January 17, 2018 • 42 mins
In 1898, a mob of armed white men enacted a violent plan against Wilmington, North Carolina’s black community. It was the only known successful coup d’état in U.S. history; the white mob overthrew the duly elected government of Wilmington.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are returning to the story of the Wilmington's que of
(00:21):
and Part one of this episode, which aired on Monday,
had a lot of the social and political framework for this.
And while the basic chronology of the election in Wilmington's
and what happened afterwards like that will make sense without
Part one, here's a lot of context in part one,
and we're also going to be referring back to things
(00:41):
that we talked about in part one, so much better
to listen to that one if you have not already.
In eighteen ninety eight, Wilmington's, North Carolina was the state's
largest city, with a population of about twenty thousand. It
was also majority black, with a sizeable black working class
us and a significant black middle class, with numerous black
(01:03):
owned businesses as well, and more than of the city's
restaurants were owned and run by black residents, along with
virtually all of the barbershops. The city also had an
all black Board of health, to black fire departments, and
multiple black police officers, and although they weren't nearly as
well funded as the schools for white students, so there
were still some disparities there. It's schools for black students
(01:26):
were really well respected within the community thanks to Wilmington's
busy sport jobs were plentiful, and all this together made
Wilmington's an attractive place for black residents to live. It
became a really popular destination for people immigrating from elsewhere
in the state, as well as from South Carolina. Numerous
accounts described race relations in Wilmington's in the years leading
(01:49):
up to the riot that we're talking about as quote,
pretty good as long as white Democrats stayed in charge
of the local government. It would be more accurate to
say that there wasn't much racist islands in Wilmington's as
long as Democrats stayed in charge. As we discussed in
Part one, Democrats in the state capital of Raleigh actively
kept Republicans and black citizens out of office in Wilmington's,
(02:12):
so race relations may have been good by the definition
of not violent, but Wilmington's didn't have home rule. The
party in charge actively opposed the civil rights to the
majority of its citizens, and those citizens had no way
to remove that party from office. Yeah, the whole concept
of race relations, it's kind of fraught because a lot
(02:34):
of people use it to mean like our our minorities
keeping quiet, like how much how much uh, how much
of a fuss is being raised like and that while
there wasn't a bunch of fuss, they're also was not
self government by Wilmington's city in terms of its city government.
(02:55):
All of this, with the so called good race relations
relations shifted after the March municipal election that we talked
about in our previous episode, which had been pretty contentious
and then led to three competing boards of aldermen, all
claiming to be the real one. And and then after
that the race relations were no longer good. In fact,
(03:15):
white Democrats were planning a conspiracy to overthrow the government
that was elected on March. While this campaign was focused
on removing Wilmington's duly elected government and replacing it, it
also had a secondary goal, which is to make an
example of Wilmington's in order to keep the rest of
North Carolina's black population in line. It is not clear
(03:40):
exactly when the plan to do this was hatched. Later on,
Thomas W. Clawson, who was editor of the Wilmington's Messenger
and was involved with the Coupe said that white citizens
of Wilmington's had started formulating a plan six to twelve
months ahead of the election. A group of nine white
citizens of the ringleaders and became known as the Secret Nine.
(04:03):
They were J. Allen Taylor, Hardy Fennel, W. A. Johnson, LB. Sasser,
William Gilchrist, Pierre B. Manning, Edward S. Lathrop, Walter Parsley,
Hugh McCrae also involved in the conspiracy, where the Democratic
Party Campaign Committee of New Hanover County, the Wilmington's Chamber
(04:25):
of Commerce, and another informal group known as the Group
of Six. A lot of people involved. One of the
most visible players in the conspiracy was Alfred Moore Waddell,
who we quoted at the end of part one. What
l had been a Confederate officer during the Civil War,
and he had served in Congress from eighteen seventy one
(04:45):
to eighteen seventy nine. After being defeated in the eighteen
seventy eight election, he had remained active in the Democratic
Party and he spent some time out of the state
campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates He returned to Wilmington
in eighteen eighty three, ostensibly to practice law, but by
eight ninety eight he was unemployed. So during this time
(05:06):
he really devoted his energies to the party. He became
a fiery and compelling speaker who had a knack for
stoking racist fears among whites. The Wilmington's two of eight
was part of the coordinated statewide white supremacy campaign that
we talked about in Part one. Democrats used that campaign
(05:26):
to set the stage for what they were planning in Wilmington's,
aggravating white citizens racial animosity as much as possible and
Wilmington's specifically. As part of this campaign, members of the
state's Democratic leadership visited the city and they started establishing
white supremacy clubs, encouraging all white men to publicly announced
their membership in these clubs. The clubs operated under the
(05:49):
banner of the White Government Union. The White Government Union
also organized a racist labor movement in the city. This
labor movement stated purpose was to replace blackly were within
the city with white labor, and this project was endorsed
by Wilmington's Chamber of Commerce. Another aspect of the White
supremacy campaign was essentially a show of force. The Red
(06:12):
Shirts were the Democratic Party's intimidation and terrorism wing. They
marched in parades all across the state, often leading groups
of attractive white women to symbolically show that their role
was to protect white feminine virtue. They also served as
an honor guard for political leaders when they held rallies
and gave speeches. But it wasn't just marching and guarding.
(06:34):
The Red Shirts also terrorized black citizens, fired weapons into
people's homes, and forcibly broke up meetings and rallies of
Republican and Fusionist politicians. They threatened black voters away from polls,
and they threatened fusion political leaders to try to intimidate
them out of office. At one point, they even robbed
the train of Republican Governor Daniel L. Russell. The Red
(06:58):
Shirts were active in other states as well, and they
had a major presence in Wilmington's And of course, anytime
a black person reacted angrily or violently to being harassed, threatened,
or otherwise abused by the Red Shirts or anyone else
in Wilmington's white supremacists used that as evidence that Negro
rule of the city needed to be put down. Meanwhile,
(07:20):
in most quarters of the white community, the Red Shirts
were praised for their ongoing violent harassment of black people
and their white allies. I want to clarify that Negro
rule here, like they made it sound like black people
had just taken over the government totally. Black people were
still a significant minority in the government. Like that. The
(07:42):
government of Wilmington's did not reflect the racial demographics of
the city itself, which was majority black, like the city
government was still majority white. But they had this whole
scare lore campaign of like negro rule and how awful
it was the ultimate focus for the campaign. And Wilmington's
was Election Day of eight, so there were only a
(08:05):
few races that were being voted on that day. They
were all statewide and national elections. Wilmington's municipal elections, like
said last time, they were to be held every two years.
That wasn't for another year, but Democrats were not willing
to wait until the municipal election to retake control of
the city. So this election, although it was not from
(08:27):
municipal offices, was the opportunity they took to do that.
By Election Day of eight, pretty much all of Wilmington's
white citizens knew what was coming. The Democratic Party's white
supremacy campaign was extremely public that had been going on
for months, and although it wasn't nearly so overt, word
(08:47):
of the coup had been spreading among white citizenry as well.
Black and white residents alike expected some kind of violence.
Hoping that sober men would have cooler heads, the Board
of Aldermen ordered the city's loons to close around election day.
Rumors also started to spread that Wilmington's black population was
planning some kind of a violent resistance on election day.
(09:10):
The Democratic campaign committee hired a black detective to investigate
these rumors. He concluded that there was nothing to them
but to Pinkerton agents, so that they had found servants
who were planning to burn down their employers houses if
the Democrats won. Rumors that the black community might turn
to arson may have stemmed from the fact that they
didn't really have access to firearms to use for their
(09:33):
own defense. Black residents in Wilmington's who did try to
buy a gun ahead of election day had little success.
The only people in town who sold guns were white,
and since they already knew what was happening, they refused
to sell guns to black people, so the only weapons
in the hands of Wilmington's black residents were a few
old muskets and pistols, mostly belonging to men who had
(09:55):
served in the Civil War after the Union started accepting
black soldiers back in eighteen sixty three. Conversely, white Democrats
were definitely armed, They were definitely planning for violence, so
they were raising a lot of fears that the black
community was set doing something that they definitely were doing.
Aside from people's personal firearms and other weapons, the white
(10:18):
citizenry had access to the Wilmington's Light Infantry armory. City
business leaders had also spent twelve hundred dollars on a
Gatling gun. Armed patrols were organized for every black of
the city on election day, with the Red Shirts and
others being stationed outside of polling places to warn black
voters away. The Red Shirts also encouraged and quotation marks
(10:39):
white voters who were ambivalent to get at them vote.
They basically come to your house and be like, dude,
your voting now, I have a gun if you don't
really want to do it. White Democrats also made real
and explicit calls for violence. The night before the election,
Alfred Moore Wadell spoke at a rally and proclaim aimed quote,
(11:01):
you are Anglo Saxons. You are armed and prepared, and
you will do your duty. Be ready at a moment's notice.
Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the
Negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls. And
if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks.
We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it
with guns. Within the Black community, advice on what to
(11:26):
do in the face of all this was really mixed.
Some leaders and clergy advised people to stay home for
the sake of keeping the peace, while others insisted that
they take a stand by exercising their right to vote.
Women in North Carolina could not vote, and a coalition
of black women published a piece in the Wilmington Daily
Record urging black men to get out to the polls
and vote. So we're gonna talk about election day after
(11:49):
we first pause, have a breather and a little sponsor break.
Election day was November eight, d eight, and the day
itself came with plenty of rumors and fear, but not
a lot of actual violence. In the final count Democrats
gained more than eleven thousand votes over the previous election.
(12:13):
Some of this game came from low turnout among black
voters due to intimidation and threats, including employers who threatened
to fire any black person who voted, but some of
it was due to fraud. For example, the first Wards
fifth precinct had three hundred forty three total registered voters,
three hundred thirteen of whom were black, but six hundred
(12:35):
and seven votes were counted four hundred and fifty six
for Democrats. This was in a precinct that, according to
registrar Abram Fulton, there were no black Democrats. The count
in this precinct was also interrupted when a crowd of
men described as strangers showed up and put out all
the lights. Yeah once uh once the people who have
(12:57):
been counting votes got back inside, one of whom went
home because he was terrified. Uh Like, obviously the votes
had been tampered with. So like the there were way
more votes cast than people in the precinct, and specifically
way more votes for Democrats. Then there were black registered
voters who were overwhelmingly Republican. So this kind of stuff
(13:18):
that's going on On November nine, The Wilmington's Messenger published
the election returns that morning, along with a notice that
ran under the heading Attention White Men. This notice summoned
white men to the Wilmington's court House. At eleven o'clock
that morning, a large group gathered there as instructed, and
Alfred Waddell read a document known as the White Declaration
(13:41):
of Independence. Sometimes you will see it as the White
Men's or the white Man's Declaration of Independence. This document
had been drafted by the Secret Nine as a component
of their coup. This White Declaration of Independence began quote
believing that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a
government to be care ead on by an enlightened people,
(14:02):
believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of
an ignorant population of African origin, and believing that those
men of the state of North Carolina who joined informing
the Union did not contemplate for their descendants subjection to
an inferior race. We, the undersigned citizens of the City
of Wilmington's and County of New Hanover, do hereby declare
(14:24):
that we will no longer be ruled, and we will
never again be ruled by men of African origin. This
document went on to outline a series of points boiling
down to the idea that white citizens should not and
would not be subject to a black government. This last
point specifically condemned Alex Manly's editorial that had run in
the Wilmington's Daily Record that was printed earlier that year.
(14:46):
We talked about that a lot. In part one. It
said that the paper itself should cease operations, and that
Manly should be banished, and that the press should be
packed up and shipped away. What l and the rest
of the men then established committee known as the Committee
of twenty five to make sure these points were carried out.
Their first step was to summon thirty two of Wilmington's
(15:08):
most prominent black citizens, known as the Committee of Colored
Citizens or c c C. They instructed the c c
C to appear at the courthouse at six pm that night.
When the c c C arrived that evening, Wodel read
them the White Declaration of Independence and told them that
they had until seven thirty the following morning to go
(15:28):
to Alex Manly, shut down his newspaper and expel him
from the city. The c c C retired to a
nearby barbershop that one of them owned to figure out
what to do. They ultimately wrote up a reply saying
that they did not condone Manly's editorial, calling it obnoxious.
This wasn't a new sentiment within the black community. After
(15:49):
that our editorial was published. Multiple black leaders and clergy
had told Manly that he should retract it, and they
had criticized it as deliberately inflammatory. The c cc response
went on to say that it wasn't within their authority
to do what was being asked of them, but that
in the interest of the piece, they would try armand
(16:10):
Scott was tasked with hand delivering the CCC's response back
to what l But as he was on his way
to make his hand delivery, he ran into a large
group of armed white men who were blocking his path,
so he took it to the post office to be
delivered instead. Also, there's some some discrepancy about what this
letter actually said. Scott stated later on that the letter
(16:32):
that was eventually reprinted in the papers, which is what
we just summarized, was not what he was delivering. By
the time the c c C met Alex Manley had
already left town due to the threats on his life,
so Scott said that this letter had made it clear
that Many was already gone, and that the record hadn't
been published for two weeks. Other members of the c
(16:54):
c C cross paths with George Rowntree that evening, who
was another member of the Committee of twenty five. They
let him know that Manly was gone and that the
press was shut down. But Roundtree did not go to
the Committee of twenty five meeting the next morning, and
neither did anyone else who had heard that Manly had
already left town. So when Alfred Weddell had not gotten
(17:16):
a response from the c c C by seven thirty
the next morning, he assumed that they just weren't answering
his demands. He went to the Wilmington's Light Infantry Armory,
where he found a mob of about five hundred white
men already gathered there by eight fifteen. They were getting restless,
and when he told them that he had not gotten
a response from the Committee of Colored Citizens, they started
(17:39):
discussing who should lead a march to the offices of
the Wilmington's Daily News. The Wilmington's Light Infantry was on
hand that day, but officers couldn't lead a civilian mob
to a business in order to burn it down. They
could only get involved through direct order from the governor
or if the situation became violent. Eventually, Waddell offered to
(18:01):
take the lead. By then the mob had swelled to
between a thousand and men. They marched to Love and
Charity Hall and they pounded on the door, but since
Manly had already left, they didn't get an answer, so
the mob broke down the door. They destroyed as much
of the office as they could. They shattered the office's
kerosene lamps, and then they set it on fire. Although
(18:26):
some people did try to extinguish blowing cinders that spread
from Love and Charity Hall to neighboring buildings. The fire
chief kept the fire department from fighting the fire until
it was clear that the building was damaged beyond all repair.
Once an all black fire crew was finally allowed to
approach the fire, they had to fight it while surrounded
(18:47):
by armed, angry white men who harassed and threatened them
the entire time. Meanwhile, Colonel Walker Taylor of the Wilmington
Light Infantry sent a telegram to the governor which read,
quote situation and here serious I hold military awaiting your
prompt orders. After the mob that had burned down Love
and Charity Hall returned to the armory, Alfred Waddell claimed
(19:10):
he dismissed them to go back to their homes. They
had done what they set out to do. However, he
made that claim as part of an article in which
he described the events that followed as having been carried
out with the utmost restraint, and this was of course
far from the truth. So after the after this mob
(19:34):
went back to the Infantry Armory, a small group of
armed black men started to gather not far away. Rumors
started to spread that they were planning some kind of
counter attack, so the white mob moved to intercept them.
This led to a brief standoff and at some point
it is really not clear by whom a shot was fired.
(19:54):
More shots followed, and then things really came to a
head when a white man named William Mayo was struck
with a life threatening injury, and this sparked a riot
that spread through Wilmington's, which we are going to talk
about in more detail after we first have a sponsor break.
(20:16):
So on November, after William Mayo had been shot, a
heavily armed white mob started moving through Wilmington's terrorizing and
murdering the black population. Word of what was happening spread
through the city and then beyond via telegraph. Other cities,
including those as far away as Atlanta and New Orleans,
(20:37):
started offering the aid of their own troops to Wilmington's
and to be clear, these troops were being offered to
assist the white mob, not to protect the black citizens.
When the governor replied to Colonel Taylor's telegram, his instructions
were to use Wilmington's Light Infantry troops to preserve the peace.
The city's riot alarm was sounded, which was a signal
(20:58):
to the Red Shirts and other parramiditary groups to mobilize.
All of these armed men moved in on the predominantly
black neighborhood of Brooklyn. In addition to the gatling gun
that we mentioned earlier, a second machine gun unit was
deployed by naval reserves. The mob that progressed through the
neighborhood of Brooklyn was made up of white civilians, the
(21:19):
Wilmington's Light Infantry, the Red Shirts, and others, and they
made violent, terrifying progress. The machine gun units aimed into
Black churches which had been rumored as secret hiding places
for armories, which they were not. Black women were strip
searched on the street, supposedly under suspicion of having been
carrying weapons. The civilian mob and military and paramilitary units
(21:43):
fired indiscriminately into homes, and they killed black citizens who resisted.
At one point, the Red Shirts started a man hunt
for Daniel Wright, who was accused of having fired the
shot that hit William Mayo. Right took up a position
in his attic and fired at the Red Shirts before
being captured, temporarily tied to a light post, and then
(22:03):
released and told to run while the white mobs shot
him repeatedly. They left him lying in the street, and
someone took him to the hospital. More than an hour later.
He died. The next day, the governor dispatched more troops
to Wilmington's that did not stop the violence, though these
troops had a lot of the same idea as the
Wilmington's Light Infantry in terms of how to keep the peace,
(22:26):
It's not by protecting the black population. Word of the
situation also made its way to Washington, d C. However,
President McKinley didn't dispatch federal troops because there wasn't an
official request from the governor. Later he would get multiple
letters from Wilmington's black residence asking for help, but he
did not intervene since the governor reported that the situation
(22:48):
was under control. As this mob moved through Wilmington's, many
of its black population fled. They took refuge and swamps
and a cemetery outside of town. At first, most of
the refugees were women and children, and men joined them
later as they were able to escape from the city.
Those who fled into the swamps mostly stayed there without food, shelter,
(23:09):
or warm clothing through the ninth of November tenth and eleventh.
Even though Wilmington's is a coastal city, this was not
a warm experience. It was cold and damp, and they
had nothing to eat and nowhere to take cover. Meanwhile,
Wilmington's white political and business leaders got to work on
their coup. De Eta. George Rowntree and W. H. Chadburne
(23:31):
were both a big part of this, although many other
men were involved as well. They encouraged the mayor, his staff,
the non Democrats on the board of Aldermen, and the
chief of police to resign Fusionist government. Leaders and their
supporters were forcibly run out of town, sometimes at gunpoint
or under threat of death. The Committee of twenty five
(23:54):
then went to city Hall to elect replacements for all
the people they had just ousted. They voted on them
to like maintain this this illusion that this was an
elected body, and their replacements for the Board of Aldermen
were an all white group of Democrats, who then elected
elected Alfred Morrawaddell as the mayor. The newly instituted city
(24:16):
government then put together a list of prominent black citizens
who should be run out of town, including the entirety
of the c c C. A few people were allowed
to stay if they quote knew their place, and some
were placed under arrest, reportedly for their own safety. The
final death toll of this riot isn't clear. The coroner
(24:36):
held fourteen inquests, all of which were ruled as having
died from gunshot wounds inflicted by parties. Unknown estimates are
as high as one hundred black citizens killed, with many
more injured. A few white men were injured, one critically
none were killed. Aside from those who were killed or wounded,
(24:57):
more than two thousand black citizens left Wilmington's in the
wake of the riot and que, prominent white Republicans left
as well, and soon the city had lost its black majority.
The Republican Party lost its support in both Wilmington's and
elsewhere in North Carolina, with its white members being branded
as race traders. The riot and coup affected Wilmington's black
(25:19):
community in a number of ways, in addition to the death's,
injuries and trauma. For the most part, black property owners
in Wilmington's were able to keep their property after the
riot and coup, but black business owners disproportionately lost their businesses.
In seven before the riot, there had been two hundred
sixteen black owned businesses and seven hundred eighty nine white
(25:43):
owned businesses in the Wilmington's city directory. In the nineteen
hundred directory, there were only one hundred sixty two black
owned businesses, a decrease of Meanwhile, the number of white
owned businesses dropped by only two percent. All so, Wilmington's
working class Black residents, who either chose to stay or
(26:04):
didn't have the means to go, were increasingly shuttled into
lower status and lower paying jobs. One of the refrains
of the white supremacy campaign that had been going on
throughout North Carolina had been returning jobs to white citizens
and these newly vacated jobs as as black citizens were
moved into less advantageous jobs. Newly vacated jobs were indeed
(26:29):
filled by white workers, but employers had been paying black
employees much less than they would typically pay a white person.
The pay did not increase when the race of the
workers changed. After the riot was over, the response among
the black community within an outside of Wilmington's was divided
about how to live in light of what had just happened.
(26:51):
In Wilmington's. Many church leaders took to the pulpit to
advise compliance and appeasement for the sake of just keeping
the peace outs I had the state. The incident provoked
outrage among black civic and political leaders. A number of
meetings and demonstrations protested what had happened and proposed ways
to try to prevent a future recurrence, but these efforts
(27:13):
were lampooned and criticized among white democratic presses, in some
cases turning into even more fuel for more racist propaganda.
It was clear to the black community that anything other
than total deference and appeasement was just going to be
met with more violence, so Ultimately, efforts at resistance and
the immediate aftermath of this riot fell apart. The riot
(27:35):
received favorable coverage in the white press overwhelmingly. I mean,
of course, there were there were detractors, but for the
most part this this was viewed as like a necessary
retaking of Wilmington's Robert Bunting, a federally appointed commissioner, reported
in Washington that he had been forcibly removed from office
and run out of the city. In response, the U. S.
(27:58):
Attorney General told the U. S Attorne me for the
Eastern District of North Carolina to investigate, and while the U. S.
Attorney said he would, he never did himming and hawing
about it until the federal government just dropped the issue.
The matter was closed in nineteen hundred with no indictments
or arrests. No one was ever prosecuted for their role
in the riot or the coup. After the coup, Wilmington's
(28:22):
new government rewrote the city charter again to legitimize their positions.
Then they all ran for re election in one with
the Republican Party offering no opposing candidates. The Wilmington's coup
and the white supremacy campaign leading up to it affected
politics throughout North Carolina. As the Democratic Party had hoped
(28:43):
after what happened in Wilmington's it wasn't necessary to do
the same thing elsewhere in the state. Democrats regained control
of the state's General Assembly. Afterward, North Carolina passed a
suffrage amendment to the constitution. This amendment required literacy tests
and poll taxes, but it included a grandfather clause, exempting
(29:04):
anyone descended from someone who was eligible to vote in
eighteen sixty seven. This meant that the new requirements applied
almost exclusively to black people who did not have the
right to vote in eighteen sixty seven. This law actually
remained in place until the Civil rights movement. Democrats and
the General Assembly also rolled back the Fusion government's most
(29:27):
progressive progressive election laws, and on March sixth, the General
Assembly ratified Quote an Act to Restore Good Government to
the Counties of North Carolina, which once again gave legislators
and Raleigh control of the local government of thirteen cities.
These cities were all either majority black or close to it. Together.
(29:47):
All of this once again solidified Democrats power in North
Carolina even beyond what it had been before. The success
of the Fusion Coalition. When Democrat Charles Acock, who had
actively participated in the white supremacy campaign, was elected governor
in nine hundred, the party had control of both houses
of the state legislature and the governorship. North Carolina essentially
(30:10):
had a one party government for decades afterward. After it
was all over, the riot was generally something that black
residents of North Carolina, especially in Wilmington's, heard about from parents, grandparents,
and peers. Two black writers also published works of historical
fiction about it, really in those early years afterwards. One
(30:31):
was nineteen hundreds Hanover or The Persecution of the Lowly
Story of the Wilmington Massacre, by David Bryan Fulton, who
was writing under the pseudonym Jack Thorne. The other was
Charles wood l That's a different Woodell. The other was
Charles wood l One The Marrow of Tradition. But the
riot mostly disappeared from white collective memory for decades. It
(30:54):
was not part of North Carolina history classes, and when
it did come up, it was mostly described as a
ace riot, and in some cases it was praised. That
started to change in with the publication of Philip Girard's
novel Cape Fear Rising. Yeah, I graduated from North Carolina
Public schools in this was not a thing I ever
(31:15):
heard about in a North Carolina classroom. Ever, It's also
not a thing that I heard about in college, although
I did not have like North Carolina history classes in college.
So in two thousand, not long after the centennial of
this riot, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted legislation to
create a commission to investigate It was followed similar investigations
(31:37):
into the Tulsa riot in the nineteen three Rosewood massacre,
both of which have been the subject of previous episodes.
The North Carolina Commission used the investigations into these incidents
as a model, so the commission's purpose was to both
develop a historical record of the incident and to determine
its impact on North Carolina's black population. The investigations findings
(31:59):
were really east in a more than four d page
report in two thousand and six, and the findings are
clear that it was an armed overthrow of a duly
elected municipal government, that it was an organized conspiracy and
not a spur of the moment act of violence, and
that quote involved in the conspiracy were men prominent in
the Democratic Party, former Confederate officers, former office holders, and
(32:23):
newspaper editors locally and statewide. Rallied by Josephus Daniels of
the Raleigh News and Observer. The investigation also noted the
role of Alex Manley's editorial that we talked about in
part one, which was responding to Rebecca Latimer Felton's speech,
but they pointed out that this coup would have taken
place even without that involvement. After all, the coup was
(32:46):
being planned six to twelve months before election day, which
was well before that editorial was ever published. The commission
also made connections between the eight ninety eight riot and
coup and later incidents of violence in Wilmington's in the
nineteen seventies. It framed this more recent violence as quote
directly related to unresolved conflicts of The commission also made
(33:09):
recommendations for empowerment, economic redevelopment, education, and commemoration. In two
thousand and six, the same year as the Commission released
its findings, the Raleigh News and Observer and the Charlotte
Observer each apologized for their role in the violence and
the coupe, and as part of this the two papers,
co published a twelve page special report on the riot,
(33:29):
which was distributed as a special section of both of them.
The North Carolina Democratic Party apologized a year later. The
General Assembly passed a resolution acknowledging the Act in two
thousand seven as well, which had been part of the
commission's recommendations. However, it took some effort to get that
acknowledgement through the General Assembly. A bill titled eighteen ninety
(33:53):
eight Wilmington's Race Riot Acknowledgement was filed in March of
two thousand seven and was ultimately blocked it least, according
to news reports, because Republican legislators wanted it to include
the fact that white Republican legislators had been working with
black citizens and had opposed the riot. Yeah, a lot
of the discussion and news media of this riot within
(34:15):
the last like five years has basically been to try
to to criticize the Democrats by current sitting Republican leaders, which,
as we've talked about on the podcast before, like it's
it's it's great that the Democratic Party apologized for this.
(34:36):
When it comes to your voting decisions, you have to
vote based on what the party is doing right now.
Not on what the party was doing a hundred years ago,
like political parties have totally We've talked about that before. Yeah,
we've talked about the way the platforms have shifted and
and in some ways they traded places on their positions, um,
(34:58):
which is important to remember, and I think sometimes that
gets excluded purposely to try to frame things in a
more positive light. Yeah. So, yeah, but that was a
lot of times that shift of platform gets kind of
oversimplified as like a light switch that got turned. But
like every political party in the country has been continually
(35:20):
revising it's it's platforms since they've existed. Back to wrapping
up this story. So after that whole thing when it
got derailed because apparently people wanted to talk about how
the Republicans helped, a Senate joint resolution acknowledging the events
was introduced on July thirty one of that year and
(35:43):
then ultimately ratified on August two. But this joint resolution
is a lot milder and its language than the original
bill was. It leaves out things from the original bill,
like the words white supremacy, as well as the earlier
bill's acknowledgement that it was quote a conspirat see of
a white elite that used intimidation and force. Also removed
(36:05):
from what eventually was ratified was quote government at all
levels failed to protect that citizens, which was replaced with
the much less UH firm quote government was unsuccessful in
protecting its citizens during that time. In more recent updates,
(36:25):
the state's Highway Historical Marker Committee approved a plaque that
will be installed in March of two thousand eighteen, so
in just a couple of months. UH. This plaque will
be placed at Market Street between Fourth Street and Fifth Street,
which is the site of the old Armory building and
in a busy part of Wilmington's downtown. There have been
slash our other markers and memorials, but that one is
(36:48):
the most recent one and also the one that clearly
frames that as having been a coup that involved burning
down this newspaper. To circle back around, so what the
party doing right now for just a second, we should
also note that a lot of the background stuff that
we talked about through these two episodes is still going on.
So race obviously is still used as a political wedge
(37:10):
in the country as a whole. In North Carolina, now
it's the Republican party that has turned to jerrymandering and
racially discriminatory voting laws to influence election outcomes. In North Carolina,
the Republican Party controlled both houses of the States General
Assembly and the governorship from until the end of twenty sixteen,
(37:31):
and during that time they passed a voter i d
law that the Fourth U. S. Circuit Court struck down
in saying it's ruled quote target African Americans with almost
surgical precision. Today, as in the day we are recording
this podcast, a panel of federal judges ruled that the
congressional district lines that the Republican controlled state legislature drew
(37:54):
in ten where jerrymandered to give them an unfair advantage,
calling the um quote motivated by invidious partisan intent. On
top of that, there continues to be a theme of
the state government and Raleigh over ruling municipal government decisions.
As one example, the now notorious House Bill Too that
(38:14):
made national headlines in was passed in an emergency session
that was convened specifically to prevent an anti discrimination ordinance
that protected transgender people's access to bathrooms, which was passed
by the Charlotte City Council from going into effect. This
is such a running theme in North Carolina politics still
that a sarcastic Raleigh knows best is a common refrain
(38:37):
in municipal politics. Do you have a little bit of
listener mail? Again, I'm crossing my fingers for lighter fair,
but I also don't want to act like, oh, we
shouldn't talk about dark things. But we've had a lot
of that. It's hard to even read some of the
quotes in this one, So I would love it if
we have lighter email. Yeah, yeah, I do have lighter email.
(39:00):
Is actually from Twitter. This was a great enough thing
that came in on Twitter that I was able to
keep up with it because it can be it can
be tricky when people tweet things at us too. Then
later on when we're back in the studio, like find
the tweet again. Uh. And this is from Johan on
Twitter and it is about our Unearthed when we talked
(39:20):
about um the collection of artifacts that was just stolen
from some scaffolding, and we had a whole conversation about
whether maybe it was an inside job, like did somebody
know that there were just these easily accessible artifacts that
could be taken out of the museum and Johan says,
as in a Norwegian and a history student at the
University of Bergen, I can sadly put your suspicions of
(39:43):
inside information in the Bergen heist to rest. The two
men arrested were known to police as petty criminals, and
the police described the heist as a crime of opportunity. Uh.
And then Johan very helpfully sent some sources is on this,
noting that they're in Norwegian, and then said, also of note,
(40:04):
the museum's alarms went off twice that night. The first
time the security company sent someone who decided, without entering
the building that it was probably the wind shaking the
scaffolding triggering the sensors. The second time they just disabled
it remotely. So uh, yeah, that's maybe not not the
best thing to do. I understand this impulse. I used
(40:27):
to live in a home that had a burglar alarm
that was I had some false positive incidents, so I
understand the impulse to be like, oh, that's probably just
probably just the cats knocked over the room again. But uh,
now that that's maybe not the best way to treat
with h to handle a burgler alarm going off at
(40:49):
the museum anyway, Thank you so much Johan for sending
us this further information. I definitely would not have found
that on my own because it was in Norwegian. So
it's always good to hear from somebody there on the scene.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast Where History podcast that house to
works dot com. And then we are on social media
(41:10):
at miss in History. That is where you will find
our Facebook, our Twitter, our Pinterest, our Instagram. You can
come to our website, which is missing history dot com,
where you will find show notes, uh, including in our
in our show notes for today's episode will be a
link to the entire commission report. That's many hundreds of
pages on this riot and que Uh. There's also a
(41:32):
circle searchable archive of all our past episodes. So you
can do all the and more at miss and history
dot com. And you can subscribe to our podcast on
Apple Podcasts, people Play, wherever else you might get podcasts
for more on this and thousands of other topics. House
(41:54):
to works dot com.
Welcome to steph you missed in history Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are returning to the story of the Wilmington's que of
(00:21):
and Part one of this episode, which aired on Monday,
had a lot of the social and political framework for this.
And while the basic chronology of the election in Wilmington's
and what happened afterwards like that will make sense without
Part one, here's a lot of context in part one,
and we're also going to be referring back to things
(00:41):
that we talked about in part one, so much better
to listen to that one if you have not already.
In eighteen ninety eight, Wilmington's, North Carolina was the state's
largest city, with a population of about twenty thousand. It
was also majority black, with a sizeable black working class
us and a significant black middle class, with numerous black
(01:03):
owned businesses as well, and more than of the city's
restaurants were owned and run by black residents, along with
virtually all of the barbershops. The city also had an
all black Board of health, to black fire departments, and
multiple black police officers, and although they weren't nearly as
well funded as the schools for white students, so there
were still some disparities there. It's schools for black students
(01:26):
were really well respected within the community thanks to Wilmington's
busy sport jobs were plentiful, and all this together made
Wilmington's an attractive place for black residents to live. It
became a really popular destination for people immigrating from elsewhere
in the state, as well as from South Carolina. Numerous
accounts described race relations in Wilmington's in the years leading
(01:49):
up to the riot that we're talking about as quote,
pretty good as long as white Democrats stayed in charge
of the local government. It would be more accurate to
say that there wasn't much racist islands in Wilmington's as
long as Democrats stayed in charge. As we discussed in
Part one, Democrats in the state capital of Raleigh actively
kept Republicans and black citizens out of office in Wilmington's,
(02:12):
so race relations may have been good by the definition
of not violent, but Wilmington's didn't have home rule. The
party in charge actively opposed the civil rights to the
majority of its citizens, and those citizens had no way
to remove that party from office. Yeah, the whole concept
of race relations, it's kind of fraught because a lot
(02:34):
of people use it to mean like our our minorities
keeping quiet, like how much how much uh, how much
of a fuss is being raised like and that while
there wasn't a bunch of fuss, they're also was not
self government by Wilmington's city in terms of its city government.
(02:55):
All of this, with the so called good race relations
relations shifted after the March municipal election that we talked
about in our previous episode, which had been pretty contentious
and then led to three competing boards of aldermen, all
claiming to be the real one. And and then after
that the race relations were no longer good. In fact,
(03:15):
white Democrats were planning a conspiracy to overthrow the government
that was elected on March. While this campaign was focused
on removing Wilmington's duly elected government and replacing it, it
also had a secondary goal, which is to make an
example of Wilmington's in order to keep the rest of
North Carolina's black population in line. It is not clear
(03:40):
exactly when the plan to do this was hatched. Later on,
Thomas W. Clawson, who was editor of the Wilmington's Messenger
and was involved with the Coupe said that white citizens
of Wilmington's had started formulating a plan six to twelve
months ahead of the election. A group of nine white
citizens of the ringleaders and became known as the Secret Nine.
(04:03):
They were J. Allen Taylor, Hardy Fennel, W. A. Johnson, LB. Sasser,
William Gilchrist, Pierre B. Manning, Edward S. Lathrop, Walter Parsley,
Hugh McCrae also involved in the conspiracy, where the Democratic
Party Campaign Committee of New Hanover County, the Wilmington's Chamber
(04:25):
of Commerce, and another informal group known as the Group
of Six. A lot of people involved. One of the
most visible players in the conspiracy was Alfred Moore Waddell,
who we quoted at the end of part one. What
l had been a Confederate officer during the Civil War,
and he had served in Congress from eighteen seventy one
(04:45):
to eighteen seventy nine. After being defeated in the eighteen
seventy eight election, he had remained active in the Democratic
Party and he spent some time out of the state
campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates He returned to Wilmington
in eighteen eighty three, ostensibly to practice law, but by
eight ninety eight he was unemployed. So during this time
(05:06):
he really devoted his energies to the party. He became
a fiery and compelling speaker who had a knack for
stoking racist fears among whites. The Wilmington's two of eight
was part of the coordinated statewide white supremacy campaign that
we talked about in Part one. Democrats used that campaign
(05:26):
to set the stage for what they were planning in Wilmington's,
aggravating white citizens racial animosity as much as possible and
Wilmington's specifically. As part of this campaign, members of the
state's Democratic leadership visited the city and they started establishing
white supremacy clubs, encouraging all white men to publicly announced
their membership in these clubs. The clubs operated under the
(05:49):
banner of the White Government Union. The White Government Union
also organized a racist labor movement in the city. This
labor movement stated purpose was to replace blackly were within
the city with white labor, and this project was endorsed
by Wilmington's Chamber of Commerce. Another aspect of the White
supremacy campaign was essentially a show of force. The Red
(06:12):
Shirts were the Democratic Party's intimidation and terrorism wing. They
marched in parades all across the state, often leading groups
of attractive white women to symbolically show that their role
was to protect white feminine virtue. They also served as
an honor guard for political leaders when they held rallies
and gave speeches. But it wasn't just marching and guarding.
(06:34):
The Red Shirts also terrorized black citizens, fired weapons into
people's homes, and forcibly broke up meetings and rallies of
Republican and Fusionist politicians. They threatened black voters away from polls,
and they threatened fusion political leaders to try to intimidate
them out of office. At one point, they even robbed
the train of Republican Governor Daniel L. Russell. The Red
(06:58):
Shirts were active in other states as well, and they
had a major presence in Wilmington's And of course, anytime
a black person reacted angrily or violently to being harassed, threatened,
or otherwise abused by the Red Shirts or anyone else
in Wilmington's white supremacists used that as evidence that Negro
rule of the city needed to be put down. Meanwhile,
(07:20):
in most quarters of the white community, the Red Shirts
were praised for their ongoing violent harassment of black people
and their white allies. I want to clarify that Negro
rule here, like they made it sound like black people
had just taken over the government totally. Black people were
still a significant minority in the government. Like that. The
(07:42):
government of Wilmington's did not reflect the racial demographics of
the city itself, which was majority black, like the city
government was still majority white. But they had this whole
scare lore campaign of like negro rule and how awful
it was the ultimate focus for the campaign. And Wilmington's
was Election Day of eight, so there were only a
(08:05):
few races that were being voted on that day. They
were all statewide and national elections. Wilmington's municipal elections, like
said last time, they were to be held every two years.
That wasn't for another year, but Democrats were not willing
to wait until the municipal election to retake control of
the city. So this election, although it was not from
(08:27):
municipal offices, was the opportunity they took to do that.
By Election Day of eight, pretty much all of Wilmington's
white citizens knew what was coming. The Democratic Party's white
supremacy campaign was extremely public that had been going on
for months, and although it wasn't nearly so overt, word
(08:47):
of the coup had been spreading among white citizenry as well.
Black and white residents alike expected some kind of violence.
Hoping that sober men would have cooler heads, the Board
of Aldermen ordered the city's loons to close around election day.
Rumors also started to spread that Wilmington's black population was
planning some kind of a violent resistance on election day.
(09:10):
The Democratic campaign committee hired a black detective to investigate
these rumors. He concluded that there was nothing to them
but to Pinkerton agents, so that they had found servants
who were planning to burn down their employers houses if
the Democrats won. Rumors that the black community might turn
to arson may have stemmed from the fact that they
didn't really have access to firearms to use for their
(09:33):
own defense. Black residents in Wilmington's who did try to
buy a gun ahead of election day had little success.
The only people in town who sold guns were white,
and since they already knew what was happening, they refused
to sell guns to black people, so the only weapons
in the hands of Wilmington's black residents were a few
old muskets and pistols, mostly belonging to men who had
(09:55):
served in the Civil War after the Union started accepting
black soldiers back in eighteen sixty three. Conversely, white Democrats
were definitely armed, They were definitely planning for violence, so
they were raising a lot of fears that the black
community was set doing something that they definitely were doing.
Aside from people's personal firearms and other weapons, the white
(10:18):
citizenry had access to the Wilmington's Light Infantry armory. City
business leaders had also spent twelve hundred dollars on a
Gatling gun. Armed patrols were organized for every black of
the city on election day, with the Red Shirts and
others being stationed outside of polling places to warn black
voters away. The Red Shirts also encouraged and quotation marks
(10:39):
white voters who were ambivalent to get at them vote.
They basically come to your house and be like, dude,
your voting now, I have a gun if you don't
really want to do it. White Democrats also made real
and explicit calls for violence. The night before the election,
Alfred Moore Wadell spoke at a rally and proclaim aimed quote,
(11:01):
you are Anglo Saxons. You are armed and prepared, and
you will do your duty. Be ready at a moment's notice.
Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the
Negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls. And
if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks.
We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it
with guns. Within the Black community, advice on what to
(11:26):
do in the face of all this was really mixed.
Some leaders and clergy advised people to stay home for
the sake of keeping the peace, while others insisted that
they take a stand by exercising their right to vote.
Women in North Carolina could not vote, and a coalition
of black women published a piece in the Wilmington Daily
Record urging black men to get out to the polls
and vote. So we're gonna talk about election day after
(11:49):
we first pause, have a breather and a little sponsor break.
Election day was November eight, d eight, and the day
itself came with plenty of rumors and fear, but not
a lot of actual violence. In the final count Democrats
gained more than eleven thousand votes over the previous election.
(12:13):
Some of this game came from low turnout among black
voters due to intimidation and threats, including employers who threatened
to fire any black person who voted, but some of
it was due to fraud. For example, the first Wards
fifth precinct had three hundred forty three total registered voters,
three hundred thirteen of whom were black, but six hundred
(12:35):
and seven votes were counted four hundred and fifty six
for Democrats. This was in a precinct that, according to
registrar Abram Fulton, there were no black Democrats. The count
in this precinct was also interrupted when a crowd of
men described as strangers showed up and put out all
the lights. Yeah once uh once the people who have
(12:57):
been counting votes got back inside, one of whom went
home because he was terrified. Uh Like, obviously the votes
had been tampered with. So like the there were way
more votes cast than people in the precinct, and specifically
way more votes for Democrats. Then there were black registered
voters who were overwhelmingly Republican. So this kind of stuff
(13:18):
that's going on On November nine, The Wilmington's Messenger published
the election returns that morning, along with a notice that
ran under the heading Attention White Men. This notice summoned
white men to the Wilmington's court House. At eleven o'clock
that morning, a large group gathered there as instructed, and
Alfred Waddell read a document known as the White Declaration
(13:41):
of Independence. Sometimes you will see it as the White
Men's or the white Man's Declaration of Independence. This document
had been drafted by the Secret Nine as a component
of their coup. This White Declaration of Independence began quote
believing that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a
government to be care ead on by an enlightened people,
(14:02):
believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of
an ignorant population of African origin, and believing that those
men of the state of North Carolina who joined informing
the Union did not contemplate for their descendants subjection to
an inferior race. We, the undersigned citizens of the City
of Wilmington's and County of New Hanover, do hereby declare
(14:24):
that we will no longer be ruled, and we will
never again be ruled by men of African origin. This
document went on to outline a series of points boiling
down to the idea that white citizens should not and
would not be subject to a black government. This last
point specifically condemned Alex Manly's editorial that had run in
the Wilmington's Daily Record that was printed earlier that year.
(14:46):
We talked about that a lot. In part one. It
said that the paper itself should cease operations, and that
Manly should be banished, and that the press should be
packed up and shipped away. What l and the rest
of the men then established committee known as the Committee
of twenty five to make sure these points were carried out.
Their first step was to summon thirty two of Wilmington's
(15:08):
most prominent black citizens, known as the Committee of Colored
Citizens or c c C. They instructed the c c
C to appear at the courthouse at six pm that night.
When the c c C arrived that evening, Wodel read
them the White Declaration of Independence and told them that
they had until seven thirty the following morning to go
(15:28):
to Alex Manly, shut down his newspaper and expel him
from the city. The c c C retired to a
nearby barbershop that one of them owned to figure out
what to do. They ultimately wrote up a reply saying
that they did not condone Manly's editorial, calling it obnoxious.
This wasn't a new sentiment within the black community. After
(15:49):
that our editorial was published. Multiple black leaders and clergy
had told Manly that he should retract it, and they
had criticized it as deliberately inflammatory. The c cc response
went on to say that it wasn't within their authority
to do what was being asked of them, but that
in the interest of the piece, they would try armand
(16:10):
Scott was tasked with hand delivering the CCC's response back
to what l But as he was on his way
to make his hand delivery, he ran into a large
group of armed white men who were blocking his path,
so he took it to the post office to be
delivered instead. Also, there's some some discrepancy about what this
letter actually said. Scott stated later on that the letter
(16:32):
that was eventually reprinted in the papers, which is what
we just summarized, was not what he was delivering. By
the time the c c C met Alex Manley had
already left town due to the threats on his life,
so Scott said that this letter had made it clear
that Many was already gone, and that the record hadn't
been published for two weeks. Other members of the c
(16:54):
c C cross paths with George Rowntree that evening, who
was another member of the Committee of twenty five. They
let him know that Manly was gone and that the
press was shut down. But Roundtree did not go to
the Committee of twenty five meeting the next morning, and
neither did anyone else who had heard that Manly had
already left town. So when Alfred Weddell had not gotten
(17:16):
a response from the c c C by seven thirty
the next morning, he assumed that they just weren't answering
his demands. He went to the Wilmington's Light Infantry Armory,
where he found a mob of about five hundred white
men already gathered there by eight fifteen. They were getting restless,
and when he told them that he had not gotten
a response from the Committee of Colored Citizens, they started
(17:39):
discussing who should lead a march to the offices of
the Wilmington's Daily News. The Wilmington's Light Infantry was on
hand that day, but officers couldn't lead a civilian mob
to a business in order to burn it down. They
could only get involved through direct order from the governor
or if the situation became violent. Eventually, Waddell offered to
(18:01):
take the lead. By then the mob had swelled to
between a thousand and men. They marched to Love and
Charity Hall and they pounded on the door, but since
Manly had already left, they didn't get an answer, so
the mob broke down the door. They destroyed as much
of the office as they could. They shattered the office's
kerosene lamps, and then they set it on fire. Although
(18:26):
some people did try to extinguish blowing cinders that spread
from Love and Charity Hall to neighboring buildings. The fire
chief kept the fire department from fighting the fire until
it was clear that the building was damaged beyond all repair.
Once an all black fire crew was finally allowed to
approach the fire, they had to fight it while surrounded
(18:47):
by armed, angry white men who harassed and threatened them
the entire time. Meanwhile, Colonel Walker Taylor of the Wilmington
Light Infantry sent a telegram to the governor which read,
quote situation and here serious I hold military awaiting your
prompt orders. After the mob that had burned down Love
and Charity Hall returned to the armory, Alfred Waddell claimed
(19:10):
he dismissed them to go back to their homes. They
had done what they set out to do. However, he
made that claim as part of an article in which
he described the events that followed as having been carried
out with the utmost restraint, and this was of course
far from the truth. So after the after this mob
(19:34):
went back to the Infantry Armory, a small group of
armed black men started to gather not far away. Rumors
started to spread that they were planning some kind of
counter attack, so the white mob moved to intercept them.
This led to a brief standoff and at some point
it is really not clear by whom a shot was fired.
(19:54):
More shots followed, and then things really came to a
head when a white man named William Mayo was struck
with a life threatening injury, and this sparked a riot
that spread through Wilmington's, which we are going to talk
about in more detail after we first have a sponsor break.
(20:16):
So on November, after William Mayo had been shot, a
heavily armed white mob started moving through Wilmington's terrorizing and
murdering the black population. Word of what was happening spread
through the city and then beyond via telegraph. Other cities,
including those as far away as Atlanta and New Orleans,
(20:37):
started offering the aid of their own troops to Wilmington's
and to be clear, these troops were being offered to
assist the white mob, not to protect the black citizens.
When the governor replied to Colonel Taylor's telegram, his instructions
were to use Wilmington's Light Infantry troops to preserve the peace.
The city's riot alarm was sounded, which was a signal
(20:58):
to the Red Shirts and other parramiditary groups to mobilize.
All of these armed men moved in on the predominantly
black neighborhood of Brooklyn. In addition to the gatling gun
that we mentioned earlier, a second machine gun unit was
deployed by naval reserves. The mob that progressed through the
neighborhood of Brooklyn was made up of white civilians, the
(21:19):
Wilmington's Light Infantry, the Red Shirts, and others, and they
made violent, terrifying progress. The machine gun units aimed into
Black churches which had been rumored as secret hiding places
for armories, which they were not. Black women were strip
searched on the street, supposedly under suspicion of having been
carrying weapons. The civilian mob and military and paramilitary units
(21:43):
fired indiscriminately into homes, and they killed black citizens who resisted.
At one point, the Red Shirts started a man hunt
for Daniel Wright, who was accused of having fired the
shot that hit William Mayo. Right took up a position
in his attic and fired at the Red Shirts before
being captured, temporarily tied to a light post, and then
(22:03):
released and told to run while the white mobs shot
him repeatedly. They left him lying in the street, and
someone took him to the hospital. More than an hour later.
He died. The next day, the governor dispatched more troops
to Wilmington's that did not stop the violence, though these
troops had a lot of the same idea as the
Wilmington's Light Infantry in terms of how to keep the peace,
(22:26):
It's not by protecting the black population. Word of the
situation also made its way to Washington, d C. However,
President McKinley didn't dispatch federal troops because there wasn't an
official request from the governor. Later he would get multiple
letters from Wilmington's black residence asking for help, but he
did not intervene since the governor reported that the situation
(22:48):
was under control. As this mob moved through Wilmington's, many
of its black population fled. They took refuge and swamps
and a cemetery outside of town. At first, most of
the refugees were women and children, and men joined them
later as they were able to escape from the city.
Those who fled into the swamps mostly stayed there without food, shelter,
(23:09):
or warm clothing through the ninth of November tenth and eleventh.
Even though Wilmington's is a coastal city, this was not
a warm experience. It was cold and damp, and they
had nothing to eat and nowhere to take cover. Meanwhile,
Wilmington's white political and business leaders got to work on
their coup. De Eta. George Rowntree and W. H. Chadburne
(23:31):
were both a big part of this, although many other
men were involved as well. They encouraged the mayor, his staff,
the non Democrats on the board of Aldermen, and the
chief of police to resign Fusionist government. Leaders and their
supporters were forcibly run out of town, sometimes at gunpoint
or under threat of death. The Committee of twenty five
(23:54):
then went to city Hall to elect replacements for all
the people they had just ousted. They voted on them
to like maintain this this illusion that this was an
elected body, and their replacements for the Board of Aldermen
were an all white group of Democrats, who then elected
elected Alfred Morrawaddell as the mayor. The newly instituted city
(24:16):
government then put together a list of prominent black citizens
who should be run out of town, including the entirety
of the c c C. A few people were allowed
to stay if they quote knew their place, and some
were placed under arrest, reportedly for their own safety. The
final death toll of this riot isn't clear. The coroner
(24:36):
held fourteen inquests, all of which were ruled as having
died from gunshot wounds inflicted by parties. Unknown estimates are
as high as one hundred black citizens killed, with many
more injured. A few white men were injured, one critically
none were killed. Aside from those who were killed or wounded,
(24:57):
more than two thousand black citizens left Wilmington's in the
wake of the riot and que, prominent white Republicans left
as well, and soon the city had lost its black majority.
The Republican Party lost its support in both Wilmington's and
elsewhere in North Carolina, with its white members being branded
as race traders. The riot and coup affected Wilmington's black
(25:19):
community in a number of ways, in addition to the death's,
injuries and trauma. For the most part, black property owners
in Wilmington's were able to keep their property after the
riot and coup, but black business owners disproportionately lost their businesses.
In seven before the riot, there had been two hundred
sixteen black owned businesses and seven hundred eighty nine white
(25:43):
owned businesses in the Wilmington's city directory. In the nineteen
hundred directory, there were only one hundred sixty two black
owned businesses, a decrease of Meanwhile, the number of white
owned businesses dropped by only two percent. All so, Wilmington's
working class Black residents, who either chose to stay or
(26:04):
didn't have the means to go, were increasingly shuttled into
lower status and lower paying jobs. One of the refrains
of the white supremacy campaign that had been going on
throughout North Carolina had been returning jobs to white citizens
and these newly vacated jobs as as black citizens were
moved into less advantageous jobs. Newly vacated jobs were indeed
(26:29):
filled by white workers, but employers had been paying black
employees much less than they would typically pay a white person.
The pay did not increase when the race of the
workers changed. After the riot was over, the response among
the black community within an outside of Wilmington's was divided
about how to live in light of what had just happened.
(26:51):
In Wilmington's. Many church leaders took to the pulpit to
advise compliance and appeasement for the sake of just keeping
the peace outs I had the state. The incident provoked
outrage among black civic and political leaders. A number of
meetings and demonstrations protested what had happened and proposed ways
to try to prevent a future recurrence, but these efforts
(27:13):
were lampooned and criticized among white democratic presses, in some
cases turning into even more fuel for more racist propaganda.
It was clear to the black community that anything other
than total deference and appeasement was just going to be
met with more violence, so Ultimately, efforts at resistance and
the immediate aftermath of this riot fell apart. The riot
(27:35):
received favorable coverage in the white press overwhelmingly. I mean,
of course, there were there were detractors, but for the
most part this this was viewed as like a necessary
retaking of Wilmington's Robert Bunting, a federally appointed commissioner, reported
in Washington that he had been forcibly removed from office
and run out of the city. In response, the U. S.
(27:58):
Attorney General told the U. S Attorne me for the
Eastern District of North Carolina to investigate, and while the U. S.
Attorney said he would, he never did himming and hawing
about it until the federal government just dropped the issue.
The matter was closed in nineteen hundred with no indictments
or arrests. No one was ever prosecuted for their role
in the riot or the coup. After the coup, Wilmington's
(28:22):
new government rewrote the city charter again to legitimize their positions.
Then they all ran for re election in one with
the Republican Party offering no opposing candidates. The Wilmington's coup
and the white supremacy campaign leading up to it affected
politics throughout North Carolina. As the Democratic Party had hoped
(28:43):
after what happened in Wilmington's it wasn't necessary to do
the same thing elsewhere in the state. Democrats regained control
of the state's General Assembly. Afterward, North Carolina passed a
suffrage amendment to the constitution. This amendment required literacy tests
and poll taxes, but it included a grandfather clause, exempting
(29:04):
anyone descended from someone who was eligible to vote in
eighteen sixty seven. This meant that the new requirements applied
almost exclusively to black people who did not have the
right to vote in eighteen sixty seven. This law actually
remained in place until the Civil rights movement. Democrats and
the General Assembly also rolled back the Fusion government's most
(29:27):
progressive progressive election laws, and on March sixth, the General
Assembly ratified Quote an Act to Restore Good Government to
the Counties of North Carolina, which once again gave legislators
and Raleigh control of the local government of thirteen cities.
These cities were all either majority black or close to it. Together.
(29:47):
All of this once again solidified Democrats power in North
Carolina even beyond what it had been before. The success
of the Fusion Coalition. When Democrat Charles Acock, who had
actively participated in the white supremacy campaign, was elected governor
in nine hundred, the party had control of both houses
of the state legislature and the governorship. North Carolina essentially
(30:10):
had a one party government for decades afterward. After it
was all over, the riot was generally something that black
residents of North Carolina, especially in Wilmington's, heard about from parents, grandparents,
and peers. Two black writers also published works of historical
fiction about it, really in those early years afterwards. One
(30:31):
was nineteen hundreds Hanover or The Persecution of the Lowly
Story of the Wilmington Massacre, by David Bryan Fulton, who
was writing under the pseudonym Jack Thorne. The other was
Charles wood l That's a different Woodell. The other was
Charles wood l One The Marrow of Tradition. But the
riot mostly disappeared from white collective memory for decades. It
(30:54):
was not part of North Carolina history classes, and when
it did come up, it was mostly described as a
ace riot, and in some cases it was praised. That
started to change in with the publication of Philip Girard's
novel Cape Fear Rising. Yeah, I graduated from North Carolina
Public schools in this was not a thing I ever
(31:15):
heard about in a North Carolina classroom. Ever, It's also
not a thing that I heard about in college, although
I did not have like North Carolina history classes in college.
So in two thousand, not long after the centennial of
this riot, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted legislation to
create a commission to investigate It was followed similar investigations
(31:37):
into the Tulsa riot in the nineteen three Rosewood massacre,
both of which have been the subject of previous episodes.
The North Carolina Commission used the investigations into these incidents
as a model, so the commission's purpose was to both
develop a historical record of the incident and to determine
its impact on North Carolina's black population. The investigations findings
(31:59):
were really east in a more than four d page
report in two thousand and six, and the findings are
clear that it was an armed overthrow of a duly
elected municipal government, that it was an organized conspiracy and
not a spur of the moment act of violence, and
that quote involved in the conspiracy were men prominent in
the Democratic Party, former Confederate officers, former office holders, and
(32:23):
newspaper editors locally and statewide. Rallied by Josephus Daniels of
the Raleigh News and Observer. The investigation also noted the
role of Alex Manley's editorial that we talked about in
part one, which was responding to Rebecca Latimer Felton's speech,
but they pointed out that this coup would have taken
place even without that involvement. After all, the coup was
(32:46):
being planned six to twelve months before election day, which
was well before that editorial was ever published. The commission
also made connections between the eight ninety eight riot and
coup and later incidents of violence in Wilmington's in the
nineteen seventies. It framed this more recent violence as quote
directly related to unresolved conflicts of The commission also made
(33:09):
recommendations for empowerment, economic redevelopment, education, and commemoration. In two
thousand and six, the same year as the Commission released
its findings, the Raleigh News and Observer and the Charlotte
Observer each apologized for their role in the violence and
the coupe, and as part of this the two papers,
co published a twelve page special report on the riot,
(33:29):
which was distributed as a special section of both of them.
The North Carolina Democratic Party apologized a year later. The
General Assembly passed a resolution acknowledging the Act in two
thousand seven as well, which had been part of the
commission's recommendations. However, it took some effort to get that
acknowledgement through the General Assembly. A bill titled eighteen ninety
(33:53):
eight Wilmington's Race Riot Acknowledgement was filed in March of
two thousand seven and was ultimately blocked it least, according
to news reports, because Republican legislators wanted it to include
the fact that white Republican legislators had been working with
black citizens and had opposed the riot. Yeah, a lot
of the discussion and news media of this riot within
(34:15):
the last like five years has basically been to try
to to criticize the Democrats by current sitting Republican leaders, which,
as we've talked about on the podcast before, like it's
it's it's great that the Democratic Party apologized for this.
(34:36):
When it comes to your voting decisions, you have to
vote based on what the party is doing right now.
Not on what the party was doing a hundred years ago,
like political parties have totally We've talked about that before. Yeah,
we've talked about the way the platforms have shifted and
and in some ways they traded places on their positions, um,
(34:58):
which is important to remember, and I think sometimes that
gets excluded purposely to try to frame things in a
more positive light. Yeah. So, yeah, but that was a
lot of times that shift of platform gets kind of
oversimplified as like a light switch that got turned. But
like every political party in the country has been continually
(35:20):
revising it's it's platforms since they've existed. Back to wrapping
up this story. So after that whole thing when it
got derailed because apparently people wanted to talk about how
the Republicans helped, a Senate joint resolution acknowledging the events
was introduced on July thirty one of that year and
(35:43):
then ultimately ratified on August two. But this joint resolution
is a lot milder and its language than the original
bill was. It leaves out things from the original bill,
like the words white supremacy, as well as the earlier
bill's acknowledgement that it was quote a conspirat see of
a white elite that used intimidation and force. Also removed
(36:05):
from what eventually was ratified was quote government at all
levels failed to protect that citizens, which was replaced with
the much less UH firm quote government was unsuccessful in
protecting its citizens during that time. In more recent updates,
(36:25):
the state's Highway Historical Marker Committee approved a plaque that
will be installed in March of two thousand eighteen, so
in just a couple of months. UH. This plaque will
be placed at Market Street between Fourth Street and Fifth Street,
which is the site of the old Armory building and
in a busy part of Wilmington's downtown. There have been
slash our other markers and memorials, but that one is
(36:48):
the most recent one and also the one that clearly
frames that as having been a coup that involved burning
down this newspaper. To circle back around, so what the
party doing right now for just a second, we should
also note that a lot of the background stuff that
we talked about through these two episodes is still going on.
So race obviously is still used as a political wedge
(37:10):
in the country as a whole. In North Carolina, now
it's the Republican party that has turned to jerrymandering and
racially discriminatory voting laws to influence election outcomes. In North Carolina,
the Republican Party controlled both houses of the States General
Assembly and the governorship from until the end of twenty sixteen,
(37:31):
and during that time they passed a voter i d
law that the Fourth U. S. Circuit Court struck down
in saying it's ruled quote target African Americans with almost
surgical precision. Today, as in the day we are recording
this podcast, a panel of federal judges ruled that the
congressional district lines that the Republican controlled state legislature drew
(37:54):
in ten where jerrymandered to give them an unfair advantage,
calling the um quote motivated by invidious partisan intent. On
top of that, there continues to be a theme of
the state government and Raleigh over ruling municipal government decisions.
As one example, the now notorious House Bill Too that
(38:14):
made national headlines in was passed in an emergency session
that was convened specifically to prevent an anti discrimination ordinance
that protected transgender people's access to bathrooms, which was passed
by the Charlotte City Council from going into effect. This
is such a running theme in North Carolina politics still
that a sarcastic Raleigh knows best is a common refrain
(38:37):
in municipal politics. Do you have a little bit of
listener mail? Again, I'm crossing my fingers for lighter fair,
but I also don't want to act like, oh, we
shouldn't talk about dark things. But we've had a lot
of that. It's hard to even read some of the
quotes in this one, So I would love it if
we have lighter email. Yeah, yeah, I do have lighter email.
(39:00):
Is actually from Twitter. This was a great enough thing
that came in on Twitter that I was able to
keep up with it because it can be it can
be tricky when people tweet things at us too. Then
later on when we're back in the studio, like find
the tweet again. Uh. And this is from Johan on
Twitter and it is about our Unearthed when we talked
(39:20):
about um the collection of artifacts that was just stolen
from some scaffolding, and we had a whole conversation about
whether maybe it was an inside job, like did somebody
know that there were just these easily accessible artifacts that
could be taken out of the museum and Johan says,
as in a Norwegian and a history student at the
University of Bergen, I can sadly put your suspicions of
(39:43):
inside information in the Bergen heist to rest. The two
men arrested were known to police as petty criminals, and
the police described the heist as a crime of opportunity. Uh.
And then Johan very helpfully sent some sources is on this,
noting that they're in Norwegian, and then said, also of note,
(40:04):
the museum's alarms went off twice that night. The first
time the security company sent someone who decided, without entering
the building that it was probably the wind shaking the
scaffolding triggering the sensors. The second time they just disabled
it remotely. So uh, yeah, that's maybe not not the
best thing to do. I understand this impulse. I used
(40:27):
to live in a home that had a burglar alarm
that was I had some false positive incidents, so I
understand the impulse to be like, oh, that's probably just
probably just the cats knocked over the room again. But uh,
now that that's maybe not the best way to treat
with h to handle a burgler alarm going off at
(40:49):
the museum anyway, Thank you so much Johan for sending
us this further information. I definitely would not have found
that on my own because it was in Norwegian. So
it's always good to hear from somebody there on the scene.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast Where History podcast that house to
works dot com. And then we are on social media
(41:10):
at miss in History. That is where you will find
our Facebook, our Twitter, our Pinterest, our Instagram. You can
come to our website, which is missing history dot com,
where you will find show notes, uh, including in our
in our show notes for today's episode will be a
link to the entire commission report. That's many hundreds of
pages on this riot and que Uh. There's also a
(41:32):
circle searchable archive of all our past episodes. So you
can do all the and more at miss and history
dot com. And you can subscribe to our podcast on
Apple Podcasts, people Play, wherever else you might get podcasts
for more on this and thousands of other topics. House
(41:54):
to works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.