Carolina. The legislators infringed on the constitutional right to vote, but the US Supreme Court had recently upheld similar measures in a challenge to Mississippi's 1890 constitution. Democrats in other southern states also worked to reduce the black vote, passing disfranchising laws or constitutions following Mississippi's and through 1908.

Dominating the legislatures, Democrats passed laws imposing racial segregation of public facilities and Jim Crow. They essentially imposed martial law on African Americans in North Carolina, setting an example that had influence beyond the state's borders. Not until the gains of Civil Rights Movement and after passage of federal laws in the mid-1960s several generations later would most African Americans regain exercise of their civil rights in North Carolina and other Southern states.

Hugh MacRae was among the nine conspirators who planned the insurrection. He later donated land outside Wilmington to New Hanover County for a "white's only" park, which was named for him. In the park stands a plaque in his honor that does not mention his role in the 1898 insurrection. A descendant of his contributed to the 1998 centennial commemoration.

Election of 1900
In 1900, a second "white supremacy" political campaign cemented the Democrats' domination in the state; they elected Charles B. Aycock as governor. Party agitators used photos suggesting "Negro domination" to raise fears and tensions. The crude strategy, plus the constitutional amendment, had sharply reduced African-American voting, and the Democrats controlled the legislature and governor's office.

The night before the election, Waddell spoke: "You are Anglo-Saxons. You are armed and prepared and you will do your duty…Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns."

The Democratic Party won by a landslide.

1998 Centennial Commission
By the early 1990s, many residents and officials of Wilmington thought that the events of November 10, 1898, needed to be discussed openly and commemorated. Different groups in the city told and understood different histories of the events. Similar to public efforts to acknowledge destructive race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921) and Rosewood, Florida (1923), in which whites had attacked black communities, commemoration organizing began at the grassroots level.

In 1995, informal conversations began among the African-American community, UNC-Wilmington's university faculty, and civil rights activists. The intention was to inform all residents fully about what really happened on that day, and to agree on a monument to memorialize the event. On November 10, 1996, the town of Wilmington held a program inviting the community to help make plans for the 1998 centennial commemoration. Over 200 people attended, including local state representatives and members of the city council. Some descendants of the white supremacy leaders of 1898 were opposed to any type of commemoration.

In early 1998, Wilmington planned a series of "Wilmington in Black and White" lectures, which brought in political leaders, academic specialists and civic rights activists, as well as facilitators such as Common Ground. Word spread that George Rountree III was to attend the discussion to be held at St. Stephen's A.M.E. Church. As his grandfather was known to have been one of the leaders of the 1898 violence, Rountree attracted a large crowd. Following a speech by John Haley, a noted African-American historian of race relations from UNC-Wilmington, Rountree rose to speak. He started by speaking of his personal support for racial equality. He talked of his own relationship with his grandfather, saying that he "refused to apologize for his grandfather's actions, as the man was the product of his times." Other descendants also said they owed no apologies, as they had no part in their ancestors' actions.

Many listeners argued with Rountree about his position and refusal to apologize. Some said that, "although he bore no responsibility for those events, he personally had benefited from them." Kenneth Davis, an African American, spoke of his own grandfather's achievements during those times, which Rountree's grandfather and others had "snuffed out" by their violence. Davis said that the "past of Wilmington's black community … was not the past Rountree preferred." After much debate among the listeners, backed up by countless people giving "muffled shouts of approval," Davis rose again to thank Rountree for speaking at the event.

Recognizing that the black community had suffered severely both politically and economically following the insurrection, especially due to state disenfranchisement and Jim Crow, the state Commission grappled with a response.

It adopted a two-part approach: "[The] first was the creation of an economic development committee to explore the possible economic benefits of black-heritage tourism, a concept that was strongly endorsed by a number of African Americans within the organization. The second approach, accomplished through cooperation with the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, was the creation of the community-based Partners for Economic Inclusion, which sponsored a major conference in September 1998 to address "the issue of inclusion of the black community in the greater business environment."

Histories and State Race Riot Commission
Several histories of the event have been published. Helen G. Edmonds addressed the riot in her 1951 work, The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894-1901; she wrote then: "In reality, the Democrats effected a coup d'etat." As the predominant view of the time reflected the Dunning School's disparagement of Reconstruction and white historians commonly referred to the events as a race riot by blacks, her accurate assessment of the events was overlooked by many. Her book was reprinted by the University of North Carolina in 1979 and 2003, and is considered to provide a balanced, accurate account of the history.

More recent works include Leon Prather's We Have Taken a City: The Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898  (1984/2006), which gives a detailed view of events and is considered a balanced account. Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (1998), a series of essays by a variety of scholars and edited by David Cecelsi and Timothy Tyson, was published during the centennial year.

In 2000, the North Carolina General Assembly established the 13-member 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to develop a historical record of the event and to assess the economic impact of the riot on blacks locally and across the region and state. The commission had both black and white members. It was co-chaired by state legislator Thomas E. Wright.

The Commission studied the riot for nearly six years, and produced a report after hearing from numerous sources and scholars. Representative Wright led the effort in the North Carolina General Assembly to gain legislation to correct the century-old damage with a kind of compensation or reparation for victims' descendants through economic development, scholarships and other programs. Wright introduced ten bills for this purpose at the start of the session. But, he became embroiled in a personal campaign finance scandal that Commission members feared endangered their work. Their bills were ignored by the legislature.

The Commission's history by LeRae Umfleet was published in 2006. The report made "broad recommendations for reparation by government and businesses. They include incentives for minority business development in areas that were affected and the easing of barriers to minority home ownership." Commission member Kenny Davis said that their recommendations for economic development would benefit the entire community, not just African Americans.

Historians noted that the Raleigh press had contributed to the riots by publishing inflammatory stories, in addition to the results of the elections in Wilmington. This encouraged white men from other parts of the state to travel to take part in the attacks against blacks, including the coup d'état. Articles in the Charlotte Observer have also been cited as adding to the inflamed emotions. The Commission asked the newspapers to make scholarships available to minority students and to help distribute copies of the commission report. The commission "also asked that New Hanover County, which includes the city, be placed under special federal supervision through the Voting Rights Act," to ensure that current voter registration and voting are conducted without discrimination.

In January 2007, the North Carolina Democratic Party officially acknowledged and renounced the actions by party leaders during the Wilmington insurrection and the white supremacy campaigns. In August 2007, the state senate passed a resolution acknowledging and expressing "profound regret" for the riot. Some supporters hoped to get the events covered in the school curriculum. Historians want to build a memorial at the corner of Third and Davis Streets in Wilmington to commemorate the incident.

In literature

 * Charles W. Chesnutt's novel, The Marrow of Tradition (1901), addressed the rise of white supremacists in North Carolina and described had a fictional account of a riot in a city based on Wilmington; it was more accurate than contemporary portrayals by southern white newspapers. He portrayed the riots as initiated in white violence against blacks, with extensive damage suffered by the black community.
 * Wilmington author Philip Gerard wrote a novel, Cape Fear Rising (1994), that recounts the 1898 campaign and events leading to the burning of the Daily Record.
 * John Sayles portrayed the Wilmington Insurrection in Book Two of his novel, A Moment in the Sun (2011), based on contemporary primary sources. Sayles combines fictional characters with historical figures.
 * Barbara Wright's young adult novel, Crow (2012), portrays the events through a fictional young African-American boy, the son of a reporter on the black newspaper. Her work was named a Notable Social Studies Trade Book in 2013 by the National Council on Social Studies.