THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER > FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006
The Ghosts of 1898
WILMINGTON RACE RIOT
13
Ghaoter 10
THE IMPACT OF 1898
A scene of the segregated South, taken in 1938 at the Halifax County Courthouse in northeastern North Carolina.
PHOTO BY JOHN VACHON/FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
he Wilmington race riot did not invent segregation in
the South but instead cemented it. Right after the Civil
War, Southern whites had attempted to segregate pub
lic life, often modeling their efforts on laws passed in
the North in the 1840s. Newly freed black Southern
ers chose to build their own worlds of community and
aspiration, though they steadfastly resisted any segregation that
smacked of exclusion. In Fusion-era North Carolina, blacks and
whites had attempted, in their halting and imperfect way, to prac-
tice.midtiracial politics. But the white supremacy campaign slammed
the door on democracy and installed a new order.
The new social order was fre
quently referred to as “Jim Crow,”
^er a stock minstrel show charac
ter whose antics demeaned African-
Americans. The power of white skin
in the Jim Crow South was both
stark and subtle. White supremacy
permeated daily life so deeply that
most white people could no more
ponder it than fish might consider
the wetness of water.
The racial etiquette that emerged
from the white supremacist violence
of 1898 was at once bizarre, arbitrary
and nearly inviolable, inscribed in
what W.E.B. Du Bois called “the
cake of custom.” A white man who
would never shake hands with a
black man might refuse to permit
anyone but a black man to shave his
face, cut his hair or give him a sham
poo. A white man might share his
bed, but never his table, with a black
woman. Black breasts could suckle
white babies, and black hands could
pat out biscuit dough for white
mouths, but black heads must never
try on a hat in a department store,
lest it be rendered unfit for sale to
white people. Black maids washed
the bodies of the aged and infirm, but
the starched white uniforms they
were compelled to wear could not be
laundered in the same washing ma
chines that white people used.
The folkways of white supremacy
made it permissible to call a favored
black man “Uncle” or “Professor,” so
'long as he was not actually your un
cle or a real college professor. Thus
the titles contained a mixture of
mockery and affection. But a black
man must never hear the words “mis
ter” or “sir” from white fips. Black
women were “girls” until they were
old enough to be called “auntie.” Un
der no circumstances should they
ever hear a white person of any age
address them as “Mrs.” or “Miss.”
TTie eternal racial views of almi^ty
God were well-known to white North
Carolinians in the Age of Jim Crow.
Most white Christians came to be
lieve that white supremacy was the
will of God; the Lord himself had
placed them above the “sons of
Ham,” whose appointed purpose was
to be hewers of white people’s wood
and drawers of white people’s water.
This was the genius of white su
premacy. Though it was a social or
der imposed and maintained by
force, its defenders made it seem
not only natural but even divinely or
dained. Any challenge to white su
premacy, North Carolina’s superin-
tendent of schools told an
auditorium fiUed with black college
students in 1927, would represent “a
violation of God’s eternal laws as
fixed as the stars.”
This was the world shaped by the
men who had overthrown the Fusion
government and ensured that white
supremacy would reign in North Car
olina. In the years after the campaign,
they crowed about it. “We have
fou^t for this issue and against that
policy,” Charles Aycock told sup
porters before he died in 1912, “but
everywhere and all the time we have
fou^t for white supremacy.”
MEASURING
THE EFFECTS OF
WHITE SUPREMACY
It is impossible to fully measure
the effects of the white
supremacy campaign on blacks,
but these statistics begin to
suggest them:'
Wilmington becomes a white-
majority city.
Wilmington population by race
vw White Black
20,000 -r
10,000
5,000 L=
1860 1880 1900
1910
North Carolina becomes a
one-party state.
H Republican Democrat lil Other
Percent of votes for governor
1.4^ 0.1—
40.8 1
99.9
Percent of votes for president
i-i '
V'.;.-:';#
1896
1900
African-American education
suffers.
Wilmington city school disbursements
White WM Black
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
Nov. 1898 Nov. 1899 Jan. 1903
Source: 1898 Wilmington Race
Riot Commission Report
The News & Observer