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The Ghosts of 1898WILMINGTON’S RACE RIOT AND THE RISE OF WHITE SUPREMACY

BY TIMOTHY B. TYSON

On Nov. 10, 1898, heavily armed columns of white men marched into the black neighbor-hoods of Wilmington. In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned theoffices of the local black newspaper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents — theprecise number isn’t known — and banished many successful black citizens and their so-called “white nigger” allies. A new social order was born in the blood and the flames, rootedin what The News and Observer’s publisher, Josephus Daniels, heralded as “permanent good

government by the party of the White Man.” The Wilmington race riot of 1898 stands as one of the most important chapters in North Carolina’s

history. It is also an event of national historical significance. Occurring only two years after theSupreme Court had sanctioned “separate but equal” segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson, the riot markedthe embrace of virulent Jim Crow racism, not merely in Wilmington, but across the United States.

Despite its importance, the riot hasremained a hidden chapter in ourstate’s history. It was only this year thatNorth Carolina completed its official in-vestigation of the violence. In additionto providing a thorough history of theevent, the report of the WilmingtonRace Riot Commission recommendedpayments to descendants of victims.And it advised media outlets, includingThe News & Observer, to tell the peo-ple the truth about 1898.

Those truths include that what oc-curred in Wilmington on that chillyautumn morning was not a sponta-neous outbreak of mob violence. Itwas, instead, the climax of a care-fully orchestrated statewide cam-paign led by some of the leading fig-ures in North Carolina’s history toend interracial cooperation and builda one-party state that would assurethe power of North Carolina’s busi-ness elite.

The black-white coalitionAt the end of the 19th century,

Wilmington was a symbol of blackhope. Thanks to its busy port, theblack majority city was North Car-olina’s largest and most importantmunicipality. Blacks owned 10 of thecity’s 11 eating houses and 20 of its 22barbershops. The black male liter-acy rate was higher than that ofwhites.

Black achievement, however, wasalways fragile. Wealthy whites werewilling to accept some black advance-ment, so long as they held the reins ofpower. Through the Democratic Party,whites controlled the state and localgovernments from 1876 to 1894. How-ever, the party’s coalition of wealthy,working class and rural whites beganto unravel in the late 1880s as Amer-ica plunged into depression.

North Carolina became a hotbed ofagrarian revolt as hard-pressed farm-ers soured on the Democrats becauseof policies that cottoned to banks andrailroads. Many white dissidents even-tually founded the People’s Party, alsoknown as the Populists. Soon theyimagined what had been unimagin-able: an alliance with blacks, who

shared their economic grievances. As the economic depression deep-

ened, these white Populists joinedforces with black Republicans, form-ing an interracial “Fusion” coalitionthat championed local self-govern-ment, free public education and elec-toral reforms that would give blackmen the same voting rights as whites.In the 1894 and 1896 elections, the Fu-sion movement won every statewideoffice, swept the legislature and electedits most prominent white leader,Daniel Russell, to the governorship.

In Wilmington, the Fusion triumphlifted black and white Republicansand white Populists to power. Hor-rified white Democrats vowed to re-gain control of the government.

Race baiting fuels voteAs the 1898 political season loomed,

the Populists and Republicans hopedto make more gains through Fusion.To rebound, Democrats knew theyhad to develop campaign issues thattranscended party lines. Democraticchairman Furnifold Simmons mappedout the strategy with leaders whosenames would be immortalized in stat-ues, building names and street signs:Charles B. Aycock, Henry G. Connor,Robert B. Glenn, Claude Kitchin,Locke Craig, Cameron Morrison,George Rountree, Francis D. Winstonand Josephus Daniels.

They soon decided that racist ap-peals were the hammer they neededto shatter the fragile alliance betweenpoor whites and blacks. They madethe “redemption” of North Carolinafrom “Negro domination” the themeof the 1898 campaign. Thoughpromising to restore something tra-ditional, they would, in fact, create anew social order rooted in white su-premacy and commercial domination.

At the center of their strategy laythe gifts and assets of Daniels, editorand publisher of The News and Ob-server. He would spearhead a pro-paganda effort that would incite whitecitizens into a furor that led to elec-toral fraud and mass murder. It usedsexualized images of black men andtheir supposedly uncontrollable lust

for white women. Newspaper storiesand stump speeches warned of “blackbeasts” who threatened the flower ofSouthern womanhood.

The Democrats did not rely solelyupon newspapers, however, but de-ployed a statewide campaign of stumpspeakers, torchlight parades and phys-ical intimidation. Aycock earned hischance to become North Carolina’s“education governor” through hisfiery speeches for white supremacy.

Issue of race and sexAs in the rest of the state, Wilm-

ington Democrats founded their cam-paign upon propaganda, violence andfraud. Their efforts to persuade whitemen to commit wholesale violencewas made easier in August 1898 whenAlexander Manly, the black owner ofThe Daily Record, answered a speechsupporting lynchings. Not all interra-cial sex is rape, he noted; many whitewomen willingly sleep with black men.

For Democrats, Manly’s editorialwas a godsend, allowing them to sup-port their lies about predatory blacks.And no one was better at spreadingthat message of hate and violencethan Wilmington’s Alfred Waddell.

The former Confederate soldier wasa passionate speaker, who riled crowdswith his famous line: “We will neversurrender to a ragged raffle of Ne-groes, even if we have to choke theCape Fear River with carcasses.”

As Waddell spoke, the Red Shirts, aparamilitary arm of the DemocraticParty, thundered across the state onhorseback, disrupting African-Amer-ican church services and Republicanmeetings. In Wilmington, the RedShirts patrolled every street in thedays before the election, intimidatingand attacking black citizens.

Through these efforts, the Demo-crats won resounding victories acrossthe state on Nov. 8, 1898.

Stealing the election would not beenough for the conservatives. For onething, Wilmington’s local Fusionistgovernment remained in office. Manylocal officials — the mayor and theboard of aldermen, for example —had not been up for re-election in

Destruction of The Daily Record of Wilmington, said to be the only black-owned daily newspaper in the United States at the time, by white supremacists.COURTESY N.C. ARCHIVES AND HISTORY

1898. And Wilmington remained thecenter of African-American economicand political power, as well as a sym-bol of black pride. White Democratswere in no mood to wait.

The day after the election, Waddellunfurled a “White Declaration of Inde-pendence” that called for the disfran-chisement of black voters.

The following morning, Nov. 10,Waddell and a heavily armed crowd ofabout 2,000 marched to Love and Char-ity Hall, where the Record had beenpublished. The mob battered down thedoor of the two-story frame structure,dumped kerosene on the woodenfloors, and set the building ablaze.

Soon the streets filled with angryblacks and whites. Red Shirts on horse-back poured into the black communityand other white vigilantes rompedthrough the black sections of town to“kill every damn nigger in sight,” asone of them put it.

At the end of the day, no one knewhow many people had died — esti-mates ranged from nine to 300. Theonly certainty in the matter of casual-ties is that democracy was gravelywounded on the streets of Wilmington.

While the violence raged, white lead-ers launched a coup d’etat, forcing themayor, the board of aldermen, and thepolice chief to resign at gunpoint. By 4 p.m. that day, Waddell was Wilm-ington’s mayor.

Still, they were not done. The whitemob gathered at the city jail to watchsoldiers with fixed bayonets march Fu-sionist leaders to the train station, ban-ishing at least 21 successful blacks andtheir white allies from the city.

Effects of 1898 lingerWhen the new legislature met in

1899, its first order of business was todisfranchise blacks. In the years that fol-lowed, the leaders of the white su-premacy campaign were largely re-sponsible for the birth of the Jim Crowsocial order and the rise of a one-partypolitical system.

More than a century later, it is clearthat the white supremacy campaignof 1898 injected a vicious racial ide-ology into American political culturethat we have yet to transcend fully.Our separate and unequal lives attestto the fact, though much has changedfor the better and a few things havechanged for the worse.

But if 1898 has saddled us with itslegacy, it also suggests how we mightovercome it. Its central lesson is this:Human beings make history. So themistakes that North Carolinians madein 1898 can be overcome, if wechoose.

Timothy B. Tyson is seniorresearch scholar at the Center forDocumentary Studies at DukeUniversity. This is a condensedversion of an article he wrotefor The News & Observer

and The Charlotte Observer.

CHARLES B. AYCOCK

Charles Brantley Aycock gradu-ated from the University of NorthCarolina in 1880, practiced law inGoldsboro and became involved inDemocratic Party politics. AsNorth Carolina’s governor from1901 to 1905, he championed edu-cation and white supremacy. Hedied in 1912 while delivering aspeech on education.

JOSEPHUS DANIELS

After studyingat the Universityof North Car-olina’s lawschool, JosephusDaniels was ad-mitted to the barin 1885, thoughhe never prac-

ticed. He purchased The News andObserver in 1896, making it apivotal instrument of the whitesupremacy campaign. PresidentWoodrow Wilson named him secre-tary of the Navy in 1913. PresidentFranklin Roosevelt appointed himambassador to Mexico in 1933.

ALEXANDER MANLY

Alexander Manlywas editor of TheDaily Record,believed to be theonly daily newspa-per in the countryowned by anAfrican-Americanat the time. His

editorial attacking whites’ hypocriti-cal attitudes toward interracial sexwas used by Democratic leaders tosupport their anti-black scare tactics.

FURNIFOLD SIMMONS

After losing statewide elections in1894 and 1896, the North CarolinaDemocratic Party turned to Furni-fold Simmons. As party chairman,the former congressman orches-trated the campaign of 1898 thatrestored Democrats to power. Ingratitude, the legislature appointedhim in 1900 to a seat in the U.S.Senate that he held for 30 years.

ALFRED MOORE WADDELL

Alfred Moore Waddell served fourterms in Congress (1871-1879). Agifted orator, he championed whitesupremacy in the 1898 election andwas installed as Wilmington’s mayorduring the coup that occurred dur-ing the riot.

MORE ONLINE

Read Tim Tyson’s full report at www.newsobserver.com (key word: 1898)

THE COMMISSION REPORTRead the state report atwww.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc.

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The Ghosts of 1898WILMINGTON’S RACE RIOT AND THE RISE OF WHITE SUPREMACY

Destruction of The Daily Record of Wilmington, said to be the only black-owned daily newspaper in the United States at the time, by white supremacists.COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � SECTION H � RALEIGH, N.C.

n Nov. 10, 1898, armed white men marched through the black sections of Wilmington, murdering all who dared to challenge

them. As violence filled the streets, others snatched control of the government. After installing themselves in power, they ban-

ished at least 21 successful blacks and their white allies. Although it is one of the most significant chapters in state history, it

is a story many have never heard. In this special report, historian Timothy B. Tyson describes the carefully orchestrated cam-

paign that spread white supremacy across North Carolina and the South. He explains how many of the region’s leading fig-

ures and institutions seized power, altering the state’s history and creating a legacy that haunts us still.OSTORY BY TIMOTHY B. TYSON

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EVENTS OF 1898 SHAPED OUR HISTORY

IntroductionWILMINGTON RACE RIOTTHE NEWS & OBSERVER � FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 3The Ghosts of 1898

On a chilly autumn morning 108 years ago this month, heavily armed columns of white

men marched military-fashion into the black neighborhoods of Wilmington, then the state’s

largest city and the center of African-American political and economic success. “Under

thorough discipline and under command of officers,” one witness wrote, “capitalists and

laborers marched together. The lawyer and his client were side by side. Men of large busi-

ness interests kept step with the clerks.”

In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned the offices of the local black news-

paper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents —— the precise number isn’t known —— and ban-

ished many successful black citizens and their so-called “white nigger” allies. A new social order was

born in the blood and the flames, rooted in what The News and Observer’s publisher, Josephus Daniels,

heralded as “permanent good government by the party of the White Man.”

The Wilmington race riot of 1898 was a crucial turning point in the history of North Carolina. It was

also an event of national historical significance. Occurring just two years after the Supreme Court had

sanctioned “separate but equal” segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson, the riot signaled the embrace of an

even more virulent racism, not merely in Wilmington, but across the United States.

HOW A RAILROAD TICKETINSPIRED JIM CROW LAWS

In 1892, Homer Plessy pur-chased a first-class railroadticket — and thereby broke thelaw. Blacks were permitted toride only third class in hishome state of Louisiana, whichrequired separate railwayaccommodations for the races.Ultimately, the Supreme Courtheard, and rejected, Plessy’schallenge, validating segrega-tion in public facilities andinspiring a harsher wave ofrestrictive Jim Crow laws.

J. PEDER ZANE

U.S. RACE RIOTS

The march of urban racialmassacres that Wilmington ledwas not confined to the South.

In 1908, scores of blacks diedin Springfield, Ill., in an attackthat drew force from Wilming-ton’s example. In East St. Louis,Ill., white mobs killed as manyas 200 blacks and burned6,000 out of their homes in1917. The Chicago race riot of1919 left 15 whites and 23blacks dead; in 1919 alone,similar riots in 26 other U.S.cities from Omaha to Washing-ton, D.C., left scores of bodies.In Tulsa in 1921, between 150and 200 blacks died in a massassault.

TIMOTHY B. TYSON

FOUR-PRONGED PLAN

The events in Wilmingtonwere not just a single day ofviolence, but part of a four-pronged plan:

1. Steal the election: Underthe banner of white supremacy,the Democratic Party usedthreats, intimidation, anti-blackpropaganda and stuffed ballotboxes to win the statewideelections on Nov. 8, 1898.

2. Riot. On Nov. 10, armedwhites attacked blacks andtheir property.

3. Stage a coup. As the riotunfolded, white leaders forcedthe mayor, police chief andother local leaders to resignfrom their offices, placingthemselves in charge.

4. Banish the opposition.After seizing power, whites re-moved opposition by banishingtheir most able and determinedopponents, black and white.

J. PEDER ZANE

This deepening racial chasmlaunched an extraordinarily violentand repressive era in this country. Itwas a time when some state legisla-tures — in the North and South —were controlled by members of theKu Klux Klan. It was a period whengroups of respectable white South-erners gathered to burn black menin public, brought their children towatch, and mailed their loved onessouvenir postcards of the smolderingcorpses. It was a time when African-Americans lost the right to vote toa white South determined to con-trol their lives and labor by anymeans necessary. North Carolinastripped the vote from black men in1900. By 1910, every state in theSouth had taken the vote from itsblack citizens, using North Carolinaas one of their models.

Wilmington 1898 marked a flow-ering of the Age of Jim Crow. Whiteauthorities constructed the symbolsand signs of everyday life to showpeople their place. “White” and “Col-ored” signs were erected at railroadstations, over drinking fountains andat the doors of theaters and restau-rants. Hubert Eaton, a black leaderin Wilmington, recalled his shockand dismay in the 1950s to see twoBibles in every courtroom, clearlymarked by race.

The Wilmington massacre in-spired bloody racist crusades acrossthe United States. When whites inGeorgia, led by would-be governorHoke Smith, sought to take the bal-lot from black citizens in 1906, they

consulted men who came to powerby leading North Carolina’s whitesupremacy campaign. They includedGov. Robert Glenn, U.S. Sens. LeeS. Overman and Furnifold Simmonsand former Gov. Charles B. Aycock.Overman urged white Georgians tobe prepared to use bloody violenceand promised that disfranchisementwould bring the “satisfaction whichonly comes of permanent peace af-ter deadly warfare.”

Smith campaigned across Geor-gia, braying about the protection of“white womanhood” and demand-

ing that the state take the ballot fromblacks. If whites could not disfran-chise blacks legally in Georgia, Smithvowed, “we can handle them as theydid in Wilmington,” where thewoods were left “black with theirhanging carcasses.” Right afterSmith’s 1906 election, white mobsraged in the streets of Atlanta andkilled dozens of blacks. Soon, ex-actly as in North Carolina, the stateof Georgia took the vote from itsAfrican-American citizens.

Despite their importance, theevents in Wilmington have remained

Black firefighters stand on the second floor of the destroyed Loveand Charity Hall in Wilmington. Children watch on the steps

below. The building housed the city’s black-owned newspaper.COURTESY NEW HANOVER LIBRARY

largely a hidden chapter in our state’shistory. It was only this year thatNorth Carolina completed its offi-cial investigation of the violence.The report of the Wilmington RaceRiot Commission concluded that thetragedy “marked a new epoch in thehistory of violent race relations in theUnited States.” It recommendedpayments to descendants of victimsand advised media outlets, includingThe News & Observer, to tell thetruth about 1898.

Even as we finally acknowledgethe ghosts of 1898, long shadowedby ignorance and forgetfulness, someask: Why dredge this up now, whenwe cannot change the past? Butthose who favor amnesia ignore howthe past holds our future in its grip,especially when it remains unac-knowledged. The new world walksforever in the footsteps of the old.The story of the Wilmington raceriot abides at the core of North Car-olina’s past.

And that story holds many lessonsfor us today. It reminds us that his-tory does not just happen. It does notunfold naturally like the seasons orrise and fall like the tides. History ismade by people, who bend and shapethe present to create the future. Thehistory of Wilmington teaches usthat the ugly racial conflict thatshaped North Carolina and the na-tion during much of the 20th centurywas not inevitable. So long as weremember that past, we might over-come its legacy.

For more than a century, most his-torians have obscured the triumph ofwhite domination in 1898 by callingit a “race riot,” though it was not thespontaneous outbreak of mob vio-lence that the word “riot” suggests.

In his seminal study, “We HaveTaken a City” (1984), H. LeonPrather calls it a “massacre and coup.”What another scholar terms the“genocidal massacre” in Wilmingtonwas the climax of a carefully orches-trated campaign to end interracialcooperation and build a one-partystate that would assure the power ofNorth Carolina’s business elite.

When the violence ended, a war ofmemory persisted. Our politicallycorrect public history, carved intomarble on our university buildingsand the statehouse lawn, exalts themen who overthrew an elected gov-ernment in the name of white su-premacy, including Charles B. Ay-cock and Josephus Daniels. Nomonument exists to the handful of vi-sionaries who were able to imaginea better future, beyond the boundsof white supremacy. Nor do we re-member those who gave their livesfor simple justice. Instead, we mis-take power for greatness and cele-brate those responsible for our worsterrors. The losers of 1898, thoughflawed themselves, have far more toteach us than the winners.

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � THE NEWS & OBSERVER4 The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON: SYMBOL OF BLACK ACHIEVEMENT

Chapter 1

At the close of the 19th century, Wilmington was a sym-

bol of black hope in post-Civil War America. The

largest and most important city in North Carolina,

it had a black-majority population — 11,324 African-

Americans and 8,731 whites. The beautiful port city

on the Cape Fear, about 30 miles upriver from the

open Atlantic, boasted electric lights and streetcars when much

of the state lumbered along in darkness. Its port did not quite

match those of Savannah or Charleston, but it shipped tons of cot-

ton around the world.

Wilmington’s middling prosper-ity rested upon its black majority.Blacks owned 10 of the city’s 11 eat-ing houses and 20 of its 22 barber-shops. Black entrepreneur ThomasMiller was one of Wilmington’s threereal estate agents. The city’s businessdirectory listed black-owned Bell &Pickens as one of only four dealersand shippers of fish and oysters.Many of Wilmington’s most sought-after craftsmen were also black: jew-elers and watchmakers, tailors, me-chan i c s , f u rn i tu re maker s ,blacksmiths, shoemakers, stone-masons, plasterers, plumbers, wheel-wrights and brick masons. FrederickSadgwar, an African-American ar-chitect, financier and contractor,owned a stately home that stillstands as a monument to his talentsand industry.

What’s more, the black male lit-eracy rate was higher than that ofwhites. The Daily Record, said tobe the only black-owned daily news-paper in the United States, wasedited by the dashing and pro-gressive Alexander Manly, themixed-race descendant of CharlesManly, governor of the state from1849-51.

Black achievement, however,was always fragile. Wealthy whitesmight be willing to accept someblack advancement, so long aswhites held the reins of power. Butblack economic gains also pro-voked many poor whites who com-peted with them, and wealthywhites persistently encouraged an-imosity between poor whites andblacks in a divide-and-conquerstrategy. In the years after Recon-struction, aspiring black farmers,businessmen and professionals of-ten found themselves the victims ofexclusion, harassment, discrimi-nation and a range of violence thatincluded the horrors of lynching.

Pedens Shop was one of many black-owned businesses in Wilmington. Blacks owned 20 of the city’s 22 barbershops. One of the city’s three real estate agents was black. And black-owned Bell & Pickens was one of four shippers of fish and oysters.

Market Street between Front and Second streets, 1898.PHOTOS COURTESY N.C. OFFICE

OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

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THE FUSION MOVEMENT: EXPERIMENT IN INTERRACIAL DEMOCRACY

Chapter 2

Despite their defeat in 1865, the feverish devotion of the

former Confederates to white dominion did not burn

off like mists in the midmorning sun. For many white

Southerners, black citizenship remained unacceptable

and justified any level of violence. Ku Klux Klan ter-

rorism swept the South. As the federal government be-

came increasingly reluctant to protect the rights of former slaves,

white terrorism and electoral fraud brought about the end of Re-

construction. The Conservatives, who later changed their name to

the Democrats, took power across the region by 1876, and worked

hard to limit black voting.

RUSSELL LEADS FUSION

It would be several genera-tions before North Caroliniansagain witnessed the interracialcooperation that marked therace for governor in 1896. Aftera heated struggle, the Fusion-ists nominated Daniel Russell, abroad-faced, fleshy white manof nearly 300 pounds, for gov-ernor. Though many of theAfrican-American delegateshad favored another candidate,Russell swore his support forblack advancement.

“I stand for the Negroes’rights and liberties,” he de-clared. “I sucked at the breastof a Negro woman. I judge fromthe adult development the milkmust have been nutritious andplentiful,” Russell joked, mock-ing his enormous girth. “TheNegroes do not want control.They only demand, and theyought to have it, every right awhite man has.”

Campaign fliers from the1896 election reveal the Fu-sionist effort to appeal to blackvoters. “To the Colored Votersof Union County” remindedAfrican-Americans that “twoyears ago the Republicans andPopulists of North Carolinaunited and made one grandstruggle for liberty,” and thatonly this defeat of the Demo-crats enabled blacks to voteagain. “THE CHAINS OF SERVI-TUDE ARE BROKEN,” the inter-racial alliance reminded blackcitizens in an appeal to racepride. “NOW NEVER LICK THEHAND THAT LASHED YOU.”

Such appeals brought blackvoters out in a gesture of auda-cious hope that the interracialdemocracy born in Reconstruc-tion, but dead for 20 years, couldbe revived. An estimated 87percent of eligible black voterswent to the polls in 1896, andRussell was elected.

TIMOTHY B. TYSON

The collapse of Reconstructionleft North Carolina with two dis-tinct political parties. While Repub-licans, favored by blacks, controlledmany federal appointments fromWashington, the Democrats ruledthe state and local governments from1876 to 1894. But the coalition ofwealthy, working class and ruralwhites that kept the Democrats inpower began to unravel in the late1880s as the American economyheaded toward depression.

North Carolina became a hotbedof agrarian revolt as hard-pressedfarmers soured on the Democratsbecause of policies that cottoned tobanks and railroads. Many white dis-sidents rallied around economic is-sues and eventually founded the Peo-ple’s Party, also known as thePopulists. As the ruling order dis-credited itself through its inability tomeet human needs, many of the eco-nomic dissidents became racial dis-sidents, too.

Now they imagined what had beenunimaginable: an alliance withblacks, who shared their economicgrievances but also sought secure

access to the ballot box and safetyfrom white terrorism.

These “Pops” were not quite asdevoted to white supremacy astheir conservative opponents.Still, poisonous ideas that hadonce served as a rationale for slav-ery — that God had distributedmoral, cultural and intellectualworth on the basis of pigmenta-tion — were as common amongwhite Populists as they wereamong Democrats.

As the economic depression deep-ened, these increasingly desperatePopulists joined forces with Re-publicans. Together they formed aninterracial “Fusion” coalition thatchampioned local self-government,free public education, modest reg-ulation of monopoly capitalism and“one man, one vote,” which wouldgive a black man the same votingpower as a white man. In the 1894and 1896 elections, the Fusionmovement won every statewide of-fice, swept the legislature andelected its most prominent whiteleader, Daniel Russell, to the gov-ernorship.

In Wilmington, the Fusion tri-umph lifted black and white Re-publicans and white Populists topower. The new Fusion legislaturereformed local government to allowcommunities to pick their own lead-ership, and won a majority of theWilmington Board of Aldermen. Butwhite Republicans and Populistskept most offices to themselves; onlyfour of the 10 aldermen wereAfrican-Americans, despite the city’sblack majority.

We must resist the temptationto take a romantic view of theFusionists and imagine that theyrepresented the same vision asthe civil rights movement at its

best. Nearly all of the white Fu-sionists resisted equality for theirAfrican-American allies. But sincethey represented a vital part ofthe coalition, quite a few blackNorth Carolinians took places oncounty electoral tickets and won.Imperfect though it was, this Fu-sion coalition embodied a brighterfuture for our state, not just in itsideals but in its practical approachto coalition politics.

Horrified at the prospect of a

more democratic government, withall men eligible to vote and hold of-fice on equal terms, wealthy whiteDemocrats vowed to regain controlof the government.

Beginning in 1897, they sawtheir challenge as finding a strat-egy that would move the focus ofdisgruntled white voters away fromtheir policies. What they neededwas an issue that would shatterthe fragile alliance between poorwhites and blacks.

0 20 40 60 80

House Senate

Fusioncoalition

Democrats

894 statewide election results North Carolina General Assembly

FUSION VICTORYRepublicans and Populists oined forces to defeat Demo-crats in 1894.

Source: 1898 Wilmington RaceRiot Commission Report

A cartoon in The News and Observer on Oct. 26, 1898, warnedvoters of the interracial Fusion coalition of Populists and

Republicans who championed local self-government, free publiceducation and giving a black man the same vote as a white man.

SOURCE: THE NEWS AND OBSERVER

WILMINGTON RACE RIOTTHE NEWS & OBSERVER � FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 5The Ghosts of 1898

COURTESY UNC-CHAPEL HILL

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � THE NEWS & OBSERVER6 The Ghosts of 1898

THE STATEWIDE WHITE SUPREMACY CAMPAIGN

Chapter 3

Charles B. Aycock, governor of North Carolina from 1901 to 1905, has become the central

symbol of the state’s progressive traditions, first and most illustrious of our “education

governors.” Politicians in North Carolina making high-minded appeals for education and

civility routinely invoke “the spirit of Aycock.” The contradictory truth is that Aycock earned

his prominence by fomenting a bloody white supremacy revolution in North Carolina. This

campaign — with Wilmington as its flash point — essentially overthrew the state gov-

ernment by force and by fraud, ending meaningful democracy in the state for generations. How this

happened is a lesson in the politics of racial violence and the ironies of public memory.

As the 1898 political season loomed,the Populists and Republicans hopedto make more gains through Fusion.The Democrats, desperate to over-come their unpopularity, decided toplace all their chips on racial antago-nism. Party chairman Furnifold Sim-mons mapped out the campaign strat-egy with leaders whose names wouldbe immortalized in statues, on build-ings and street signs: Aycock, HenryG. Connor, Robert B. Glenn, ClaudeKitchin, Locke Craig, Cameron Mor-rison, George Rountree, Francis D.Winston and Josephus Daniels.

These men knew that the Demo-crats’ only hope was to develop cam-paign issues that cut across partylines. Southern history and practicalpolitics had taught them that whitediscomfort with black political par-

ticipation remained a smolderingember that they could fan to fullflame. So they made the “redemp-tion” of North Carolina from “Negrodomination” the theme of the 1898campaign. Though promising to re-store something traditional, theywould, in fact, create a new social or-der rooted in white supremacy andcommercial domination.

A propaganda campaign slander-ing African-Americans would notcome cheap. Simmons made secretdeals with railroads, banks and in-dustrialists. In exchange for dona-tions right away, the Democratspledged to slash corporate taxes af-ter their victory.

At the center of their strategy laythe gifts and assets of Daniels, edi-tor and publisher of The News and

Observer. He spearheaded a propa-ganda effort that made white parti-sans angry enough to commit elec-toral fraud and mass murder.

It would not be merely a campaignof heated rhetoric but also one of vi-olence and intimidation. Daniels calledSimmons “a genius in putting every-body to work — men who could write,men who could speak, and men whocould ride — the last by no means theleast important.” By “ride,” Danielsemployed a euphemism for vigilanteterror. Black North Carolinians had tobe kept away from the polls by anymeans necessary.

Though it would end in bloodshed,the campaign began with an ordinaryenough meeting of the Democratic ex-

CHARLES B. AYCOCK

Charles Brantley Aycock wasborn in Wayne County on Nov. 1,1859, the youngest of 10 children.After graduating from the Univer-sity of North Carolina in 1880, hepracticed law in Goldsboro andbecame involved in DemocraticParty politics. As North Carolina’sgovernor from 1901 to 1905, hechampioned education and whitesupremacy. He died in 1912 whiledelivering a speech on education.

JOSEPHUS DANIELS

Josephus Daniels was born inWashington, N.C., in 1862. His fa-ther, a shipbuilder for the Confed-eracy, was killed before the childwas 3. His mother soon moved thefamily to Wilson, where she workedfor the post office. At age 16, heentered the world of journalism; by18 he had bought the Advance, apaper serving Wilson, Nash andGreene counties.

After studying at the Universityof North Carolina’s law school, hewas admitted to the bar in 1885,though he never practiced. In-stead he continued to publish andedit newspapers, proving himselfa fierce ally of the Democratic

Party. He purchased The News and Observer in 1894, making it apivotal instrument of the white supremacy campaign. PresidentWoodrow Wilson named him secretary of the Navy in 1913. PresidentFranklin Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to Mexico in 1933.Daniels died in Raleigh on Jan. 15, 1948.

FURNIFOLD SIMMONS

Furnifold Simmons was born onhis father’s plantation near Pol-locksville in Jones County in 1854.After graduating from TrinityCollege (now Duke University) in1873, he studied law and beganpracticing in New Bern. He servedone term in Congress (1887-89),then lost the next two electionsfor that seat.

After losing statewide electionsin 1894 and 1896, North Carolina’sDemocratic Party named him itschairman. Simmons orchestratedthe campaign of 1898 that wouldrestore the party to power. Show-ing its gratitude, the legislatureappointed him in 1900 to a seat in

the U.S. Senate that he would hold for 30 years.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

COURTESY UNC LIBRARY

NEWS & OBSERVER FILE PHOTO

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOTTHE NEWS & OBSERVER � FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 7The Ghosts of 1898

PROPAGANDA, PASSION ACROSS THE STATE

Chapter 4ecutive committee on Nov. 20, 1897.At its end, Francis D. Winston ofBertie County published a call forwhites to rise up and “reestablish An-glo-Saxon rule and honest govern-ment in North Carolina.” He attackedRepublican and Populist leaders forturning over local offices to blacks.“Homes have been invaded, and thesanctity of wwoommaann endangered,” theDemocratic broadside claimed. “Busi-ness has been paralyzed and prop-erty rendered less valuable.”

This claim ignored the enormouscommercial expansion in North Car-olina in the 1890s. Despite the painof farmers pelted by the nationalagricultural depression, textile millshad increased fourfold; invested cap-ital had surged to 12 times its 1890value; the number of employed work-ers in North Carolina had skyrock-eted during the decade; and the rail-road interests had obtained a 99-yearlease on public railways. But thetruth was not the point. The Demo-crats clearly planned to portraythemselves as the saviors of NorthCarolina from the Fusionist regime— and from “Negro domination.”

By any rational assessment,African-Americans could hardly besaid to “dominate” North Carolinapolitics. Helen G. Edmonds, thescholar from N.C. Central Univer-sity, which in her day was calledNorth Carolina College for Negroes,weighed the matter in her classic1951 work, “The Negro and FusionPolitics in North Carolina, 1894-1901.” She wrote:

“An examination of ‘Negro domi-nation’ in North Carolina revealedthat one Negro was elected to Con-gress; ten to the state legislature; fouraldermen were elected in Wilmington,two in New Bern, two in Greenville,one or two in Raleigh, one countytreasurer and one county coroner inNew Hanover; one register of deedsin Craven; one Negro jailer in Wilm-ington; and one county commissionerin Warren and one in Craven.”

Indeed, all three political partieswere controlled by whites. Two ofthem — the Populists and the Demo-crats — could fairly be described ashostile to blacks, though the Pop-ulists supported a small degree ofblack office-holding in an arrange-ment based on the arithmetic of po-litical power. Given that North Car-olina’s population was 33 percentAfrican-American, it would be farmore accurate to describe the stateof affairs as “white domination.”

But to white supremacists, the factthat black votes — usually for whitecandidates — could sway electionswas tantamount to domination. Theywanted blacks removed from the po-litical equation.

To achieve victory in 1898, Democrats appealed to ir-

rational passions. They used sexualized images of

black men and their supposedly uncontrollable lust

for white women. Newspaper stories and stump

speeches warned of “black beasts” and “black brutes”

who threatened the pure flower of Southern wom-

anhood. They cast any achievement or assertion by African-

American men as merely an effort to get close to white women.

SUPREMACYCONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

Aware that a picture could beworth a thousand votes, JosephusDaniels engaged the services of car-toonist Norman Jennett to pen front-page caricatures of blacks. Jennett’smasterpiece was a depiction of ahuge vampire bat with “Negro rule”inscribed on its wings, and whitewomen beneath its claws, with thecaption “The Vampire That HoversOver North Carolina.” Other imagesincluded a large Negro foot with awhite man pinned under it. The cap-tion: “How Long Will This Last?”

Sensational headlines and accountsof supposed Negro crimes wereDaniels’ stock in trade: “Negro Con-trol in Wilmington,” “A Negro In-sulted the Postmistress Because HeDid Not Get A Letter,” “NegroesHave Social Equality” and “Negro OnA Train With Big Feet BehindWhite” were typical.

The News and Observer was oneof many newspapers spreading anti-black propaganda. “The AngloSaxon/A Great White Man’s Rally,”read a headline in the state’s leadingconservative paper, the CharlotteDaily Observer. It offered readers astream of sensationalized and fabri-cated stories about black crime,corruption and atrocities againstwhite women. Star reporter H.E.C.“Red Buck” Bryant traveled NorthCarolina filing triumphant dispatchesabout the white supremacy cam-paign and disparaging accounts ofthe Fusion government.

Populist leader Marion Butler,who was elected by the Fusion leg-islature to the U.S. Senate in 1895,anticipated the crucial role news-papers would play in the 1898 cam-paign. The year before, he wrote,“There is but one chance and butone hope for the railroads to cap-ture the next legislature, and that isfor the ‘nigger’ to be made the issue”with the Raleigh and Charlotte pa-pers “together in the same bed shout-ing ‘nigger.’ ”

This propaganda fell on fertile soil.

The racist assumptions that made iteffective were commonplace. With-out the cooperation of the news-papers, though, especially The Newsand Observer, the white supremacycampaign could not have succeeded.Although he never apologized forhis central role in the campaign,Daniels later acknowledged that hisnewspaper had been harsh, unfairand irresponsible. The News andObserver was “cruel in its flagella-tions,” Daniels wrote 40 years later.“We were never very careful aboutwinnowing out the stories or runningthem down … they were played upin big type.”

Nor was it a secret, as ElectionDay approached, that violence waspart of the Democrats’ strategy.Two weeks before the slaughter inWilmington, The Washington Postran these headlines: “A City Under

Arms — Blacks to Be Preventedfrom Voting in Wilmington, N.C. —Prepared for Race War — Prop-erty-Holding Classes DeterminedUpon Ending Negro Domination.”

The white supremacy forces didnot depend solely upon newspapers,but required a statewide campaignof stump speakers, torchlight pa-rades and physical intimidation.Former Gov. Thomas J. Jarvis andfuture Govs. Robert B. Glenn andCameron Morrison struck many ablow for the conservative cause.

“The king of oratory, however,was Charles B. Aycock,” historianH. Leon Prather writes, “the Demo-cratic Moses, who would lead NorthCarolina out of the chaos and dark-ness of ‘Negro domination.’ ” As hedid throughout the campaign, Ay-cock mesmerized a standing-room-only crowd at the Metropolitan

House in Raleigh, pounding thepodium for white supremacy andthe protection of white womanhood.

White men have neglected poorand long-suffering white women,he explained in his famous “guiltand degradation” speech, which herepeated across the state that fall.“For them,” he said of the wives,daughters and sweethearts of whitemen, “it is everything whetherNegro supremacy is to continue.”

Wilmington, Aycock explainedlater, was “the storm center of thewhite supremacy movement.” Herewas the largest city in the state,with a black majority and a black-owned daily newspaper, and sev-eral African-American office hold-ers. Wilmington represented theheart of the Fusionist threat. And soit became the focus of the Democ-rats’ campaign.

N&O cartoonist Norman Jennett penned caricatures of blacks.THE NEWS AND OBSERVER

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � THE NEWS & OBSERVER8 The Ghosts of 1898

THE WILMINGTON CAMPAIGN

Chapter 5

Early in the fall of 1898, Democratic Party organizers

arrived in Wilmington to press their cause. Most of the

white-owned businesses in town contributed money.

George Rountree, a local conservative, and Francis

Winston of Bertie County, organized white supremacy

clubs in the port city. Lawyers William B. McCoy,

Iredell Meares, John Dillard Bellamy and others allowed the White

Government Union — as the Democratic Party headquarters in

Raleigh dubbed the local clubs — to meet in their offices.

EDITORIAL STOKED ANGER

Alexander Manly’s editorialresponse in The Daily Recordto a pro-lynching speech deliv-ered by a Georgia womanseemed heaven-sent to Demo-cratic leaders. Though theAfrican-American editor articu-lated painful truths, his adver-saries used it to support theiranti-black scare tactics.

“The papers are filled oftenwith reports of rapes of whitewomen, and the subsequentlynching of the alleged rapist.The editors pour forth volumesof aspersions against all Negroesbecause of the few who may beguilty. If the papers and speakersof the other race would con-demn the commission of crimebecause it is crime and not try tomake it appear that the Negroeswere the only criminals, theywould find their strongest alliesin the intelligent Negroes them-selves …

“Our experience among poorwhite people in the countryteaches us that the women ofthat race are not any moreparticular in the matter of clan-destine meetings with coloredmen than are the white menwith colored women. Meetingsof this kind go on for some timeuntil the woman’s infatuation orthe man’s boldness bring atten-tion to them and the man islynched for rape. … Tell yourmen that it is no worse for ablack man to be intimate with awhite woman, than for a whiteman to be intimate with a col-ored woman. You set yourselvesdown as a lot of carping hypo-crites in that you cry aloud forthe virtue of your women whileyou seek to destroy the moralityof ours. Don’t think ever thatyour women will remain purewhile you are debauching ours.You sow the seed — the harvestwill come in due time.”

white governor, Charles Manly.For Democratic strategists,

Manly’s editorial was a timely gift.In public, Furnifold Simmonsfumed that Manly had “daredopenly and publicly to assail thevirtue of our pure white woman-hood.” In private, however, theDemocratic Party’s chief strategistwas far more cheerful. Walker Tay-lor, a white Democrat from Wilm-ington, wrote: “Senator Simmons,who was here at the time, told usthat the article would make an easyvictory for us and urged us to tryand prevent any riot until after theelection.”

Sen. Ben Tillman of South Car-olina, the South’s most gifted racistdemagogue, saw no reason to wait.Tillman came to North Carolina inthe fall of 1898 at the invitation ofSimmons and bragged that he andhis fellow Red Shirts, a terroristmilitia, had seized power in SouthCarolina by force and by fraud. Till-man urged the white supremacyforces in North Carolina to adopthis “shotgun policy” and shamedthem for failure to use violence al-ready, especially against Manly.“Why didn’t you kill that damn nig-ger editor who wrote that?” Till-

man taunted the crowd.“Send him to South

Carolina and let himpublish any such

offensive stuff,and he will bekilled.”

T i l l m a nheadlined thelargest rally ofthe white su-premacy cam-

paign, held inFayettevi l le on

Oct. 20. By earlymorning, in one ac-

count, “vehicles filling allthe streets and thoroughfares gaveevidence that the white people ofupper Cape Fear had left the plow,the machine shops, the kitchen, nay,the very neighborhood school-room.” Hundreds of white menshowed up in red shirts, payinghomage to Tillman’s terroristachievements. A delegation fromWilmington led the parade, fol-lowed by 300 Red Shirts in mili-tary formation, trailed by a floatwith 22 beautiful young whitewomen dressed in white. The con-stant boom of cannons added a vi-olent percussion to a brass bandfrom Wilmington.

Benjamin Keith, a white Populistwho served on the WilmingtonBoard of Aldermen, claimed thatsupport for the White GovernmentUnion was not altogether volun-tary; the clubs demanded that everywhite man in the community join.“Many good people were marchedfrom their homes, some by com-mittees, and taken to headquartersand told to sign,” Keith wrote. Thethreat of banishment or worse wasplain, he said: “Those that did not[sign] were notified that they mustleave the city … as there was plentyof rope.”

The white supremacy campaignin Wilmington made fervent ap-peals for the support of poor whites.With the blessing of the Chamber ofCommerce, it demanded that whitesbe given the jobs now held byblacks, especially municipal posi-tions. However, the campaign wasnot led by that symbol of Southernracism — the uneducated “red-neck.”

In fact, Wilmington’s elite directedthe charge. “The Secret Nine,” as anadmiring local white historian calledthe cabal that helped hatch the vio-lence and coup in Wilmington, in-cluded J. Alan Taylor, Hardy L.Fennell, W.A. Johnson, L.B. Sasser,William Gilchrist, P.B. Manning,E.S. Lathrop, Walter L. Parsley andHugh MacRae. It was these men,and other scions of Eastern NorthCarolina’s aristocracy, who orga-nized armed militias to take con-trol of the streets and drew up listsof black and white Fusionists to bebanished or killed.

Not only in Wilmington butacross North Carolina, the whitesupremacy campaign representedthe triumph of financial and man-ufacturing interests. Later, theCharlotte Daily Observer wouldassess the white supremacy cam-paign and proudly celebrate the

triumph of wealth and bigotry:“The business men of the State arelargely responsible for the victory.Not before in years have the bankmen, the mill men, and the busi-ness men in general — the back-bone of the property interest ofthe State — taken such sincere in-terest. They worked from start tofinish, and furthermore they spentlarge bits of money in behalf of thecause.”

The campaign to persuade whitemen to commit wholesale violencewas made easier in August 1898when the black-owned Daily Recordof Wilmington answered an inflam-matory article in the Wilm-ington Messenger. Aspart of the conserva-tive propagandabarrage, the Mes-senger reprinteda yea r - o ldspeech by Re-becca Felton ofGeorgia thaturged whi teSouthern mento “lynch, a thou-sand times a week,if necessary,” to pro-tect white women fromblack rapists.

In response to this fabricatedrape scare and call for mass mur-der, the Record’s editor, AlexanderManly, pointed out that not allsexual contact between black menand white women was coerced. Healso noted that white men rou-tinely seduced or raped blackwomen. Why, Manly asked, was itworse for a black man to be inti-mate with a white woman than fora white man to be intimate with ablack woman?

Manly’s charge was particularly in-cendiary because he embodied itstruth — the black editor was a directdescendant of North Carolina’s

RED SHIRT VIGILANTES

The white sheets of the KuKlux Klan have become theenduring symbol of racistvigilantism, but Red Shirts alsostruck fear in the hearts ofblack people. First coming toprominence in South Carolinain the elections of 1876 thatwould spell the end of Recon-struction, red shirts weredonned by men eager to com-mit violence against blacks andtheir white allies. During Wilm-ington’s white supremacycampaign of 1898, Red Shirtspatrolled the city’s streets tointimidate blacks.

J. PEDER ZANE

COURTESY UNC-CHAPEL HILL

WADDELL’S POLITICS

Born in Hillsborough, AlfredMoore Waddell began practicinglaw in Wilmington shortly aftergraduating from the Universityof North Carolina in 1853. Risingto the rank of lieutenant colonelduring the Civil War, Waddelllater served four terms in Con-gress (1871-1879).

After his electoral defeat, hepracticed law, edited the Char-lotte Journal-Observer for twoyears (1881-82) and remainedactive in Democratic politics. Agifted orator, he championedwhite supremacy in the 1898election and was installed as thecity’s mayor during the coupthat occurred during the riot.

J. PEDER ZANE

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOTTHE NEWS & OBSERVER � FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 9The Ghosts of 1898

SILVER TONGUES AND RED SHIRTS

Chapter 6

Though Ben Tillman helped fire the boiler of white su-

premacy, Wilmington had plenty of homegrown talent. The

most effective advocate of violence probably was Alfred

Moore Waddell. A lawyer and newspaper publisher born

on Moorefield Plantation near Hillsborough, Waddell had

fought as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate cavalry.

After the war, he served three terms in Congress, finally losing his seat

to Daniel Russell, the Republican who would become the Fusionist gov-

ernor of North Carolina. Unemployed in 1898, Waddell set out to over-

throw the Russell regime by violence and demagoguery, becoming what

some called “the silver tongued orator of the east.”

Waddell packed an auditorium inWilmington early in the fall of 1898,where he shared the stage with 50 ofthe city’s most prominent citizens.White supremacy, he declared, wasthe sole issue and traitors to thewhite race should be held account-able. “I do not hesitate to say thispublicly,” Waddell proclaimed, “thatif a race conflict occurs in NorthCarolina, the very first men thatought to be held to account are thewhite leaders of the Negroes whowill be chiefly responsible for it. …I mean the governor of this statewho is the engineer of all the devil-try.” But his fiery closing, which be-came the tag line of his standardstump speech that fall, made clearthat blacks would bear the brunt ofthe violence. “We will never sur-render to a ragged raffle of Negroes,”Waddell thundered, “even if we haveto choke the Cape Fear River withcarcasses.”

Waddell unfurled his next blood-thirsty declaration in Goldsboro,where 8,000 white Democrats cameto cheer the long-haired coloneland other Democratic leaders, in-cluding Simmons, Aycock andWilliam A. Guthrie, mayor ofDurham.

Waddell set the tone and elec-trified the crowd with his promiseto throw enough black bodies intothe Cape Fear River to block itspassage to the sea. Guthrie, flankedby Red Shirts, imagined a bloodyrace war . “The Anglo -Saxonplanted civilization on this conti-nent,” Guthrie claimed, “and wher-ever this race has been in conflictwith another race, it has assertedits supremacy and either con-quered or exterminated the foe.This great race has carried theBible in one hand and the sword

[in the other.]” Guthrie warnedthe Fusionists: “Resist our marchof progress and civilization and wewill wipe you off the face of theEarth.”

Men weren’t the only ones callingfor violence. Rebecca Cameron,Waddell’s cousin, wrote to him onOct. 26 to urge him to carry out hismurderous threats. “Where are thewhite men and the shotguns!” sheexclaimed. “It is time for the oftquoted shotgun to play a part, andan active one, in the elections.”The situation was sufficiently des-perate, she believed, that not merethreats but “bloodletting is neededfor the hearts of the common manand when the depletion commenceslet it be thorough!” Urging her men-folk to eliminate Gov. Russell, inparticular, Cameron quoted theBible in her plea for bloodshed:“Solomon says, ‘There is a Timeto Kill.’ ”

The threats were not empty.The Red Shirts, a paramilitaryarm of the Democratic Party,thundered across the state onhorseback, disrupting African-American church services and Re-publican meetings. In Wilming-ton, the Red Shirts patrolled everystreet in the city in the days beforethe election, intimidating and at-tacking black citizens.

The terror went far beyondWilmington; it was felt in many ofthe eastern counties. “The RedShirt organization caused much un-rest and alarm,” the editor of theMaxton Blade recalled, “and justbefore election day made nightlyraids, shot through houses, andwarned Negroes not to go near thepolls.” On the day of the balloting,Red Shirts blocked every road lead-ing to Maxton and many other com-

munities, and drove would-be blackvoters away with gunfire. “Beforewe allow the Negroes to controlthis state as they do now,” Con-gressman W.W. Kitchin declared,“we will kill enough of them thatthere will not be enough left tobury them.”

Russell, who was from Wilming-ton, complained before the electionthat “citizens had been fired onfrom ambush and taken from theirhomes at night and whipped; andthat peaceful citizens were afraid toregister” to vote. To quell the vio-lence, Russell eventually withdrewthe Republican ticket from NewHanover County. Yet this was notenough to satisfy his opponents.When Russell traveled to Wilm-ington on Election Day, Red Shirtterrorists swarmed his train at Ham-let and tried to lynch him. To un-derstand the condition of the demo-cratic process in North Carolinathat year, we are forced to con-template the governor huddling ina mail-baggage car, hiding from alynch mob organized by his elec-toral opponents.

The Red Shirt mobs ruled thestreets of Wilmington as the 1898election approached. Mike Dowling,a former firefighter who had lost hisjob for “incompetency, drunkennessand continued insubordination,” ledthem through the streets of Wilm-ington on horseback.

Wealthy Democrats provided freefood and liquor to the white mobs inthe streets. Leaders of the whitesupremacy campaign also spent thestaggering sum of $1,200 on a new,rapid-fire Gatling gun. They demon-strated its power in early Novem-ber, leaving no doubt of the conse-quences for those who openlyresisted the campaign.

A “White Man’s Rally” on Nov. 2featured free barbecue and torch-light parades of armed men. Thenight before the election, Waddell re-minded the armed throng: “You areAnglo-Saxons. You are armed andprepared, and you will do your duty.If you find the Negro out voting, tellhim to leave the polls, and if he re-fuses, kill him, shoot him down in histracks. We shall win tomorrow if wehave to do it with guns.”

The following day, Nov. 8, 1898,many African-Americans in Wilm-ington avoided the polls in hope ofevading bloodshed. Other black cit-izens attempted to vote. But thearmed white men posted on everyblock by the White GovernmentUnion certainly kept many awayfrom the ballot box. Though the in-timidation might have sufficed,given the violent atmosphere andthe withdrawal of the local Repub-lican ticket, the Democrats never-theless stuffed ballot boxes. Dowl-ing, the Red Shirt leader who alsoserved as a Democratic Party elec-tion official, explained that he andothers were taught “how to depositRepublican ballots so they could bereplaced.”

Democrats won in Wilmingtonby 6,000 votes, a huge swing fromt w o y e a r s b e f o r e , w h e n t h eFusionists earned a 5,000-voteadvantage. Even among the disap-pointed Fusionists, there was somerelief that the city had been sparedwidespread violence.

“I awoke that morning with thank-ful heart that the election haspassed,” a white woman, JaneCronly, wrote, “without the shed-ding of the blood of either the inno-cent or the guilty.”

But even her small and measuredoptimism was unfounded.

Red Shirts were a paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party that disrupted black church servicesand Republican meetings. This photo was taken in Laurinburg in Scotland County in 1898.

COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

GOVERNOR ELUDES MOB

Despite a flurry of threats,Republican Gov. Daniel Russellvoted without incident in hishometown of Wilmington onNov. 8. His return trip to Raleighwas not so quiet. His train wasstopped twice by Red Shirts —including one gang led by afuture governor, Cameron Morri-son. Morrison warned the gover-nor of vigilantes up the track,and persuaded Russell to hide.

The governor huddled in amail-baggage car to avoid alynch mob.

TIMOTHY B. TYSON

VOTING FRAUD IN 1898

Intimidation, violence andballot-stuffing were the ElectionDay tools of choice of Demo-crats in Wilmington. The mostegregious cases of electionfraud occurred in heavily blacksections of the First Ward.

In the Fourth Precinct, Demo-crats dramatically suppressedthe black vote. Although 337Republicans were registered inthe precinct, the party talliedonly 97 votes.

In the Fifth Precinct, Demo-crats not only suppressed theblack vote, they also inflatedtheir own totals. Thirty Demo-crats were registered in theprecinct, but the party earned456 votes. A precinct with 343registered voters produced atotal of 607 votes.

J. PEDER ZANE

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � THE NEWS & OBSERVER10 The Ghosts of 1898

VIOLENCE IN THE STREETS

Chapter 7

The white supremacy campaign was so inflammatory that

violence seemed unavoidable. “You cannot think or

imagine anything to equal or compare to the policy the

Democrats seem to have adopted to carry this section,”

Benjamin Keith, a Fusionist alderman, wrote to Sen.

Marion Butler in late October. “I look for a lot of in-

nocent men killed here if things continue as they are now.”

INTIMIDATING FIREPOWER

Leaders of the white su-premacy movement signaledtheir deadly intentions bothbefore and during the riotthrough their machine gunsquad.

Weeks before the election,local business interests pur-chased a gun capable of firing420 rounds per minute. Theweapon was trumpeted in thepress and its power demon-strated to black leaders in anexhibition Nov. 1.

Just two days before the riot,the Naval Reserves acquired aHotchkiss gun that could fire80 to 100 shots per minute. Onthe day of the riot, both gunswere wheeled through blacksections of Wilmington andaimed at crowds under ordersto disperse.

J. PEDER ZANE

Stealing the election would not beenough for the conservatives. Forone thing, Wilmington’s local Fu-sionist government remained in of-fice, since many local officials — themayor and the board of aldermen, forexample — had not been up for re-election in 1898. And Wilmingtonremained the center of African-Amer-ican economic and political power, aswell as a symbol of black pride. WhiteDemocrats were in no mood to wait.

The day after the election, HughMacRae, a Massachusetts Instituteof Technology-trained industrialistand one of the Secret Nine, called apublic meeting. “Attention WhiteMen,” the headline in the WilmingtonMessenger proclaimed. Court testi-mony later described the meeting atthe courthouse as a “respectable rep-resentative assemblage of business-men, merchants, lawyers, doctors,divines, and mechanics.” One localwhite man wrote to a friend inRaleigh that “businessmen are at pre-sent holding a big meeting to takesteps to run the mayor and someprominent Negroes out of town.”

The meeting began with formerMayor S.H. Fishblate calling AlfredWaddell to the podium. Waddellunfurled a “White Declaration ofIndependence,” drawn up by theSecret Nine. The U.S. Constitution“did not anticipate the enfran-chisement of an ignorant popula-tion of African origin,” Waddellread aloud. The framers of theUnion “did not contemplate fortheir descendants a subjection toan inferior race.” Never again, thedeclaration said, would white menof New Hanover County permitblack political participation. Thecrowd roared and rose to its feet.

An appointed committee revisedthe declaration, adding calls for theresignations of the mayor, the chiefof police, and the board of aldermen,in addition to the demand for Manly’snewspaper to “cease to be published”and “its editor banished from thecity.” The committee selected Wad-dell to head a Committee of Twenty-

Five to “direct the execution of theprovisions of the resolutions.”

The committee summoned 32prominent “colored citizens” to thecourthouse. “There the black mensaw arrayed against them the real fi-nancial powers of the city,” H. LeonPrather writes, “backed by weaponssuperior in both number and fire-power. It was clear, too, that thevoice of white supremacy did notwaver; there was murder in the air.”

Waddell read them the White De-claration of Independence. He firmlyexplained the white conservatives’ in-sistence that “the Negro” stop “an-tagonizing our interests in everyway, especially by his ballot,” andthat the city “give to white men alarge part of the employment hereto-fore given to Negroes.” He de-manded that the Record stop publi-cation and its editor leave the city.The African-American leaders strucka compliant pose, as their optionswere limited. Waddell gave them a12-hour deadline, an empty gesture,since the Democrats had alreadystolen the election, editor Manly hadalready fled the city and the Recordhad already ceased publication.

The following morning at 8:15,Waddell met a heavily armed crowdat the city’s stately white marble ar-mory. He lined up the Committee ofTwenty-Five at the head of the pro-cession, shouldered his Winchesterrifle, and assumed the head of the col-umn, his white hair flowing in thelight breeze. Passing up MarketStreet, a swelling crowd of menmarched to Love and Charity Hall,the black community center on Sev-enth Street between Nun and Churchstreets, where the Record had beenpublished. Led by Waddell, the mobbattered down the door of the two-story frame structure, dumpedkerosene on the wooden floors andset the building ablaze. After it wasdestroyed, some of the whites posedfor a photograph with their guns infront of the blackened building tocommemorate the moment.

But soon the streets filled with an-

gry blacks and whites. Red Shirtson horseback poured into the blackcommunity. Sporadic gunfire quicklyturned to disciplined military actionat the intersection of Fourth andHarnett streets. “Now, boys, I wantto tell you right now I want you allto load,” T.C. James, who com-manded one group of foot soldiers,reportedly told them, “and when Igive the command to shoot, I wantyou to shoot to kill.”

Thomas Clawson, editor of theWilmington Messenger, was stand-ing nearby with a group of news-paper reporters, and wrote that “avolley tore off the top of a [black]man’s head and he fell dead about 20feet in front of the news-hawks.” Theinitial orderly barrages quickly fell to-ward a swirling cacophony of gunfire,as white men randomly chased blackcitizens through the streets and firedinto homes and businesses.

Sometimes the white marauderstargeted particular blacks. A howlingmob surrounded the home of DanielWright, a well-known black politi-cian, whom some accused of havingfired on the mob. By the time theyhad managed to haul Wright out ofhis house, a large crowd had gath-ered and murder mutated intoamusement. Someone knockedWright down with a pipe. “Stringhim up to a lamp post!” a member ofthe mob yelled. But the white menwho wanted Wright to run the gant-let prevailed. The mob turned himloose, chanting “Run, nigger, run!”Wright ran for 15 yards or so untilabout 40 shots ripped him to pieces.“He was riddled with a pint of bul-lets, like a pigeon thrown from atrap,” one observer wrote.

Red Shirts and other vigilantesromped through the black sections oftown to “kill every damn nigger insight,” as one of them put it. “Whathave we done, what have we done?”one black man cried. And GeorgeRountree, an architect of the cam-paign, found himself unable to an-swer, since “they had done nothing.”

Eventually, Gov. Russell was no-tified of the violence and, from his of-fice in Raleigh, called out the Wilm-ington Light Infantry to restoreorder. However, the horse-drawnrapid-fire Gatling gun under the com-mand of Capt. William Rand Kenanbrought more fear than peace toblack neighborhoods.

At the end of the day, no one knewhow many people had died. The NewYork Times, then a conservative pa-per, put the death toll at nine. Wad-dell, writing in his memoirs, esti-mated about 20 black casualties.Rountree, MacRae and J. Alan Tay-lor put the number at 90. Local his-torian Harry Hayden, an admirer ofthe white supremacy campaign, re-ported that some of his white sourcesboasted that they’d killed “over 100”black folks.

Echoing the oral traditions of theirgrandparents’ generation, someAfrican-Americans in Wilmingtonbelieve that an honest body countwould have exceeded 300. Sinceabout 1,400 blacks fled Wilmingtonin the wake of the massacre andcoup, it will probably always remainimpossible to determine the bodycount. The only certainty in the mat-ter of casualties is that democracy inNor th Caro l ina was g rave lywounded on the streets of Wilm-ington on Nov. 10, 1898.

Wilmington Light Infantrywith rapid-fire gun, 1898.COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOTTHE NEWS & OBSERVER � FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 11The Ghosts of 1898

BANISHMENT AND COUP

Chapter 8 ‘WHITE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE’

Flush with victory in thestolen election, Alfred Waddellunveiled the “White Declarationof Independence” on Nov. 9.Given that Wilmington’s politicsand economy were controlledby whites before and after theelection, the declaration’s sevenmain points suggest the widegap that existed between realityand rhetoric in the city that fall.

Here are excerpts from thedeclaration:

“First That the time haspassed for the intelligent citi-zens of the community owning90% of the property and payingtaxes in like proportion, to beruled by negroes.

“Second That we will nottolerate the action ofunscrupulous white men inaffiliating with the negroes sothat by means of their votesthey can dominate the intelli-gent and thrifty element in thecommunity, thus causing busi-ness to stagnate and progressto be out of the question.

“Third That the negro hasdemonstrated by antagonizingour interest in every way, andespecially by his ballot, that heis incapable of realizing that hisinterests are and should beidentical with those of thecommunity. …

“Fifth That we propose inthe future to give to white mena large part of the employmentheretofore given to negroes …

“Sixth We are prepared totreat the negroes with justiceand consideration in all matterswhich do not involve sacrifices ofthe interest of the intelligent andprogressive portion of the com-munity. But are equally preparednow and immediately to enforcewhat we know to be our rights.

“Seventh That we have been,in our desire for harmony andpeace, blinded both to our bestinterests and our rights. A climaxwas reached when the negropaper of this city published anarticle so vile and slanderousthat it would in most communi-ties have resulted in the lynchingof the editor. We deprecatelynching and yet there is nopunishment, provided by thecourts, adequate for this offense.We therefore owe it to the peo-ple of this community and of thiscity, as a protection against suchlicense in the future, that thepaper known as the “Record”cease to be published and thatits editor [Alexander Manly] bebanished from this community.“

Wilmington Light Infantry and Naval Reserves members escort captured blacks. Fusionist leaders were marched to the train station.COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

For days after the coup, hundredsof African-Americans who had fledthe white mobs huddled in theforested thickets around Wilmington.Many had escaped too quickly tobother with coats or blankets, andslept on the ground in the wet No-vember woods. “Bone-chilling driz-zling rain falls sadly from a leadensky,” Charles Francis Bourke of Col-lier’s Weekly wrote from the scene.“Yet in the swamps and woods, in-nocent hundreds of terrified men,women and children wander about,fearful of the vengeance of whites,fearful of death, without money, food,[or] sufficient clothes.” Childrenwhimpered in the cold, their parentsreluctant to light fires for fear thatthe mobs would find them. “In theblackness of the pines,” Bourke ob-served, “I heard a child crying and ahoarse voice crooning softly a mourn-ful song, the words of which fell intomy memory with the air: ‘When de

battle over we kin wear a crown in thenew Je-ru-sulum.’ ”

But the work was not complete inthis new Jerusalem along the LowerCape Fear. Everyone seemed to un-derstand that a purge was in order.“Immediately after Waddell becamemayor,” H. Leon Prather writes, “theSecret Nine furnished him with alist of prominent Republicans, bothwhite and black, who must be ban-ished from Wilmington.”

The white mob gathered at thecity jail to watch soldiers with fixedbayonets march Fusionist leaders tothe train station. Those local citi-zens slated for banishment fit threerough categories: African-Americanleaders who insisted on citizenshipfor their people or who openly op-posed the white supremacy cam-paign; black businessmen whoseprosperity offended local whites; andwhite politicians who had, as theWilmington Morning Star wrote of

the soon-to-be-exiled United StatesCommissioner R.H. Bunting, a “po-litical record of cooperating with theNegro element.”

Silas Wright, the white Republicanmayor whom Waddell had deposed,fit the same “white niggers” categoryas Bunting and stood among the firstnames on the banishment list. GeorgeZ. French, another white Fusioniststalwart and a deputy sheriff, nar-rowly escaped lynching. A raging mobplaced a noose around his neck andstarted to string him up from a lightpole on North Front Street. FrankStedman, a member of the Commit-tee of Twenty-Five, saved the whitelaw enforcement officer’s life, but themob dragged French to the train sta-tion and told him to “leave North Car-olina and never return again uponperil of his life.”

Chief of Police John Melton, astaunch white Populist, found himselfaccosted, The News and Observer re-ported, by a mob that would havelynched him but for some soldiers whointervened. One local white Demo-crat recalled that he would “never for-get” how Melton looked when “one ofthe boys went upstairs and took a ropewith a noose in it and threw it at hisfeet, [and Melton] turned just as whiteas a sheet.” The mob dispatched himand two other white Fusionists on atrain to Washington, D.C., amid criesof “white nigger.”

The black men who were hustledto the train station at the point of abayonet included Salem J. Bell andRobert B. Pickens, who operated asuccessful fish and oyster business.

Ari Bryant, who owned a butchershop, was “looked upon by the Ne-groes as a high and mighty leader,”the Wilmington Morning Starmocked, by way of explainingBryant’s banishment. The most pros-perous exile may have been ThomasC. Miller, who had been born in slav-ery and yet had become a financialforce in Wilmington, dealing in land,loaning money and entering mort-gages with blacks and whites alike.One member of the detachment thattook Miller recalled that he was “oneNegro that we could not make keepquiet and he talked and talked untilEd McKoy’s gun went ‘click click’and when we told him to shut up, hekept a little quieter.”

Like most triumphant revolution-ary governments, having silenced itsprincipal opponents, the new ad-ministration declared its devotion topublic order. They fired all the blackand Fusionist city employees, start-ing with firefighters and police offi-cers. They declared that school com-mittees henceforth would becomposed “exclusively of white citi-zens,” even in black districts. Thewhite terror in the streets persisted,even though Waddell notified whites“who seem disposed to abuse the op-portunity of carrying arms which re-cent events afforded” that “no furtherturbulence or disorderly conduct willbe tolerated.” In an article he wrotefor Collier’s Magazine two weeks af-ter the riot, Wilmington’s new mayorexplained that “there was no intim-idation used in the establishment ofthe present city government.”

While the streets became a killing ground, the Com-

mittee of Twenty-Five launched a coup d’etat in the

corridors of City Hall, forcing the mayor, the board

of aldermen, and the police chief to resign at gunpoint.

By 4 p.m. that day, the committee had replaced

elected Fusionist city officials, both black and white,

with its hand-picked white appointees. The new mayor, fresh from lead-

ing the mobs in the streets, was Col. Alfred M. Waddell. In short, the

paramilitary force that wealthy conservatives had built to seize power

in North Carolina now ran the city of Wilmington.

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � THE NEWS & OBSERVER12 The Ghosts of 1898

THE AFTERMATH

Chapter 9

Despite Mayor Waddell’s assertion of “no intimidation,” mar-

tial celebrations seemed in order. On Nov. 11, a military

parade of five companies marched throughout Wilming-

ton, displaying two rapid-fire guns and the Hotchkiss gun

of the Naval Reserves. It was not merely a celebration of

white supremacy but an assurance that the new regime was

firmly in charge. The Morning Star called the parade “a formidable

demonstration of the resources for the maintenance of order.”

Three days later, the statewideDemocratic Party flung a huge streetparty in Raleigh after nightfall. Morethan 2,000 torches illuminated thecheering throngs, and 500 barrelsof burning tar along the parade routefilled the air with plumes of coloredsmoke, creating a carnival atmos-phere. The victorious Democrats as-sembled a booklet, “North Carolina’sGlorious Victory, 1898,” that trum-peted the white supremacy campaignand highlighted its leaders.

On Sunday, Nov. 13, the whiteChristians of Wilmington filed intotheir churches and heard celebra-tions of the slaughter. The Rev.J.W. Kramer declared that themobs in the streets had been “do-ing God’s service.” At First BaptistChurch, congregants heard the Rev.Calvin S. Blackwell compare thevictory of white supremacy to thetriumph of the Lord and his heav-enly hosts over Satan and his “blackrobed angels.” He dismissed thekillings as “a mere incident” and ob-served, without much originality,that “you cannot make an omeletwithout breaking a few eggs. Theprimary purpose was not to kill butto educate.”

In his own defense of mass mur-der, the Rev. Payton H. Hoge atFirst Presbyterian Church parsed apassage from Proverbs: “He thatruleth his spirit is better than hethat taketh a city.” The author ofProverbs plainly was endorsing self-control, as opposed to the taking ofcities, but Hoge had his own inter-pretation. “Since last we met inthese walls, we have taken a city,”crowed Hoge. “To God be thepraise.”

The public silence of those whoopposed the massacre said as muchas the celebrations of those whosupported it. Though besieged byvisitors and telegrams begging forhelp for black North Carolinians,Republican President WilliamMcKinley said nothing. The lack

of federal response sent the un-mistakable signal that conservativewhite Southerners ruled at theirown whim and the nation wouldno longer quibble about who killedwhom.

The following year, the bloodyhands that welcomed Red Shirt ter-ror in 1898 moved to take the ballotaway from black North Caroliniansforever. The first order of businessin 1899 was to disfranchise blacksand many poor whites, making cer-tain that an alliance of “low-bornscum and quondam slaves,” as aNews and Observer editorial put it,would never again threaten elitewhite rule.

The Democrats introduced a con-stitutional amendment that cre-

ated literacy tests for voting andplaced a poll tax on aspiring voters.The “grandfather clause” protectedilliterate whites for a time; any lin-eal descendant of a man eligibleto vote before 1867 — a white man— need not prove his literacy.Even so, the suffrage amendmenteventually removed voting rightsfrom nearly all blacks and manywhites. In 1896, 85.4 percent ofNorth Carolina’s electorate hadcast a ballot. By 1904, less than50 percent would vote.

It was not only in the South thatdemocratic horizons narrowed. Ina 1900 editorial about the dis-franchisement campaign, TheNew York Times stated: “North-ern men no longer denounce thesuppression of the Negro vote inthe South as it used to be de-nounced in Reconstruction days.The necessity of it under thesupreme law of self-preservationis candidly recognized.”

Its “necessity” seems less evidentto most of us today, but the Wilm-ington race riot of 1898 standsamong the most important eventsin the history of North Carolina andis a pivotal moment in the historyof the United States. It was nothingless than a counter-revolutionagainst interracial democracy, andit reverberated far beyond the state.Its aftermath witnessed the birthof the Jim Crow social order, theend of black voting rights and therise of a one-party political systemin the South that strangled the as-pirations of generations of blacksand whites.

This Democratic Party booklet trumpeted the white supremacycampaign and highlighted its leaders.

COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

A militia unit in Wilmington. Immediately after the election of 1898, military might showed that the new regime was firmly in charge.COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

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THE IMPACT OF 1898

Chapter 10

The new social order was fre-quently referred to as “Jim Crow,”after a stock minstrel show charac-ter whose antics demeaned African-Americans. The power of white skinin the Jim Crow South was bothstark and subtle. White supremacypermeated daily life so deeply thatmost white people could no moreponder it than fish might considerthe wetness of water.

The racial etiquette that emergedfrom the white supremacist violenceof 1898 was at once bizarre, arbitraryand nearly inviolable, inscribed inwhat W.E.B. Du Bois called “thecake of custom.” A white man whowould never shake hands with ablack man might refuse to permitanyone but a black man to shave hisface, cut his hair or give him a sham-poo. A white man might share his

bed, but never his table, with a blackwoman. Black breasts could sucklewhite babies, and black hands couldpat out biscuit dough for whitemouths, but black heads must nevertry on a hat in a department store,lest it be rendered unfit for sale towhite people. Black maids washedthe bodies of the aged and infirm, butthe starched white uniforms theywere compelled to wear could not belaundered in the same washing ma-chines that white people used.

The folkways of white supremacymade it permissible to call a favoredblack man “Uncle” or “Professor,” solong as he was not actually your un-cle or a real college professor. Thusthe titles contained a mixture ofmockery and affection. But a blackman must never hear the words “mis-ter” or “sir” from white lips. Blackwomen were “girls” until they wereold enough to be called “auntie.” Un-der no circumstances should theyever hear a white person of any ageaddress them as “Mrs.” or “Miss.”

The eternal racial views of almightyGod were well-known to white NorthCarolinians in the Age of Jim Crow.

Most white Christians came to be-lieve that white supremacy was thewill of God; the Lord himself hadplaced them above the “sons ofHam,” whose appointed purpose wasto be hewers of white people’s woodand drawers of white people’s water.

This was the genius of white su-premacy. Though it was a social or-der imposed and maintained byforce, its defenders made it seemnot only natural but even divinely or-dained. Any challenge to white su-premacy, North Carolina’s superin-t e n d e n t o f s c h o o l s t o l d a nauditorium filled with black collegestudents in 1927, would represent “aviolation of God’s eternal laws asfixed as the stars.”

This was the world shaped by themen who had overthrown the Fusiongovernment and ensured that whitesupremacy would reign in North Car-olina. In the years following the cam-paign, they crowed about it. “Wehave fought for this issue and againstthat policy,” Charles Aycock told sup-porters before he died in 1912, “buteverywhere and all the time we havefought for white supremacy.”

MEASURINGTHE EFFECTS OF

WHITE SUPREMACYIt is impossible to fully measure the effects of the white supremacy campaign on blacks, but these statistics begin to suggest them:

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

Wilmington population by race

1860 1880 1900 1910

BlackWhite

Wilmington becomes a white-majority city.

Percent of votes for governor

Percent of votes for president

39.8

97.460.2

40.899.957.8

1.4 0.1

2.6

Democrat OtherRepublican

1896 1900

North Carolina becomes aone-party state.

African-American education suffers.

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

Wilmington city school disbursements

Nov. 1898 Nov. 1899 Jan. 1903

BlackWhite

Source: 1898 Wilmington RaceRiot Commission Report

The News & Observer

WILMINGTON RACE RIOTTHE NEWS & OBSERVER � FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 13The Ghosts of 1898

A scene of the segregated South, taken in 1938 at the Halifax County Courthouse in northeastern North Carolina.PHOTO BY JOHN VACHON/FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

The Wilmington race riot did not invent segregation in

the South but instead cemented it. Right after the Civil

War, Southern whites had attempted to segregate pub-

lic life, often modeling their efforts on laws passed in

the North in the 1840s. Newly freed black Southern-

ers chose to build their own worlds of community and

aspiration, though they steadfastly resisted any segregation that

smacked of exclusion. In Fusion-era North Carolina, blacks and

whites had attempted, in their halting and imperfect way, to prac-

tice multiracial politics. But the white supremacy campaign slammed

the door on democracy and installed a new order.

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � THE NEWS & OBSERVER14 The Ghosts of 1898

THE MEMORY OF 1898

Chapter 11

For decades afterward, participation in the 1898 cam-

paign became the irreplaceable political credential; at

least five of the state’s next six governors were drawn

from its ranks. As late as 1920, Cameron Morrison

campaigned on his laurels as a Red Shirt Democrat

in the “party of white supremacy.”

And yet, even as white supremacytightened its grip on North Carolina,the memory of what that victory hadentailed — murders, banishments,stuffed ballot boxes — soon becamemurky. The central episode wasgradually cleansed from our state’shistory, from our textbooks and ourmemories. Eventually, Charles B.Aycock became known as the edu-cation governor.

However, the raw violence ofWilmington was not completely for-gotten. It could, of course, be seenevery day, everywhere, in the JimCrow world it had made. More than60 blacks were lynched in NorthCarolina between 1900 and 1943.Whites would often raise the specterof 1898 when mounting demandsfrom African-Americans for justicemade it necessary to remind them ofwhat could happen. “Sometimes,”historian Glenda Gilmore writes,“murder does its best work in mem-ory, after the fact.”

During World War II, blackprotests against racial discrimina-tion blossomed, especially amongblack men in uniform. Black soldiersstationed at Camp Davis, 30 milesnorth of Wilmington, overturnedbuses at Grace and Second streets inWilmington to protest segregationpolicies that limited black seating.Mayor Bruce Cameron pleaded withGov. J. Melville Broughton to “tellthem as long as you are governor thecolored people will have to behavethemselves.”

On July 11, 1943, Broughtonmounted a podium beside the CapeFear River that Alfred Waddell hadpromised to clot with black bodies.In language evoking the inflamma-tory tirades of 1898 against blackspreying on white women, Broughtoncondemned “radical agitators” whohe claimed were seeking “to advancetheories and philosophies which ifcarried to their logical conclusionwould result only in a mongrel race.”Then he cut to the chase: “Forty-five years ago, blood flowed freely inthe streets of this city.” It was hardto escape the conclusion that if the

“radical agitators” persisted, it couldhappen again.

Broughton was not simply a pan-dering politician intent on main-taining law and order. He reflectedthe view of much of North Car-olina’s elite, who still understoodthe violence upon which their worldrested.

During the war, Josephus Daniels’sons, Jonathan and Frank Daniels, of-ten conferred about race relations inNorth Carolina. Jonathan workedas an assistant to President FranklinRoosevelt on race relations. Alarmedat “the rising insistence of Negroeson their rights,” Jonathan favoredsmall concessions in order to main-tain white domination. “We thoughtwe had to get a little justice [forblacks] just to keep them in line,’’ hesaid later.

Frank Daniels, who stayed inRaleigh to publish The News andObserver, took a harder stance. IfAfrican-Americans continue to “keepon insisting for more privileges,” hewrote, “a worse condition is going toexist in North Carolina before verylong than the period from 1895 to1902, because white people just

aren’t going to stand for it.” If blackscontinued to press for “equality,”Daniels insisted, “white people aregoing to rise in arms and eliminatethem from the national picture.” Inthe end, Daniels warned, continuedcivil rights activism would “meanthat all of [the blacks] that can readand write are going to be eliminatedin the Hitler style.”

Despite several riots and persistentblack protests across the state, thebloodbath some predicted did notoccur. Newly committed to Amer-ica’s image as a beacon of democ-racy, the federal government, thenational Democratic Party and manynewspapers, including The Newsand Observer, began to actively op-pose white terror after the war.

Lynching was no longer a viablepolitical option, though it contin-ued to happen occasionally. When ablack man in Jackson, N.C., mirac-ulously escaped the clutches of alynch mob in 1947, Gov. R. GreggCherry attempted to prosecutemembers of the mob, though hefailed. When the Klan committeddozens of kidnappings, whippingsand shootings in Eastern North Car-olina in the early 1950s, 60 Klans-men were indicted. During the1960s, white terrorism persistedbut rarely won public applause.

And yet from the very first hintsof the modern black freedom strug-g le , the memory o f v io lencehaunted Wilmington. HubertEaton, an African-American physi-cian who pressed for integrationin Wilmington for many years, re-calls a 1951 school board meetingin which he was rebuffed by theboard’s attorney, who alluded tothe violence of 1898 “as an effort tointimidate — to warn that it couldhappen again.”

In 1971, when the upheavals overschool integration tore throughWilmington, a white man at aRights of White People rally inHugh MacRae Park told the Wilm-ington Morning Star: “What weneed in this town are some deadagitators. They should be shot andleft in the streets as a reminder forthree days and then bury them. I’vegot my gun.”

When Wilmington’s streetsraged with violence in early 1971,one black woman recalled, herschoolteachers warned her aboutwhat had happened at the turn ofthe century. “Those old experi-enced teachers,” she told an inter-viewer, “… talked in hush-hushtones about 1898.” But the ghostsalong the river persisted in theirwhispering, and that is what

echoed in our church in 1971 whenan African-American woman toldmy father, the Rev. Vernon C.Tyson, ‘They say that river wasfull of black bodies.’ ”

It is no wonder that the furiousconflict that marked the black free-dom movement in Wilmington in1971 brought back memories ofbodies drifting in the current of theCape Fear. Wilmington’s African-Americans realized that the legacyof the racial massacre still hauntedthe city. And this is only a little lesstrue today. Far beyond North Car-olina and 1898, the tragic eventsthat transpired in Wilmington forceus to contemplate the meaning ofAmerica’s racial past and its hold onthe living.

From our vantage point more thana century later, we can see that thewhite supremacy campaigns of the1890s and early 1900s injected a vi-cious racial ideology into the heartof American political culture. Ourseparate and unequal lives attest toits persistence.

If 1898 has saddled us with itslegacy, it also suggests how we mightovercome it. Its central lesson isthis: Human beings make history.The mistakes that North Caroliniansmade in 1898 can be mended if wechoose.

A Rights of White People meeting at Hugh MacRae Park in Wilmington, 1971. ‘What we need in thistown are some dead agitators. They should be shot and left in the streets …,’ a white man said.

PHOTO BY ANDY HOWELL/WILMINGTON STAR-NEWS

After a violent demonstrationby black soldiers in Wilmington

during World War II, Gov. J.Melville Broughton made a

speech invoking the 1898 riots.NEWS & OBSERVER FILE PHOTO

WILMINGTON RACE RIOTTHE NEWS & OBSERVER � FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 15The Ghosts of 1898

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Modern Wilmington has risen on the banks of the Cape Fear River. PAUL STEPHEN/WILMINGTON STAR-NEWS

BUILDING FROM THE PAST

Epilogue

What I do know is that in order to changethe past, we must understand and confront it.I first heard about the Wilmington race riot of1898 in 1971, soon after I entered Roland-Grise Junior High School in Wilmington. Some

friends and I were playing baseball in HughMacRae Park. As day dimmed toward dusk,we huddled in a dugout to smoke cigarettesand discuss the mysteries that seventh-gradersponder. As we chattered away in the dark,we began to hear engines racing and car doorsslamming. At first, we assumed that it was onlythe stirrings of a Little League game. Butwhen we peered out of the dugout, hundredsof white men and a few women had gatheredon the baseball diamond, many brandishing ri-fles and shotguns and others waving U.S. andConfederate flags. Several held a banner thatproclaimed the name of their organization:The Rights of White People.

Their leader, Sgt. Leroy Gibson, walked upto the makeshift microphone and began bel-lowing about how the “niggers” and “niggerlovers” had all the rights and white working

people had none. “The niggers keep talkingabout how Waddell said in 1898 they weregonna fill up the river with carcasses,” he said.“I don’t know if they did or not. But if this in-tegration and rioting business doesn’t stop,we’re going to clog that river with dead nig-gers this time, and I mean it.”

What I saw that day was hatred. What Ihave seen too often since then is the neglectof public schools and civic responsibilities.What I learned in the years that followed wasthat the venom and the apathy were an in-heritance, passed down through the genera-tions from days of slavery and the riot of 1898.It was only much later that I learned that thissad epic in our state’s and nation’s historyharbors stories of hope. In their imperfectway, the losers of 1898 — the leaders of theFusion movement who tried to practice in-

terracial politics and create strong public in-stitutions — offer examples that we can learnfrom. We have made great strides since 1898,but the effort to separate people into “us” and“them” continues.

A new Fusion movement, one rooted inhope and generosity, and encompassing notonly blacks and whites but new immigrants tothe state, could still redeem the best dreamsthat have made us. We look to Wilmington in1898, then, not to wring our hands in a fruit-less nostalgia of pain, but to redeem a demo-cratic promise. And so we hold fast to whatCharles Chesnutt, an African-American fromNorth Carolina and one of our great writers,called “the shining thread of hope,” which per-mitted him, over a century ago, to close hisown story of the Wilmington catastrophe:“There’s time enough, but none to spare.”

As a historian, I find it easier to

understand what happened in

the past than to draw easy

lessons for the future. We can-

not go back and change the

history and yet, as William

Faulkner observed, “The past is never

dead. It’s not even past.”

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WILMINGTON RACE RIOT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 � THE NEWS & OBSERVER16 The Ghosts of 1898

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION

The future

OUR 1898 TEAM

Editor: J. Peder Zane,pzane@newsobserver.comDesign: Teresa KriegsmanCopy Editor: Bill DuPrePhoto Editor: Robert MillerGraphics: Judson DrennanResearch: Brooke CainProject Directors: Steve Riley,News & Observer; GlennBurkins, Charlotte Observer

WHAT WE TOLD THE CHILDREN: TEXTBOOKS SINCE 1907

In May, the 13 members of the1898 Wilmington Race Riot Com-mission offered recommendations to“repair the wrong” done 108 yearsago. Many of the recommendationswould require action by the GeneralAssembly, which returns to Raleighin January.

The text of the commission’s rec-ommendations:

EMPOWERMENT: Acknowledging thatthe democratic process failed in Wilm-ington, resulting in persistent, unfa-vorable treatment especially to theAfrican American community, gov-ernment leadership at all levels willpursue actions that repair the wrong.

1. Acknowledge that the violenceof 1898 was a conspiracy of a whiteelite that used intimidation and forceto replace a duly elected local gov-ernment; that people lost their lives,livelihoods, and were banished fromtheir homes without due process ofthe law, and governments at all lev-els failed to protect citizens.

2. Establish a Restructuring andDevelopment Authority including lo-cal leadership to supervise imple-mentation of a strategic vision fundedthrough an endowment, supported byfederal, state and local governments,as well as media and businesses, es-pecially those which benefited fromthe consequences of 1898.

3. Support amendment of the fed-eral Voting Rights Act to add NewHanover County.

4. Create a study commission toexamine the broader impact of slav-ery, Jim Crow and discriminationon the lives of African Americans.

ECONOMIC REDEVELOPMENT: Rec-ognizing the long-term economic dis-advantages created by banishment,loss of civil service positions and in-timidation, funding from all sourceswill be directed by the Restructuringand Development Authority to im-prove economic development op-portunities.

5. Support judicial redress to com-pensate heirs of victims who canprove loss and relationship to victimsvia intestacy statutes.

6. Provide incentives for businessdevelopment of areas impacted bythe Wilmington race riot of 1898(e.g., establish enterprise zone;create small business incubator withtax incentives to attract minority-owned businesses).

7. Increase minority home owner-ship in impacted areas (e.g., use em-inent domain to acquire vacant com-mercial properties in Brooklyn and

Southside; sell properties to low-income residents of those sectionswith guaranteed mortgages).

EDUCATION: Educational informa-tion about the events of 1898 will bemade available to all ages and re-gions using print, audio-visual media,and the worldwide web.

8. Maintain and update the final re-port of the Wilmington Race RiotCommission with the N.C. Office ofArchives and History; distribute thepublished report to appropriate local,state and national repositories, andto individuals who contributed to-ward the research and developmentof a more complete record.

9. Incorporate the 1898 events intoDepartment of Public Instruction cur-riculum learning expectations; de-velop appropriate grade-level cur-riculum materials; and provide teacherworkshops for effectively integratingthe materials into instruction.

10. Newspapers (News and Ob-server, The Charlotte Observer,The Wilmington Star, The Wash-ington Post, etc.) should acknowl-edge the role of media in the eventsof 1898 and work with the NorthCarolina black press association toprepare a summary of the commis-s ion repor t f o r d i s t r ibu t ionstatewide. The commission callsupon said papers to study the effectsof 1898 and impact of Jim Crow onthe state’s black press and to endowscholarships at the state’s publicuniversities.

11. Fund development for a docu-mentary to be aired nationally, re-gionally and locally. The documen-tary should be suitable for inclusionin school curriculum materials.

12. Increase support for tutoring andmentoring programs in New HanoverCounty, targeting at-risk youth.

COMMEMORATION: Recognition ofthe documented events of 1898 willbe conspicuously displayed and madeavailable in prominent public loca-tions.

13. Fund establishment of an 1898exhibit at the Cape Fear Museumand creation of a traveling exhibit de-signed by the museum for usestatewide.

14. Provide additional funding forthe New Hanover County Public Li-brary to make resources availablerelative to 1898 and its impact.

15. Erect plaques, markers and/ormonuments to identify key partici-pants and locations of 1898 eventsstatewide and in Wilmington.

In the years after 1898, the state of North Carolina told the storyof the white supremacy campaign to its children in a variety of ways.The earliest textbooks I have found, published in 1901, 1903 and1906, ignored these events. The history text my son uses at hisChapel Hill middle school, “North Carolina: A Proud State in OurNation” by W.S. Powell, is equally silent — though other contempo-rary textbooks mention the riot in detail. What follows is a sample ofthe state’s official history:

1907 — “Young People’s History of North Carolina” by DanielHarvey Hill refers to the election of Daniel Russell, the Fusionistgovernor, and then notes that “in the second year of Governor Rus-sell’s term, the Democrats elected a majority in the Legislature andthe State returned in part to Democratic control.”

1916 — “A Child’s History of North Carolina” by W.C. Alleninstructs that the Fusion legislature “put the city largely under ne-gro rule. … The government of the city was badly carried on, andlawlessness prevailed.” The account says that blacks fired on whites,and whites returned the fire, killing several. “After the riot was overthe incompetent negro and white officers of the city were forced toresign, one by one, and competent white men chosen in their places… a conservative board of aldermen [was] installed, negro policemendischarged ... Thus the revolution was at an end. Since that timeWilmington has greatly prospered.”

1933 — “The Story of North Carolina” by Alex Mathews with Wal-ter Clinton Jackson teaches: “There were many Negro office-holders inthe eastern part of the state, some of whom were poorly fitted for theirtasks. This naturally aroused ill feeling between the races.”

1940 — “North Carolina for Boys and Girls” by Sarah WilliamAshe and Orina Kidd Garber (1940) says that under the Fusiongovernment “negroes could hold office. The days of the Carpetbag-gers seemed about to return. But the people of North Carolina re-membered those terrible days too well to allow them to return.”

1958 — “North Carolina History” by Daniel Jay Whitener states:“Negroes who came to the rallies saw the ‘Red Shirts’ and silentlyslipped away. The Negro by nature was friendly and eager to avoidtrouble … the Negroes were frightened and on election day manystayed at home. The careful planning and leadership of Simmonshelped the Democrats. White supremacy was the issue. … A few dayslater a bad race riot took place in Wilmington. Negroes were killed andboth Negroes and white men were wounded. Many Negroes fled fromthe town. The revolution of 1898 restored ‘white supremacy.’ ”

1978 — “Carolina Quest” by Thomas C. Parramore says: “Twodays after the election a force of six hundred whites gathered atWilmington and ushered in the new era by wrecking and burning theprinting office … In the rioting that followed, ten blacks were re-ported killed and many others fled the city, including black city offi-cials. A number of blacks were jailed for ‘starting a riot’ and a newwhite administration took over Wilmington’s government.”

1987 — “North Carolina: The Story of a Special Kind of Place”by William S. Powell reports: “In Wilmington, on the night of theelection, armed white men appeared on the street. They were deter-mined to end ‘Negro rule’ in the city promptly. On Nov. 9 and 10there was a bloody riot in which ten or more blacks were killed, theoffice of Alex Manly’s black newspaper was burned, and many blacksfled. Republican rule in Wilmington came to an immediate end whenSilas Wright, the black mayor, fled to New York. Three days later, theRaleigh News and Observer reported: ‘Negro rule is at an end inNorth Carolina forever.’ ”

2006 — “North Carolina: the History of an American State” byKenneth Townsend teaches: “At no time did blacks ever enjoy repre-sentation equal to their numbers nor did ‘Negro rule’ ever exist inNorth Carolina. Nevertheless, the Democrats used the race issue tofrighten voters and regain power. … Riding horses, wearing red shirts,and carrying guns … Democratic ruffians broke up Fusionist politicalrallies, disrupted black church meetings, whipped outspoken blacks,and drove blacks from the polls when they tried to register.”

TIMOTHY B. TYSON

SOURCES

As I wrote this account, I reliedheavily on the “1898 WilmingtonRace Riot Report,” whose princi-pal researcher and author isLeRae S. Umfleet. This report isa groundbreaking compilation,including a full narrative of theevents in their historical contextand informative appendices.

In addition to a variety ofarchival and newspapersources, I relied upon two booksthat should interest generalreaders. H. Leon Prather’s book,“We Have Taken A City: TheWilmington Racial Massacreand Coup of 1898” (1984), isprobably our best account ofthe tragedy. A short version ofPrather’s book appears in“Democracy Betrayed: TheWilmington Race Riot of 1898and Its Legacy” (1998), ananthology of articles I editedwith historian David Cecelski.

I also drew upon scholarlyworks, especially “The Negroand Fusion Politics in NorthCarolina, 1894-1901” by HelenEdmonds (1951), which puts therace riot in a wide context, and“Gender and Jim Crow: Womenand the Politics of WhiteSupremacy in North Carolina,1896-1920” by Glenda Eliza-beth Gilmore (1996).

“Race and Politics in NorthCarolina, 1872-1901” by EricAnderson (1981) furnishes agood overview of the politics ofthe period. “Maverick Republi-can in the Old North State: APolitical Biography of DanielRussell” by Jeffrey J. Crow andRobert Durden (1977) providessimilar context.

I frequently consulted “TheHistory of A Southern State:North Carolina” by Hugh T.Lefler and Albert R. Newsome(1954); “White Violence andBlack Response: From Recon-struction to Montgomery” byHerbert Shapiro (1988); “BlackWilmington and the North Car-olina Way” by John L. Godwin(2000) and “North CarolinaThrough Four Centuries” byWilliam S. Powell (1989).

TIMOTHY B. TYSON