The Ghosts of 1898
WILMINGTON RACE RIOT
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 ♦ THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER
ChaDter 1
WILMINGTON: SYMBOL OF BLACK ACHIEVEMENT
A t the close of the 19th century, Wilmington was a sym
bol of black hope in post-Civil War America. The
largest and most important city in North Carolina,
it had a black-ma.jority population —11,324 African-
Americans and 8,731 whites. The beautiful port city
on the Cape Fear, about 30 miles upriver from the
open Atlantic, boasted electric lights and streetcars when much
of the state lumbered along in darkness. Its port did not quite
match those of Savannah or Charleston, but it shipped tons of cot
ton around the world.
r ,
I- X*
I
f' ' * ^
llfl
Market Street between
Front and Second streets, 1898.
PHOTOS COURTESY N.C. OFFICE
OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY
Wilmington’s middling prosper
ity rested upon its black majority.
Blacks owned 10 of the city’s 11 eat
ing houses and 20 of its 22 barber
shops. Black entrepreneur Thomas
Miller was one of Wilmington’s three
real estate agents. The city’s business
directory listed black-owned Bell &
Pickens as one of only four dealers
and shippers of fish and oysters.
Many of Wilmington’s most sought-
after craftsmen were also black: jew
elers and watchmakers, tailors, me-
chanics, furniture makers,
blacksmiths, shoemakers, stone
masons, plasterers, plumbers, wheel
wrights and brick masons. Frederick
Sadgwar, an African-American ar
chitect, financier and contractor,
owned a stately home that still
stands as a momunent to his talents
and industry.
What’s more, the black male lit
eracy rate was higher than that of
whites. The Daily Record, said to
be the only black-owned daily news
paper in the United States, was
edited by the dashing and pro
gressive Alexander Manly, the
mixed-race descendant of Charles
Manly, governor of the state from
1849-51.
Black achievement, however,
was always fragile. Wealthy whites
might be willing to accept some
black advancement, so long as
whites held the reins of power. But
black economic gains also pro
voked many poor whites who com
peted with them, and wealthy
whites persistently encouraged an
imosity between poor whites and
blacks in a divide-and-conquer
strategy. In the years after Recon
struction, aspiring black farmers,
businessmen and professionals of
ten found themselves the victims of
exclusion, harassment, discrimi
nation and a range of violence that
included the horrors of lynching.
—. f'lP jOf
fi.- 1
,1..,
1
> t
9
-
‘S';'
"T-T
•r"-i
i-i
J.
h
iii-
■..fegtp
—— i -1. if: Hk?'|r^
v.-
iEwssi..*:wS)s,
Pedens Shop was one of many black-owned businesses in Wilmington. Blacks owned 20 of the city's 22 barbershops.
One of the city's three real estate agents was black. And black-owned Bel! & Pickens was one of four shippers of fish and oysters.