THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER ♦ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006
WILMINGTON RACE RIOT
Introduction
EVENTS OF 1898 SHAPED OUR HISTORY
O n a chilly autumn morning 108 years ago this month, heavily armed columns of \vhite
men marched military-fashion into the black nei^borhoods of Wilmington, then the state’s
largest city and the center of African-American political and economic success. “Under
thorough discipline and under command of officers,” one witness wrote, “capitalists emd
laborers marched together. The lawyer and his client were side by side. Men of large busi
ness interests kept step with the clerks.”
In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned the offices of the local black news
paper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents — the precise number isn’t known — and ban
ished many successful black citizens and their so-called “white nigger” allies. A new social order was
bom in the blood and the flames, rooted in what The News and Observer’s publisher, Josephus Daniels,
heralded as “permanent good government by the party of the White Man.”
The Wilmington race riot of 1898 was a cmcial turning point in the history of North Carolina. It was
also an event of national historical significance. Occurring just two years after the Supreme Court had
sanctioned “separate but equal” segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson, the riot signaled the embrace of an
even more virulent racism, not merely in Wilmington, but across the United States.
This deepening racial chasm
launched an extraordinarily violent
and repressive era in this coimtry. It
was a time when some state legisla
tures — in the North and South —
were controlled by members of the
Ku Klux Klan. It was a period when
groups of respectable white South
erners gathered to bum black men
in public, brought their children to
watch, and mailed their loved ones
souvenir postcards of the smoldering
corpses. It was a time when African-
Americans lost the right to vote to
a white South determined to con
trol their lives and labor by any
means necessary. North Carolina
stripped the vote from black men in
1900. By 1910, every state in the
South had taken the vote from its
black citizens, using North Carolina
as one of their models.
Wilmington 1898 marked a flow
ering of the Age of Jim Crow. White
authorities constmcted the symbols
and signs of everyday life to show
people their place. “White” and “Col
ored” signs were erected at railroad
stations, over drinking foimtains and
at the doors of theaters and restau
rants. Hubert Eaton, a black leader
in Wilmington, recalled his shock
and dismay in the 1950s to see two
Bibles in every courtroom, clearly
marked by race.
The Wilmington massacre in
spired bloody racist cmsades across
the United States. When whites in
Georgia, led by would-be governor
Hoke Smith, sought to take the bal
lot from black citizens in 1906, they
Black firefighters stand on the second floor of the destroyed Love
and Charity Hall in Wilmington. Children watch on the steps
below. The building housed the city's black-owned newspaper.
COURTESY NEW HANOVER LIBRARY
consulted men who came to power
by leading North Carolina’s white
supremacy campaign. They included
Gov. Robert Glenn, U.S. Sens. Lee
S. Overman and Fumifold Simmons
and former Gov. Charles B. Aycock.
Overman urged white Georgians to
be prepared to use bloody violence
and promised that disfranchisement
would bring the “satisfaction which
only comes of permanent peace af
ter deadly warfare.”
Smith campaigned across Geor
gia, braying about the protection of
“white womanhood” and demand
ing that the state take the ballot from
blacks. If whites could not disfran
chise blacks legally in Georgia, Smith
vowed, “we can handle them as they
did in Wilmington,” where the
woods were left “black with their
hanging carcasses.” Right after
Smith’s 1906 election, white mobs
raged in the streets of Atlanta and
killed dozens of blacks. Soon, ex
actly as in North Carolina, the state
of Georgia took the vote from its
African-American citizens.
Despite their importance, the
events in Wilmington have remained
largely a hidden chapter in our state’s
history. It was only this year that
North Carolina completed its offi
cial investigation of the violence.
The report of the Wilmington Race
Riot Commission conclude that the
tragedy “marked a new epoch in the
history of violent race relations in the
United States.” It recommended
payments to descendants of victims
and advised media outlets, including
The News & Observer, to tell the
truth about 1898.
Even as we finally acknowledge
the ^K)sts of 1898, long shadowed
by ignorance and forgetfulness, some
ask: Why dredge this up now, when
we cannot change the past? But
those who favor amnesia ignore how
the past holds our future in its grip,
especially when it remains unac
knowledged. The new world walks
forever in the footsteps of the old.
The story of the Wilmington race
riot abides at the core of North Car
olina’s past.
And that story holds many lessons
for us today. It reminds us that his
tory does not just happen. It does not
unfold natur^y like the seasons or
rise and fall like the tides. History is
made by people, who bend and slmpe
the present to create the future. The
history of Wilmington teaches us
that the ugly racial conflict that
shaped North Carolina and the na
tion during much of the 20th century
was not inevitable. So long as we
remember that past, we mi^t over
come its legacy.
For more than a century, most his
torians have obscured the triumph of
white domination in 1898 by aJUing
it a “race riot,” though it was not the
spontaneous outbreak of mob vio
lence that the word “riot” suggests.
In his seminal study, “We Have
Taken a City” (1984), H. Leon
Prather calls it a “massacre and coup.”
What another scholar terms the
“genocidal massacre” in Wilmington
was the climax of a carefully orches
trated campaign to end interracial
cooperation and build a one-party
state that would assure the power of
North Carolina’s business elite.
When the violence ended, a war of
memory persisted. Our politically
correct public history, carved into
marble on our university buildings
and the statehouse lawn, exalts the
men who overthrew an elected gov
ernment in the name of white su
premacy, including Charles B. Ay-
cock and Josephus Daniels. No
monument exists to the handful of vi
sionaries who were able to ima^ne
a better future, beyond the bounds
of white supremacy. Nor do we re
member those who gave their lives
for simple justice. Instead, we mis
take power for greatness and cele
brate those responsible for our worst
errors. The losers of 1898, though
flawed themselves, have far more to
teach us than the winners.
HOW A RAILROAD TICKET
INSPIRED JIM CROW LAWS
In 1892, Homer Plessy pur
chased a first-class railroad
ticket - and thereby broke the
law. Blacks were permitted to
ride only third class in his
home state of Louisiana, which
required separate railway
accommodations for the races.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court
heard, and rejected, Plessy's
challenge, validating segrega
tion in public facilities and
inspiring a harsher wave of
restrictive Jim Crow laws.
J. PEOER ZANE
U.S. RACE RIOTS
The march of urban racial
massacres that Wilmington led
was not confined to the South.
In 1908, scores of blacks died
in Springfield, III., in an attack
that drew force from Wilming
ton's example. In East St. Louis,
III., white mobs killed as many
as 200 blacks and burned
6,000 out of their homes in
1917. The Chicago race riot of
1919 left 15 whites and 23
blacks dead; in 1919 alone,
similar riots in 26 other U.S.
cities from Omaha, Neb., to
Washington, D.C., left scores of
bodies. In Tulsa, Okla., in 1921,
between 150 and 200 blacks
died in a mass assault.
TIMOTHY B. TYSON
FOUR-PRONGED PLAN
The events in Wilmington
were not just a single day of
violence, but part of a four
pronged plan:
1. Steal the election: Under
the banner of white supremacy,
the Democratic Party used
threats, intimidation, anti-black
propaganda and stuffed ballot
boxes to win the statewide
elections on Nov. 8,1898.
2. Riot. On Nov. 10, armed
whites attacked blacks and
their property.
3. Stage a coup. As the riot
unfolded, white leaders forced
the mayor, police chief and
other local leaders to resign
from their offices, placing
themselves in charge.
4. Banish the opposition.
After seizing power, whites re
moved opposition by banishing
their most able and determined
opponents, black and white.
J. PEDER ZANE