January 23, 2021 • 38 mins
Part two of this 2018 classic delves into the only known successful coup d'etat in U.S. history, when a white mob enacted a violent plan against their town’s black community, and overthrew the duly elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, Everybody. Today's Classic is the second part of
our two parter on the Wilmington's q OF, which we
are bringing out of the archive following a requests from
several listeners. If you haven't heard last Saturday's Classic, it
really does have a lot of context for the events
that are discussed in this episode. The second part of
(00:23):
the two parter came out on January Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and
(00:43):
I'm Holly Fry. Today's we are returning to the story
of the Wilmington's q OF 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
(01:03):
that will make sense without part one, there's a lot
of context in part one, and we're also going to
be referring back to things that we talked about in
part one, so much better to listen to that one
if you have not already. In 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
(01:27):
black working class and a significant black middle class, with
numerous black 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
(01:48):
nearly as well funded as the schools for white students,
so there were still some disparities there, It's schools for
black students were really well respected within the community thanks
to Wilmington's busy port, joh 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
(02:09):
elsewhere in the state, as well as from South Carolina.
Numerous accounts described race relations in Wilmington's in the years
leading 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 violence in Wilmington's
(02:29):
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 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 of
(02:52):
the majority of its citizens, and those citizens had no
way to remove that party from office. He had the
whole concept of race relations. It's kind of fraught because
a lot 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
(03:13):
that while there wasn't a bunch of fuss, there also
was not self government by Wilmington's city in terms of
its city government. 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
(03:34):
been pretty contentious and then led to three competing boards
of aldermen, all claiming to be the real one. And
then after that the race relations were no longer good.
In fact, 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,
(03:57):
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 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
(04:18):
white citizens of Wilmington's had started formulating a plan six
to twelve months ahead of the election. A group of
nine white citizens were the ringleaders and became known as
the Secret Nine. They were J. Allen Taylor, Hardy Fennel, W. A. Johnson, LB. Sasser,
William Gilchrist, Pierre B. Manning, Edward S. Lathrop, Walter Parsley,
(04:45):
Hugh McCrae. Also involved in the conspiracy, where the Democratic
Party Campaign Committee of New Hanover County, the Wilmington's Chamber
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,
(05:05):
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
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's
(05:27):
in eighteen eighty three, ostensibly to practice law, but by
eighteen ninety eight he was unemployed, so during this time
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 coup of eighteen
ninety eight was part of the coordinated statewide white supremacy
(05:49):
campaign that we talked about in Part one. Democrats used
that campaign to set the stage for what they were
planning in Wilmington's, aggravating white citizens racial and aimosity 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
(06:13):
to publicly announce their membership in these clubs. The clubs
operated under the 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
black labor within the city with white labor, and this
project was endorsed by Wilmington's Chamber of Commerce. Another aspect
(06:36):
of the white supremacy campaign was essentially a show of force.
The Red 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
(06:58):
rallies and gave speech is But it wasn't just marching
and guarding. 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,
(07:20):
they even robbed the train of Republican governor Daniel L. Russell.
The Red 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
(07:40):
in Wilmington's, white supremacists used that as evidence that Negro
rule of the city needed to be put down. Meanwhile,
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
(08:00):
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
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
(08:24):
it was the ultimate focus for this campaign. And Wilmington's
was election day of eight, so there were only a
few races that were being voted on that day. They
were all statewide and national elections. Wilmington's municipal elections. Like
we said last time, they were to be held every
two years. That wasn't for another year, but Democrats were
(08:47):
not willing to wait until the municipal election to retake
control of the city. So this election, although it was
not from 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
(09:08):
Party's white supremacy campaign was extremely public. That had been
going on for months, and although it wasn't nearly so overt,
word 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 saloons to close
(09:29):
around election day. Rumors also started to spread that Wilmington's
black population was planning some kind of a violent resistance
on election day. The Democratic campaign committee hired a black
detective to investigate these rumors. He concluded that there was
nothing to them but to Pinkerton agents said that they
had found servants who were planning to burn down their
(09:50):
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 fire arms
to use for their 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
(10:13):
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 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,
(10:37):
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
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 at
(10:58):
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
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
(11:21):
and explicit calls for violence. The night before the election,
Alfred Moore Waddell spoke at a rally and proclaimed quote,
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
(11:42):
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
do in the face of all this was really mixed.
Some leaders and clergy advised people to stay home for
the of keeping the peace, while others insisted that they
(12:02):
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 we first pause,
have a breather, and a little sponsor break. Election day
(12:29):
was November 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. 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,
(12:54):
but some of it was due to fraud. For example,
the First Words fifth Precinct had three hundred forty three
total registered voters, three hundred thirteen of whom were black,
but six hundred 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.
(13:17):
The count in this precinct was also interrupted when a
crowd of men described as strangers showed up and put
out all the lights. Yet once, uh once, the people
who have 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
(13:38):
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 that's kind
of stuff that was 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.
(14:01):
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 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 has
(14:21):
a component of their cup. This White Declaration of Independence
began quote believing that the Constitution of the United States
contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people,
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
(14:43):
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
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
(15:05):
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.
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
(15:26):
packed up and shipped away. What l and the rest
of the men then established a 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 most prominent black citizens, known as the Committee
of Colored Citizens or c c C. They instructed the
(15:46):
c c C to appear at the courthouse at six
pm that night. When the c c C arrived that evening,
what L read them the White Declaration of Independence and
told them that they had until seven thirty the following
morning to go to Alex Manly, shut down his newspaper
and expel him from the city. The c c C
(16:06):
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 that editorial was published, multiple black leaders
and clergy had told Manly that he should retract it,
(16:27):
and they had criticized it as deliberately inflammatory. The c
c C 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 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
(16:49):
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
that was eventually reprinted in the papers, which is what
we just summarized, was not what he was delivering. By
(17:11):
the time the c c C met Alex Manly had
already left town due to the threats on his life.
So Scott said that this letter had made it clear
that Manly was already gone and that the record hadn't
been published for two weeks. Other members of the CCC
crossed paths with George Rowntree that evening, who was another
member of the Committee of twenty five. They let him
(17:32):
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 Waddell had not gotten a response from
the CCC by seven thirty the next morning, he assumed
that they just weren't answering his demands. He went to
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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 discussing who should lead
a march to the offices of the Wilmington's Daily News.
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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 take the lead. By
then the mob had swelled to between a thousand and
(18:37):
fidd 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 some people did try
(18:58):
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 by armed, angry
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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 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 he dismissed them to go
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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 went back to the Infantry armory,
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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. More shots followed, and then
things really came to a head when a white man
(20:30):
named William Mayo was struck with a life threatening injury,
and this sparked a riot that spread through Wilmington's, which
we were going to talk about it in more detail
after we first have a sponsor break. So on November,
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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, started offering the aid
of their own troops to Wilmington's, and to be clear,
(21:16):
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
Light infantry troops to preserve the peace. The city's riot
alarm was sounded, which was a signal to the Red
Shirts and other paramilitary groups to mobilize. All of these
(21:38):
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 Wilmington's Light Infantry, the
Red Shirts, and others, and they made violent, terrifying prog us.
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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 fired indiscriminately into homes,
and they killed black citizens who resisted. At one point,
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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 released and told
to run while the white mobs shot him repeatedly. They
left him lying in the street, and someone took him
(22:45):
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 Light
Infantry and turned terms of how to keep the peace,
it's not by protecting the black population. Word of the
situation also made its way to Washington, d C. However,
(23:08):
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 residents asking for help, but he
did not intervene since the governor reported that the situation
was under control. Has this mob moved through Wilmington's, many
of its black population fled. They took refuge and swamps
(23:32):
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,
or warm clothing through the nights 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
(23:54):
had nothing to eat and nowhere to take cover. Meanwhile,
Wilmington's white political goal and business leaders got to work
on their coup deata. George Rowntree and W. H. Chadburne
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
(24:16):
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
then went to city Hall to elect replacements for all
the people they had just housted. They voted on them
to like maintain this this illusion that this was an
(24:39):
elected body, and their replacements for the Board of Aldermen
were an all white group of Democrats, who then elected
elected Alfred Morowaddell as the mayor. The newly instituted city
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 a they quote knew their place, and some
(25:01):
were placed under arrest, reportedly for their own safety. The
final death toll of this riot isn't clear. The coroner
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
(25:22):
more injured. A few white men were injured, one critically
none were killed. Aside from those who were killed or wounded,
more than two thousand black citizens left Wilmington's in the
wake of the riot and coup. Prominent white Republicans left
as well, and soon the city had lost its black majority.
(25:43):
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
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
(26:05):
and coup, but black business owners disproportionately lost their businesses.
In Before the riot, there had been two hundred sixteen
black owned businesses and seven hundred eighty nine white owned
businesses in the Wilmington's City directory. In the nineteen hundred directory,
there were only one hundred sixty two black owned businesses
(26:26):
a decrease of Meanwhile, the number of white owned businesses
dropped by only two percent. Also, Wilmington's working class Black residents,
who either chose to stay or 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
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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 filled by white workers, but
employers had been paying black employees much less than they
(27:10):
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. In Wilmington's Many
church leaders took to the pulpit to advise compliance and
(27:31):
appeasement for the sake of just keeping the peace. Outside
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 were lampoon and criticized among
white democratic presses, in some cases turning into even more
(27:55):
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 received favorable coverage in the white
press overwhelmingly. I mean, of course, there were there were detractors,
(28:17):
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. Attorney General told the U. S. Attorney
for the Eastern District of North Carolina to investigate, and
(28:39):
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 new government rewrote the city charter
(28:59):
again to legitimize their positions. Then they all ran for
re election in eighteen nine and 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, after what
happened in Wilmington's it wasn't necessary to do the same
(29:22):
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 anyone descended from
someone who was eligible to vote in eighteen sixty seven.
(29:44):
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 movements. Democrats and the General Assembly
also rolled back the Fusion government's most progressive progressive election laws,
and on March sixth, the General Assembly ratified quote an
(30:08):
Act to Restore Good Government to the Counties of North Carolina,
which once again gave legislators in Raleigh control of the
local government of thirteen cities. These cities were all either
majority black or close to it. Together. All of this
once again solidified Democrats power in North Carolina even beyond
what it had been before the success of the Fusion Coalition.
(30:31):
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 had a one party
government for decades afterward. After it was all over. The
(30:52):
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 was nineteen hundreds
Hanover or The Persecution of the Lowly Story of the
Wilmington Massacre by David Bryan Fulton, who was writing under
(31:14):
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 was not part
of North Carolina history classes, and when it did come up,
it was mostly described as a race riot, and in
(31:36):
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 heard about in a North
Carolina classroom. Ever, It's also not a thing that I
(31:56):
heard about in college, although I did not have like
North Carolina history classes 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
its followed similar investigations into Tells the riot in the
nine Rosewood Massacre, both of which have been the subject
(32:18):
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 were released in a more than four
hundred page report in two thousand and six, and the
(32:39):
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 newspaper editors locally and statewide. Rallied by Josephus Daniels
(33:03):
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
being planned six to twelve months before election day, which
(33:24):
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
(33:44):
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 coup, and as part of this, the two papers
co published a twelve page special report on the riot,
(34:05):
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
(34:28):
eight Wilmington's Race Riot Acknowledgement was filed in March of
two thousand seven and was ultimately blocked, at 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 in news media of this riot within
(34:50):
the last like five years has basically been to try
to to criticize the Demo rats 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.
(35:11):
When it comes to your voting decisions, you have to
vote a 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,
(35:33):
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
(35:55):
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 eight
ninety eight events was introduced on July thirty one of
(36:17):
that year and then ultimately ratified on August two. But
this joint resolution is a lot milder in 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
conspiracy of a white elite that used intimidation and force.
(36:38):
Also removed from what eventually was ratified was quote government
at all levels failed to protect its citizens, which was
replaced with the much less UH firm quote government was
unsuccessful in protecting its citizens during that time. In more
(36:59):
recent updates, 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
(37:19):
have been slash our other markers and memorials, but that
one is the most recent one and also the one
that clearly frames that as having been a coup that
involved burning down this newspaper. Fay so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
(37:41):
the archive. If you heard an email address or a
Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
email address is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Our old house stuff works email address no longer works,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show
(38:03):
on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Happy Saturday, Everybody. Today's Classic is the second part of
our two parter on the Wilmington's q OF, which we
are bringing out of the archive following a requests from
several listeners. If you haven't heard last Saturday's Classic, it
really does have a lot of context for the events
that are discussed in this episode. The second part of
(00:23):
the two parter came out on January Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and
(00:43):
I'm Holly Fry. Today's we are returning to the story
of the Wilmington's q OF 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
(01:03):
that will make sense without part one, there's a lot
of context in part one, and we're also going to
be referring back to things that we talked about in
part one, so much better to listen to that one
if you have not already. In 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
(01:27):
black working class and a significant black middle class, with
numerous black 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
(01:48):
nearly as well funded as the schools for white students,
so there were still some disparities there, It's schools for
black students were really well respected within the community thanks
to Wilmington's busy port, joh 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
(02:09):
elsewhere in the state, as well as from South Carolina.
Numerous accounts described race relations in Wilmington's in the years
leading 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 violence in Wilmington's
(02:29):
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 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 of
(02:52):
the majority of its citizens, and those citizens had no
way to remove that party from office. He had the
whole concept of race relations. It's kind of fraught because
a lot 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
(03:13):
that while there wasn't a bunch of fuss, there also
was not self government by Wilmington's city in terms of
its city government. 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
(03:34):
been pretty contentious and then led to three competing boards
of aldermen, all claiming to be the real one. And
then after that the race relations were no longer good.
In fact, 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,
(03:57):
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 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
(04:18):
white citizens of Wilmington's had started formulating a plan six
to twelve months ahead of the election. A group of
nine white citizens were the ringleaders and became known as
the Secret Nine. They were J. Allen Taylor, Hardy Fennel, W. A. Johnson, LB. Sasser,
William Gilchrist, Pierre B. Manning, Edward S. Lathrop, Walter Parsley,
(04:45):
Hugh McCrae. Also involved in the conspiracy, where the Democratic
Party Campaign Committee of New Hanover County, the Wilmington's Chamber
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,
(05:05):
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
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's
(05:27):
in eighteen eighty three, ostensibly to practice law, but by
eighteen ninety eight he was unemployed, so during this time
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 coup of eighteen
ninety eight was part of the coordinated statewide white supremacy
(05:49):
campaign that we talked about in Part one. Democrats used
that campaign to set the stage for what they were
planning in Wilmington's, aggravating white citizens racial and aimosity 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
(06:13):
to publicly announce their membership in these clubs. The clubs
operated under the 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
black labor within the city with white labor, and this
project was endorsed by Wilmington's Chamber of Commerce. Another aspect
(06:36):
of the white supremacy campaign was essentially a show of force.
The Red 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
(06:58):
rallies and gave speech is But it wasn't just marching
and guarding. 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,
(07:20):
they even robbed the train of Republican governor Daniel L. Russell.
The Red 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
(07:40):
in Wilmington's, white supremacists used that as evidence that Negro
rule of the city needed to be put down. Meanwhile,
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
(08:00):
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
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
(08:24):
it was the ultimate focus for this campaign. And Wilmington's
was election day of eight, so there were only a
few races that were being voted on that day. They
were all statewide and national elections. Wilmington's municipal elections. Like
we said last time, they were to be held every
two years. That wasn't for another year, but Democrats were
(08:47):
not willing to wait until the municipal election to retake
control of the city. So this election, although it was
not from 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
(09:08):
Party's white supremacy campaign was extremely public. That had been
going on for months, and although it wasn't nearly so overt,
word 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 saloons to close
(09:29):
around election day. Rumors also started to spread that Wilmington's
black population was planning some kind of a violent resistance
on election day. The Democratic campaign committee hired a black
detective to investigate these rumors. He concluded that there was
nothing to them but to Pinkerton agents said that they
had found servants who were planning to burn down their
(09:50):
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 fire arms
to use for their 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
(10:13):
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 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,
(10:37):
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
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 at
(10:58):
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
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
(11:21):
and explicit calls for violence. The night before the election,
Alfred Moore Waddell spoke at a rally and proclaimed quote,
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
(11:42):
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
do in the face of all this was really mixed.
Some leaders and clergy advised people to stay home for
the of keeping the peace, while others insisted that they
(12:02):
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 we first pause,
have a breather, and a little sponsor break. Election day
(12:29):
was November 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. 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,
(12:54):
but some of it was due to fraud. For example,
the First Words fifth Precinct had three hundred forty three
total registered voters, three hundred thirteen of whom were black,
but six hundred 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.
(13:17):
The count in this precinct was also interrupted when a
crowd of men described as strangers showed up and put
out all the lights. Yet once, uh once, the people
who have 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
(13:38):
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 that's kind
of stuff that was 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.
(14:01):
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 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 has
(14:21):
a component of their cup. This White Declaration of Independence
began quote believing that the Constitution of the United States
contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people,
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
(14:43):
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
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
(15:05):
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.
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
(15:26):
packed up and shipped away. What l and the rest
of the men then established a 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 most prominent black citizens, known as the Committee
of Colored Citizens or c c C. They instructed the
(15:46):
c c C to appear at the courthouse at six
pm that night. When the c c C arrived that evening,
what L read them the White Declaration of Independence and
told them that they had until seven thirty the following
morning to go to Alex Manly, shut down his newspaper
and expel him from the city. The c c C
(16:06):
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 that editorial was published, multiple black leaders
and clergy had told Manly that he should retract it,
(16:27):
and they had criticized it as deliberately inflammatory. The c
c C 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 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
(16:49):
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
that was eventually reprinted in the papers, which is what
we just summarized, was not what he was delivering. By
(17:11):
the time the c c C met Alex Manly had
already left town due to the threats on his life.
So Scott said that this letter had made it clear
that Manly was already gone and that the record hadn't
been published for two weeks. Other members of the CCC
crossed paths with George Rowntree that evening, who was another
member of the Committee of twenty five. They let him
(17:32):
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 Waddell had not gotten a response from
the CCC by seven thirty the next morning, he assumed
that they just weren't answering his demands. He went to
(17:56):
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 discussing who should lead
a march to the offices of the Wilmington's Daily News.
(18:16):
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 take the lead. By
then the mob had swelled to between a thousand and
(18:37):
fidd 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 some people did try
(18:58):
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 by armed, angry
(19:19):
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 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 he dismissed them to go
(19:43):
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 went back to the Infantry armory,
(20:08):
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. More shots followed, and then
things really came to a head when a white man
(20:30):
named William Mayo was struck with a life threatening injury,
and this sparked a riot that spread through Wilmington's, which
we were going to talk about it in more detail
after we first have a sponsor break. So on November,
(20:55):
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, started offering the aid
of their own troops to Wilmington's, and to be clear,
(21:16):
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
Light infantry troops to preserve the peace. The city's riot
alarm was sounded, which was a signal to the Red
Shirts and other paramilitary groups to mobilize. All of these
(21:38):
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 Wilmington's Light Infantry, the
Red Shirts, and others, and they made violent, terrifying prog us.
(22:00):
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 fired indiscriminately into homes,
and they killed black citizens who resisted. At one point,
(22:24):
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 released and told
to run while the white mobs shot him repeatedly. They
left him lying in the street, and someone took him
(22:45):
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 Light
Infantry and turned terms of how to keep the peace,
it's not by protecting the black population. Word of the
situation also made its way to Washington, d C. However,
(23:08):
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 residents asking for help, but he
did not intervene since the governor reported that the situation
was under control. Has this mob moved through Wilmington's, many
of its black population fled. They took refuge and swamps
(23:32):
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,
or warm clothing through the nights 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
(23:54):
had nothing to eat and nowhere to take cover. Meanwhile,
Wilmington's white political goal and business leaders got to work
on their coup deata. George Rowntree and W. H. Chadburne
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
(24:16):
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
then went to city Hall to elect replacements for all
the people they had just housted. They voted on them
to like maintain this this illusion that this was an
(24:39):
elected body, and their replacements for the Board of Aldermen
were an all white group of Democrats, who then elected
elected Alfred Morowaddell as the mayor. The newly instituted city
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 a they quote knew their place, and some
(25:01):
were placed under arrest, reportedly for their own safety. The
final death toll of this riot isn't clear. The coroner
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
(25:22):
more injured. A few white men were injured, one critically
none were killed. Aside from those who were killed or wounded,
more than two thousand black citizens left Wilmington's in the
wake of the riot and coup. Prominent white Republicans left
as well, and soon the city had lost its black majority.
(25:43):
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
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
(26:05):
and coup, but black business owners disproportionately lost their businesses.
In Before the riot, there had been two hundred sixteen
black owned businesses and seven hundred eighty nine white owned
businesses in the Wilmington's City directory. In the nineteen hundred directory,
there were only one hundred sixty two black owned businesses
(26:26):
a decrease of Meanwhile, the number of white owned businesses
dropped by only two percent. Also, Wilmington's working class Black residents,
who either chose to stay or 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
(26:48):
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 filled by white workers, but
employers had been paying black employees much less than they
(27:10):
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. In Wilmington's Many
church leaders took to the pulpit to advise compliance and
(27:31):
appeasement for the sake of just keeping the peace. Outside
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 were lampoon and criticized among
white democratic presses, in some cases turning into even more
(27:55):
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 received favorable coverage in the white
press overwhelmingly. I mean, of course, there were there were detractors,
(28:17):
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. Attorney General told the U. S. Attorney
for the Eastern District of North Carolina to investigate, and
(28:39):
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 new government rewrote the city charter
(28:59):
again to legitimize their positions. Then they all ran for
re election in eighteen nine and 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, after what
happened in Wilmington's it wasn't necessary to do the same
(29:22):
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 anyone descended from
someone who was eligible to vote in eighteen sixty seven.
(29:44):
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 movements. Democrats and the General Assembly
also rolled back the Fusion government's most progressive progressive election laws,
and on March sixth, the General Assembly ratified quote an
(30:08):
Act to Restore Good Government to the Counties of North Carolina,
which once again gave legislators in Raleigh control of the
local government of thirteen cities. These cities were all either
majority black or close to it. Together. All of this
once again solidified Democrats power in North Carolina even beyond
what it had been before the success of the Fusion Coalition.
(30:31):
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 had a one party
government for decades afterward. After it was all over. The
(30:52):
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 was nineteen hundreds
Hanover or The Persecution of the Lowly Story of the
Wilmington Massacre by David Bryan Fulton, who was writing under
(31:14):
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 was not part
of North Carolina history classes, and when it did come up,
it was mostly described as a race riot, and in
(31:36):
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 heard about in a North
Carolina classroom. Ever, It's also not a thing that I
(31:56):
heard about in college, although I did not have like
North Carolina history classes 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
its followed similar investigations into Tells the riot in the
nine Rosewood Massacre, both of which have been the subject
(32:18):
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 were released in a more than four
hundred page report in two thousand and six, and the
(32:39):
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 newspaper editors locally and statewide. Rallied by Josephus Daniels
(33:03):
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
being planned six to twelve months before election day, which
(33:24):
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
(33:44):
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 coup, and as part of this, the two papers
co published a twelve page special report on the riot,
(34:05):
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
(34:28):
eight Wilmington's Race Riot Acknowledgement was filed in March of
two thousand seven and was ultimately blocked, at 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 in news media of this riot within
(34:50):
the last like five years has basically been to try
to to criticize the Demo rats 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.
(35:11):
When it comes to your voting decisions, you have to
vote a 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,
(35:33):
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
(35:55):
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 eight
ninety eight events was introduced on July thirty one of
(36:17):
that year and then ultimately ratified on August two. But
this joint resolution is a lot milder in 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
conspiracy of a white elite that used intimidation and force.
(36:38):
Also removed from what eventually was ratified was quote government
at all levels failed to protect its citizens, which was
replaced with the much less UH firm quote government was
unsuccessful in protecting its citizens during that time. In more
(36:59):
recent updates, 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
(37:19):
have been slash our other markers and memorials, but that
one is the most recent one and also the one
that clearly frames that as having been a coup that
involved burning down this newspaper. Fay so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
(37:41):
the archive. If you heard an email address or a
Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
email address is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Our old house stuff works email address no longer works,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show
(38:03):
on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
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