It was the only successful coup in American history and a story of racial terror largely obscured from the annals of American history.
In 1898, a group of white vigilantes – angry and fearful of the newly elected Biracial local government – joined forces with the region’s militias to spread terror in Wilmington, North Carolina, then the most progressive black city. from South.
After fanning fear of a black uprising that would disrupt their way of life, endanger their wives, and bring about an unfathomable new American reality in which black men – not whites – ruled, the leaders of the white cities committed to to “choke the current of Cape Fear with carcasses” rather than allowing the black citizens of Wilmington to succeed and lead.
By the time the carnage ended, more than 100 black government officials – city councilors, clerk, treasurer, city attorney and others – had been forced to step down from elected positions. Somewhere between 60 and 250 black citizens were murdered.
After the coup – for which no one has ever been prosecuted or punished – more than 100,000 registered black voters fled the city. No black citizen would serve in public service again for three quarters of a century.
“It was a massacre,” says Christopher Everett, director of Wilmington on fire, a documentary about the uprising. “A massacre kept secret for over 100 years.”
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In Wilmington, the black community was thriving
In the years leading up to 1898, Wilmington was the most progressive city in the southern United States. A bustling and integrated port, the city, say historians, “was what the new South might have become after the Civil War.”
In 1896, nearly 126,000 black men in Wilmington were registered voters. The city’s thriving black middle class numbered some 65 doctors, lawyers and educators, dozens of barbers and restaurateurs, public health workers, police and firefighters. And just three decades after emancipation, black Republicans have occupied several positions of power, as city councilors, magistrates and other elected officials.
The integration results from the merger policy, a political phenomenon in North Carolina that has joined the Populist Party (made up mostly of poor white farmers) and the Republican Party (the political affiliation of choice for liberated black Americans) in one single entity. They have aligned themselves against the Democrats, a party made up of wealthy white segregationists who white populists say care more about the interests of banks, railways, and wealthy voters than the average person.
Together, the populists and Republicans seized the political majority, sweeping the state in 1894, electing Republicans to local and federal seats, and ousting Democrats from political power.
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A plot to win back white voters and restore white power
Photos of the aftermath of the 1898 coup and massacre at Wilmington, North Carolina. (1) Co-instigator Alfred M. Waddell, who had pledged before the coup to “choke the flow of the river Cape Fear ‘with black bodies; after the coup d’etat, he was installed as mayor; (2) Manhattan Park, where a white mob gunned down a group of black Wilmingtonians; (3) Fourth and Harnett streets in Wilmington, where the first black men fell; (4) EG Parmalee, who took over as chief of police after the coup; (5) Vigils stand in front of the ruins of the black building of the “Daily Record” newspaper.
Library of Congress / Corbis / VCG / Getty Images
Fearing the loss of white supremacy, Democrats in Wilmington have formulated a multi-pronged strategy to regain power and strip black citizens of their political and economic agency.
Powerful state and local Democrats, including Josephus Daniels, publisher of News and the observer (North Carolina’s largest newspaper), future State Governor Charles Aycock and former Congressman (and Confederate Soldier) Alfred Moore Waddell – planned to draw white voters away from the Fusion Party and against black citizens in general. It was a clearly defined goal in the official Democratic Party manual of 1898: “This is a white man’s country, and white men must control and rule it.”
Tensions played in partisan newspapers
Daniels used his diary to publish fake wacky tales about the “dark menace”. His article ignited fears that the state might be overrun by a black political party (although the Fusion Party is predominantly white), and published stories and cartoons showing black men preying on white women.
At the same time, another North Carolina newspaper published a speech by writer (and future U.S. Senator) Rebecca Felton, who said she would support the lynching of a black man every day if it meant protecting white women.
His speech prompted Alex Manly, editor of The daily record—Wilmington’s leading black newspaper – to write a scathing rebuke. In a column published weeks before the November 1898 election, Manly, himself the light-skinned grandson of a white governor, attacked the oft-published trope of white women being raped by “big, tough black bullies” . He pointed to the complicated reality of consensual romances white women sometimes had with biracial men – men whose white fathers were, in fact, much more likely to have raped a helpless black woman.
“Mrs. Felton must start at the head of the fountain if she wishes to purify the stream,” Manly wrote. “Teach your men about purity … Tell your men it’s no worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman than for the white man to be intimate with a woman of color.
Newspapers across the state reprinted the Manly column, inflaming white citizens.
Weeks later, in October, Waddell sparked further tension when, in a speech, he warned, “Let them understand once and for all that we will no longer have the intolerable conditions in which we live. We are determined to change them, if we are to smother the Cape Fear current with carcasses, ”he proclaimed. “Negro domination will henceforth only be a shameful memory for us and an eternal warning for those who will always seek to revive it.
In the November election, Democrats turned white sentiment completely against their black counterparts.
Then came the violence.
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A coup and a campaign of terror
This illustration of the Wilmington massacre in 1898 illustrates how publications of the time promoted misleading characterizations of the incident as a “race riot” or a black insurgency.
Age fotostock
During the campaign, white police broke into black houses, whipping black men and threatening them with death for trying to vote. On polling day, armed white crowds gathered outside the polling stations in Wilmington, threatening all blacks who attempted to vote. The result: Democrats won every elected office they ran for.
Once endowed with political power, Democrats turned to their second goal: to wipe out the economic wealth of the black citizens of Wilmington and institute a state of white supremacy.
The day after the mock election, Democrats in Wilmington released “The White Declaration of Independence,” which declared, “We will never be ruled and never again ruled by men of African descent.” The statement stripped Wilmington’s black citizens of the right to vote, demanded that city jobs held by black men be given to white voters and that Alex Manly leave town or be lynched. He escaped from the North.
The next morning, hundreds of armed men marched through the Manly printing press and the offices of The daily record, burning both to the ground. The crowd then marched to Town Hall, where they forced the Republican mayor and city aldermen to resign. Waddell was installed to replace the mayor.
After the coup, the crowd reached nearly 2,000 men who then terrorized the city. Backed by the racist police force and the newly established state militia, and armed with guns and a military-grade Colt machine gun capable of firing 420 .23 caliber rounds per minute, the mob killed at least 60 black residents, although many historians say the number could be well in the hundreds.
Calls for help from the black citizens of Wilmington to the state government and the White House have been ignored.
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The coup has left lasting scars
In addition to the murders, the mob forced virtually all of Wilmington’s middle and upper class black citizens to flee the city. Once left, the newly elected local government then began to institute segregationist Jim Crow policies as local law.
The coup d’état decimated black political and economic power in Wilmington for nearly 100 years. In 1902, the number of registered black voters had grown from over 125,000 to about 6,100. After the coup, no black citizen held public office in Wilmington until 1972. Only in 1992 that a black citizen was elected to Congress.
“The middle and black merchant class has never been reinstated to this day,” says David Zucchino, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. The Wilmington Lie. “The coup has left a permanent scar on the city. Wilmington became a place no black people would go unless, to borrow a phrase from the newspaper, they “knew their place.” ”
Immediately after the coup and for more than 100 years after, North Carolina newspapers, media, and public institutions obscured or distorted its truth, describing the unilateral coup as a partly provoked race war. , by black aggression. Many of the coup leaders, including Waddell, Daniels, and Aycock, have been called brave heroes.
No one has ever been arrested or prosecuted for any of the crimes of the Wilmington coup.
