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C M Y K

The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON’S RACE RIOT AND THE RISE OF WHITE SUPREMACY

Destruction of The Daily Record of Wilmington, said to be the only black-owned daily newspaper in the United States at the time, by white supremacists.
COURTESY N.C. ARCHIVES AND HISTORY

CHARLES B. AYCOCK
Charles Brantley Aycock graduated from the University of North
Carolina in 1880, practiced law in
Goldsboro and became involved in
Democratic Party politics. As
North Carolina’s governor from
1901 to 1905, he championed education and white supremacy. He
died in 1912 while delivering a
speech on education.

BY TIMOTHY B. TYSON

n Nov. 10, 1898, heavily armed columns of white men marched into the black neighborhoods of Wilmington. In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned the
offices of the local black newspaper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents — the
precise number isn’t known — and banished many successful black citizens and their socalled “white nigger” allies. A new social order was born 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 stands as one of the most important chapters in North Carolina’s
history. It is also an event of national historical significance. Occurring only two years after the
Supreme Court had sanctioned “separate but equal” segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson, the riot marked
the embrace of virulent Jim Crow racism, not merely in Wilmington, but across the United States.

JOSEPHUS DANIELS
After studying
at the University
of North Carolina’s law
school, Josephus
Daniels was admitted to the bar
in 1885, though
he never practiced. He purchased The News and
Observer in 1896, making it a
pivotal instrument of the white
supremacy campaign. President
Woodrow Wilson named him secretary of the Navy in 1913. President
Franklin Roosevelt appointed him
ambassador to Mexico in 1933.

Despite its importance, the riot has
remained a hidden chapter in our
state’s history. It was only this year that
North Carolina completed its official investigation of the violence. In addition
to providing a thorough history of the
event, the report of the Wilmington
Race Riot Commission recommended
payments to descendants of victims.
And it advised media outlets, including
The News & Observer, to tell the people the truth about 1898.
Those truths include that what occurred in Wilmington on that chilly
autumn morning was not a spontaneous outbreak of mob violence. It
was, instead, the climax of a carefully orchestrated statewide campaign led by some of the leading figures in North Carolina’s history to
end interracial cooperation and build
a one-party state that would assure
the power of North Carolina’s business elite.

ALEXANDER MANLY
Alexander Manly
was editor of The
Daily Record,
believed to be the
only daily newspaper in the country
owned by an
African-American
at the time. His
editorial attacking whites’ hypocritical attitudes toward interracial sex
was used by Democratic leaders to
support their anti-black scare tactics.

The black-white coalition
At the end of the 19th century,
Wilmington was a symbol of black
hope. Thanks to its busy port, the
black majority city was North Carolina’s largest and most important
municipality. Blacks owned 10 of the
city’s 11 eating houses and 20 of its 22
barbershops. The black male literacy rate was higher than that of
whites.
Black achievement, however, was
always fragile. Wealthy whites were
willing to accept some black advancement, so long as they held the reins of
power. Through the Democratic Party,
whites controlled the state and local
governments from 1876 to 1894. However, the party’s coalition of wealthy,
working class and rural whites began
to unravel in the late 1880s as America plunged into depression.
North Carolina became a hotbed of
agrarian revolt as hard-pressed farmers soured on the Democrats because
of policies that cottoned to banks and
railroads. Many white dissidents eventually founded the People’s Party, also
known as the Populists. Soon they
imagined what had been unimaginable: an alliance with blacks, who

FURNIFOLD SIMMONS
After losing statewide elections in
1894 and 1896, the North Carolina
Democratic Party turned to Furnifold Simmons. As party chairman,
the former congressman orchestrated the campaign of 1898 that
restored Democrats to power. In
gratitude, the legislature appointed
him in 1900 to a seat in the U.S.
Senate that he held for 30 years.
ALFRED MOORE WADDELL
Alfred Moore Waddell served four
terms in Congress (1871-1879). A
gifted orator, he championed white
supremacy in the 1898 election and
was installed as Wilmington’s mayor
during the coup that occurred during the riot.
MORE ONLINE
Read Tim Tyson’s full report at
www.newsobserver.com (key word: 1898)
THE COMMISSION REPORT
Read the state report at
www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc.

shared their economic grievances.
As the economic depression deepened, these white Populists joined
forces with black Republicans, forming an interracial “Fusion” coalition
that championed local self-government, free public education and electoral reforms that would give black
men the same voting rights as whites.
In the 1894 and 1896 elections, the Fusion movement won every statewide
office, swept the legislature and elected
its most prominent white leader,
Daniel Russell, to the governorship.
In Wilmington, the Fusion triumph
lifted black and white Republicans
and white Populists to power. Horrified white Democrats vowed to regain control of the government.

Race baiting fuels vote
As the 1898 political season loomed,
the Populists and Republicans hoped
to make more gains through Fusion.
To rebound, Democrats knew they
had to develop campaign issues that
transcended party lines. Democratic
chairman Furnifold Simmons mapped
out the strategy with leaders whose
names would be immortalized in statues, building names and street signs:
Charles B. Aycock, Henry G. Connor,
Robert B. Glenn, Claude Kitchin,
Locke Craig, Cameron Morrison,
George Rountree, Francis D. Winston
and Josephus Daniels.
They soon decided that racist appeals were the hammer they needed
to shatter the fragile alliance between
poor whites and blacks. They made
the “redemption” of North Carolina
from “Negro domination” the theme
of the 1898 campaign. Though
promising to restore something traditional, they would, in fact, create a
new social order rooted in white supremacy and commercial domination.
At the center of their strategy lay
the gifts and assets of Daniels, editor
and publisher of The News and Observer. He would spearhead a propaganda effort that would incite white
citizens into a furor that led to electoral fraud and mass murder. It used
sexualized images of black men and
their supposedly uncontrollable lust

1A, , 2006
10

for white women. Newspaper stories
and stump speeches warned of “black
beasts” who threatened the flower of
Southern womanhood.
The Democrats did not rely solely
upon newspapers, however, but deployed a statewide campaign of stump
speakers, torchlight parades and physical intimidation. Aycock earned his
chance to become North Carolina’s
“education governor” through his
fiery speeches for white supremacy.

Issue of race and sex
As in the rest of the state, Wilmington Democrats founded their campaign upon propaganda, violence and
fraud. Their efforts to persuade white
men to commit wholesale violence
was made easier in August 1898 when
Alexander Manly, the black owner of
The Daily Record, answered a speech
supporting lynchings. Not all interracial sex is rape, he noted; many white
women willingly sleep with black men.
For Democrats, Manly’s editorial
was a godsend, allowing them to support their lies about predatory blacks.
And no one was better at spreading
that message of hate and violence
than Wilmington’s Alfred Waddell.
The former Confederate soldier was
a passionate speaker, who riled crowds
with his famous line: “We will never
surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the
Cape Fear River with carcasses.”
As Waddell spoke, the Red Shirts, a
paramilitary arm of the Democratic
Party, thundered across the state on
horseback, disrupting African-American church services and Republican
meetings. In Wilmington, the Red
Shirts patrolled every street in the
days before the election, intimidating
and attacking black citizens.
Through these efforts, the Democrats won resounding victories across
the state on Nov. 8, 1898.
Stealing the election would not be
enough for the conservatives. For one
thing, Wilmington’s local Fusionist
government remained in office. Many
local officials — the mayor and the
board of aldermen, for example —
had not been up for re-election in

1898. And Wilmington remained the
center of African-American economic
and political power, as well as a symbol of black pride. White Democrats
were in no mood to wait.
The day after the election, Waddell
unfurled a “White Declaration of Independence” that called for the disfranchisement of black voters.
The following morning, Nov. 10,
Waddell and a heavily armed crowd of
about 2,000 marched to Love and Charity Hall, where the Record had been
published. The mob battered down the
door of the two-story frame structure,
dumped kerosene on the wooden
floors, and set the building ablaze.
Soon the streets filled with angry
blacks and whites. Red Shirts on horseback poured into the black community
and other white vigilantes romped
through the black sections of town to
“kill every damn nigger in sight,” as
one of them put it.
At the end of the day, no one knew
how many people had died — estimates ranged from nine to 300. The
only certainty in the matter of casualties is that democracy was gravely
wounded on the streets of Wilmington.
While the violence raged, white leaders launched a coup d’etat, forcing the
mayor, the board of aldermen, and the
police chief to resign at gunpoint. By
4 p.m. that day, Waddell was Wilmington’s mayor.
Still, they were not done. The white
mob gathered at the city jail to watch
soldiers with fixed bayonets march Fusionist leaders to the train station, banishing at least 21 successful blacks and
their white allies from the city.

Effects of 1898 linger
When the new legislature met in
1899, its first order of business was to
disfranchise blacks. In the years that followed, the leaders of the white supremacy campaign were largely responsible for the birth of the Jim Crow
social order and the rise of a one-party
political system.
More than a century later, it is clear
that the white supremacy campaign
of 1898 injected a vicious racial ideology into American political culture
that we have yet to transcend fully.
Our separate and unequal lives attest
to the fact, though much has changed
for the better and a few things have
changed for the worse.
But if 1898 has saddled us with its
legacy, it also suggests how we might
overcome it. Its central lesson is this:
Human beings make history. So the
mistakes that North Carolinians made
in 1898 can be overcome, if we
choose.
Timothy B. Tyson is senior
research scholar at the Center for
Documentary Studies at Duke
University. This is a condensed
version of an article he wrote
for The News & Observer
and The Charlotte Observer.

C M Y K

The Ghosts of 1898

C M Y K

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 SECTION H RALEIGH, N.C.

COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

them. As violence filled the streets, others snatched control of the government. After installing themselves in power, they banished at least 21 successful blacks and their white allies. Although it is one of the most significant chapters in state history, it

n Nov. 10, 1898, armed white men marched through the black sections of Wilmington, murdering all who dared to challenge

Destruction of The Daily Record of Wilmington, said to be the only black-owned daily newspaper in the United States at the time, by white supremacists.

1H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

WILMINGTON’S RACE RIOT AND THE RISE OF WHITE SUPREMACY

is a story many have never heard. In this special report, historian Timothy B. Tyson describes the carefully orchestrated campaign that spread white supremacy across North Carolina and the South. He explains how many of the region’s leading fig-

ures and institutions seized power, altering the state’s history and creating a legacy that haunts us still.
STORY BY TIMOTHY B. TYSON

paper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents — the precise number isn’t known — and banished many successful black citizens and their so-called “white nigger” allies. A new social order was
born 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 crucial 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 country. It
was a time when some state legislatures — in the North and South —
were controlled by members of the
Ku Klux Klan. It was a period when
groups of respectable white Southerners gathered to burn 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 AfricanAmericans lost the right to vote to
a white South determined to control 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 flowering of the Age of Jim Crow. White
authorities constructed the symbols
and signs of everyday life to show
people their place. “White” and “Colored” signs were erected at railroad
stations, over drinking fountains and
at the doors of theaters and restaurants. 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 inspired bloody racist crusades across
the United States. When whites in
Georgia, led by would-be governor
Hoke Smith, sought to take the ballot 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 Furnifold 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 after deadly warfare.”
Smith campaigned across Georgia, braying about the protection of
“white womanhood” and demand-

ing that the state take the ballot from
blacks. If whites could not disfranchise 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, exactly 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

C M Y K

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, Ill., in an attack
that drew force from Wilmington’s example. In East St. Louis,
Ill., 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 to Washington, D.C., left scores of bodies.
In Tulsa in 1921, between 150
and 200 blacks died in a mass
assault.
TIMOTHY B. TYSON

3H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned the offices of the local black news-

J. PEDER ZANE

FOUR-PRONGED PLAN
The events in Wilmington
were not just a single day of
violence, but part of a fourpronged 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 removed opposition by banishing
their most able and determined
opponents, black and white.
J. PEDER ZANE

ness interests kept step with the clerks.”

laborers marched together. The lawyer and his client were side by side. Men of large busi-

thorough discipline and under command of officers,” one witness wrote, “capitalists and

largest city and the center of African-American political and economic success. “Under

men marched military-fashion into the black neighborhoods of Wilmington, then the state’s

In 1892, Homer Plessy purchased 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 segregation in public facilities and
inspiring a harsher wave of
restrictive Jim Crow laws.

n a chilly autumn morning 108 years ago this month, heavily armed columns of white

HOW A RAILROAD TICKET
INSPIRED JIM CROW LAWS

EVENTS OF 1898 SHAPED OUR HISTORY

largely a hidden chapter in our state’s
history. It was only this year that
North Carolina completed its official investigation of the violence.
The report of the Wilmington Race
Riot Commission concluded 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 ghosts 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 unacknowledged. The new world walks
forever in the footsteps of the old.
The story of the Wilmington race
riot abides at the core of North Carolina’s past.
And that story holds many lessons
for us today. It reminds us that history does not just happen. It does not
unfold naturally like the seasons or
rise and fall like the tides. History is
made by people, who bend and shape
the present to create the future. The
history of Wilmington teaches us
that the ugly racial conflict that
shaped North Carolina and the nation during much of the 20th century
was not inevitable. So long as we
remember that past, we might overcome its legacy.
For more than a century, most historians have obscured the triumph of
white domination in 1898 by calling
it a “race riot,” though it was not the
spontaneous outbreak of mob violence 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 orchestrated 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 government in the name of white supremacy, including Charles B. Aycock and Josephus Daniels. No
monument exists to the handful of visionaries who were able to imagine
a better future, beyond the bounds
of white supremacy. Nor do we remember those who gave their lives
for simple justice. Instead, we mistake power for greatness and celebrate those responsible for our worst
errors. The losers of 1898, though
flawed themselves, have far more to
teach us than the winners.

Introduction

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

The Ghosts of 1898

THE NEWS & OBSERVER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THE NEWS & OBSERVER

Chapter 1

WILMINGTON: SYMBOL OF BLACK ACHIEVEMENT

t the close of the 19th century, Wilmington was a symbol of black hope in post-Civil War America. The
largest and most important city in North Carolina,
it had a black-majority population — 11,324 AfricanAmericans 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-

C M Y K

4H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

ton around the world.
Wilmington’s middling prosperity rested upon its black majority.
Blacks owned 10 of the city’s 11 eating houses and 20 of its 22 barbershops. 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 soughtafter craftsmen were also black: jewelers and watchmakers, tailors, mechanics, furniture makers,
blacksmiths, shoemakers, stonemasons, plasterers, plumbers, wheelwrights and brick masons. Frederick
Sadgwar, an African-American architect, financier and contractor,
owned a stately home that still
stands as a monument to his talents
and industry.
What’s more, the black male literacy rate was higher than that of
whites. The Daily Record, said to
be the only black-owned daily newspaper in the United States, was
edited by the dashing and progressive 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 provoked many poor whites who competed with them, and wealthy
whites persistently encouraged animosity between poor whites and
blacks in a divide-and-conquer
strategy. In the years after Reconstruction, aspiring black farmers,
businessmen and professionals often found themselves the victims of
exclusion, harassment, discrimination and a range of violence that
included the horrors of lynching.

Market Street between
Front and Second streets, 1898.
PHOTOS COURTESY N.C. OFFICE
OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

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 Bell & Pickens was one of four shippers of fish and oysters.

The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

Chapter 2

RUSSELL LEADS FUSION

THE FUSION MOVEMENT: EXPERIMENT IN INTERRACIAL DEMOCRACY

C M Y K

THE NEWS & OBSERVER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

espite their defeat in 1865, the feverish devotion of the
former Confederates to white dominion did not burn
off like mists in the midmorning sun. For many white
Southerners, black citizenship remained unacceptable
and justified any level of violence. Ku Klux Klan terrorism swept the South. As the federal government be-

FUSION VICTORY
Republicans and Populists
oined forces to defeat Democrats in 1894.
894 statewide election results
North Carolina General Assembly
House

Senate

Fusion
coalition
Democrats
0

Source: 1898 Wilmington Race
Riot Commission Report

A cartoon in The News and Observer on Oct. 26, 1898, warned
voters of the interracial Fusion coalition of Populists and
Republicans who championed local self-government, free public
education and giving a black man the same vote as a white man.
SOURCE: THE NEWS AND OBSERVER

best. Nearly all of the white Fusionists resisted equality for their
African-American allies. But since
they represented a vital part of
the coalition, quite a few black
North Carolinians took places on
county electoral tickets and won.
Imperfect though it was, this Fusion coalition embodied a brighter
future for our state, not just in its
ideals but in its practical approach
to coalition politics.
Horrified at the prospect of a

more democratic government, with
all men eligible to vote and hold office on equal terms, wealthy white
Democrats vowed to regain control
of the government.
Beginning in 1897, they saw
their challenge as finding a strategy that would move the focus of
disgruntled white voters away from
their policies. What they needed
was an issue that would shatter
the fragile alliance between poor
whites and blacks.

TIMOTHY B. TYSON

90
80
70
60

access to the ballot box and safety
from white terrorism.
These “Pops” were not quite as
devoted to white supremacy as
their conservative opponents.
Still, poisonous ideas that had
once served as a rationale for slavery — that God had distributed
moral, cultural and intellectual
worth on the basis of pigmentation — were as common among
white Populists as they were
among Democrats.
As the economic depression deepened, these increasingly desperate
Populists joined forces with Republicans. Together they formed an
interracial “Fusion” coalition that
championed local self-government,
free public education, modest regulation of monopoly capitalism and
“one man, one vote,” which would
give a black man the same voting
power as a white man. In the 1894
and 1896 elections, the Fusion
movement won every statewide office, swept the legislature and
elected its most prominent white
leader, Daniel Russell, to the governorship.
In Wilmington, the Fusion triumph lifted black and white Republicans and white Populists to
power. The new Fusion legislature
reformed local government to allow
communities to pick their own leadership, and won a majority of the
Wilmington Board of Aldermen. But
white Republicans and Populists
kept most offices to themselves; only
four of the 10 aldermen were
African-Americans, despite the city’s
black majority.
We must resist the temptation
to take a romantic view of the
Fusionists and imagine that they
represented the same vision as
the civil rights movement at its

The collapse of Reconstruction
left North Carolina with two distinct political parties. While Republicans, favored by blacks, controlled
many federal appointments from
Washington, the Democrats ruled
the state and local governments from
1876 to 1894. But the coalition of
wealthy, working class and rural
whites that kept the Democrats in
power began to unravel in the late
1880s as the American economy
headed toward depression.
North Carolina became a hotbed
of agrarian revolt as hard-pressed
farmers soured on the Democrats
because of policies that cottoned to
banks and railroads. Many white dissidents rallied around economic issues and eventually founded the People’s Party, also known as the
Populists. As the ruling order discredited itself through its inability to
meet human needs, many of the economic dissidents became racial dissidents, too.
Now they imagined what had been
unimaginable: an alliance with
blacks, who shared their economic
grievances but also sought secure

hard to limit black voting.

the Democrats, took power across the region by 1876, and worked

construction. The Conservatives, who later changed their name to

It would be several generations before North Carolinians
again witnessed the interracial
cooperation that marked the
race for governor in 1896. After
a heated struggle, the Fusionists nominated Daniel Russell, a
broad-faced, fleshy white man
of nearly 300 pounds, for governor. Though many of the
African-American delegates
had favored another candidate,
Russell swore his support for
black advancement.
“I stand for the Negroes’
rights and liberties,” he declared. “I sucked at the breast
of a Negro woman. I judge from
the adult development the milk
must have been nutritious and
plentiful,” Russell joked, mocking his enormous girth. “The
Negroes do not want control.
They only demand, and they
ought to have it, every right a
white man has.”
Campaign fliers from the
1896 election reveal the Fusionist effort to appeal to black
voters. “To the Colored Voters
of Union County” reminded
African-Americans that “two
years ago the Republicans and
Populists of North Carolina
united and made one grand
struggle for liberty,” and that
only this defeat of the Democrats enabled blacks to vote
again. “THE CHAINS OF SERVITUDE ARE BROKEN,” the interracial alliance reminded black
citizens in an appeal to race
pride. “NOW NEVER LICK THE
HAND THAT LASHED YOU.”
Such appeals brought black
voters out in a gesture of audacious hope that the interracial
democracy born in Reconstruction, but dead for 20 years, could
be revived. An estimated 87
percent of eligible black voters
went to the polls in 1896, and
Russell was elected.

white terrorism and electoral fraud brought about the end of Re-

5H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

COURTESY UNC-CHAPEL HILL

came increasingly reluctant to protect the rights of former slaves,

The Ghosts of 1898

CHARLES B. AYCOCK

Charles Brantley Aycock was
born in Wayne County on Nov. 1,
1859, the youngest of 10 children.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1880, he
practiced law in Goldsboro and
became involved in Democratic
Party politics. As North Carolina’s
governor from 1901 to 1905, he
championed education and white
supremacy. He died in 1912 while
delivering a speech on education.

COURTESY UNC LIBRARY

JOSEPHUS DANIELS

C M Y K

6H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THE NEWS & OBSERVER

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

Chapter 3
THE STATEWIDE WHITE SUPREMACY CAMPAIGN

harles B. Aycock, governor of North Carolina from 1901 to 1905, has become the central
symbol of the state’s progressive traditions, first and most illustrious of our “education
governors.” Politicians in North Carolina making high-minded appeals for education and
civility routinely invoke “the spirit of Aycock.” The contradictory truth is that Aycock earned
his prominence by fomenting a bloody white supremacy revolution in North Carolina. This
campaign — with Wilmington as its flash point — essentially overthrew the state gov-

ernment by force and by fraud, ending meaningful democracy in the state for generations. How this
happened is a lesson in the politics of racial violence and the ironies of public memory.

Josephus Daniels was born in
Washington, N.C., in 1862. His father, a shipbuilder for the Confederacy, was killed before the child
was 3. His mother soon moved the
family to Wilson, where she worked
for the post office. At age 16, he
entered the world of journalism; by
18 he had bought the Advance, a
paper serving Wilson, Nash and
Greene counties.
After studying at the University
of North Carolina’s law school, he
was admitted to the bar in 1885,
though he never practiced. Instead he continued to publish and
edit newspapers, proving himself
NEWS & OBSERVER FILE PHOTO
a fierce ally of the Democratic
Party. He purchased The News and Observer in 1894, making it a
pivotal instrument of the white supremacy campaign. President
Woodrow Wilson named him secretary of the Navy in 1913. President
Franklin Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to Mexico in 1933.
Daniels died in Raleigh on Jan. 15, 1948.

FURNIFOLD SIMMONS
Furnifold Simmons was born on
his father’s plantation near Pollocksville in Jones County in 1854.
After graduating from Trinity
College (now Duke University) in
1873, he studied law and began
practicing in New Bern. He served
one term in Congress (1887-89),
then lost the next two elections
for that seat.
After losing statewide elections
in 1894 and 1896, North Carolina’s
Democratic Party named him its
chairman. Simmons orchestrated
the campaign of 1898 that would
restore the party to power. Showing its gratitude, the legislature
COURTESY UNC-CHAPEL HILL
appointed him in 1900 to a seat in
the U.S. Senate that he would hold for 30 years.

As the 1898 political season loomed,
the Populists and Republicans hoped
to make more gains through Fusion.
The Democrats, desperate to overcome their unpopularity, decided to
place all their chips on racial antagonism. Party chairman Furnifold Simmons mapped out the campaign strategy with leaders whose names would
be immortalized in statues, on buildings and street signs: Aycock, Henry
G. Connor, Robert B. Glenn, Claude
Kitchin, Locke Craig, Cameron Morrison, George Rountree, Francis D.
Winston and Josephus Daniels.
These men knew that the Democrats’ only hope was to develop campaign issues that cut across party
lines. Southern history and practical
politics had taught them that white
discomfort with black political par-

ticipation remained a smoldering
ember that they could fan to full
flame. So they made the “redemption” of North Carolina from “Negro
domination” the theme of the 1898
campaign. Though promising to restore something traditional, they
would, in fact, create a new social order rooted in white supremacy and
commercial domination.
A propaganda campaign slandering African-Americans would not
come cheap. Simmons made secret
deals with railroads, banks and industrialists. In exchange for donations right away, the Democrats
pledged to slash corporate taxes after their victory.
At the center of their strategy lay
the gifts and assets of Daniels, editor and publisher of The News and

Observer. He spearheaded a propaganda effort that made white partisans angry enough to commit electoral fraud and mass murder.
It would not be merely a campaign
of heated rhetoric but also one of violence and intimidation. Daniels called
Simmons “a genius in putting everybody to work — men who could write,
men who could speak, and men who
could ride — the last by no means the
least important.” By “ride,” Daniels
employed a euphemism for vigilante
terror. Black North Carolinians had to
be kept away from the polls by any
means necessary.
Though it would end in bloodshed,
the campaign began with an ordinary
enough meeting of the Democratic exCONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

The Ghosts of 1898

THE NEWS & OBSERVER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

C M Y K

Chapter 4
PROPAGANDA, PASSION ACROSS THE STATE

rational passions. They used sexualized images of
black men and their supposedly uncontrollable lust
for white women. Newspaper stories and stump
speeches warned of “black beasts” and “black brutes”

anhood. They cast any achievement or assertion by African-

THE NEWS AND OBSERVER

80
70

House in Raleigh, pounding the
podium for white supremacy and
the protection of white womanhood.
White men have neglected poor
and long-suffering white women,
he explained in his famous “guilt
and degradation” speech, which he
repeated across the state that fall.
“For them,” he said of the wives,
daughters and sweethearts of white
men, “it is everything whether
Negro supremacy is to continue.”
Wilmington, Aycock explained
later, was “the storm center of the
white supremacy movement.” Here
was the largest city in the state,
with a black majority and a blackowned daily newspaper, and several African-American office holders. Wilmington represented the
heart of the Fusionist threat. And so
it became the focus of the Democrats’ campaign.

Arms — Blacks to Be Prevented
from Voting in Wilmington, N.C. —
Prepared for Race War — Property-Holding Classes Determined
Upon Ending Negro Domination.”
The white supremacy forces did
not depend solely upon newspapers,
but required a statewide campaign
of stump speakers, torchlight parades and physical intimidation.
Former Gov. Thomas J. Jarvis and
future Govs. Robert B. Glenn and
Cameron Morrison struck many a
blow for the conservative cause.
“The king of oratory, however,
was Charles B. Aycock,” historian
H. Leon Prather writes, “the Democratic Moses, who would lead North
Carolina out of the chaos and darkness of ‘Negro domination.’ ” As he
did throughout the campaign, Aycock mesmerized a standing-roomonly crowd at the Metropolitan

The racist assumptions that made it
effective were commonplace. Without the cooperation of the newspapers, though, especially The News
and Observer, the white supremacy
campaign could not have succeeded.
Although he never apologized for
his central role in the campaign,
Daniels later acknowledged that his
newspaper had been harsh, unfair
and irresponsible. The News and
Observer was “cruel in its flagellations,” Daniels wrote 40 years later.
“We were never very careful about
winnowing out the stories or running
them down … they were played up
in big type.”
Nor was it a secret, as Election
Day approached, that violence was
part of the Democrats’ strategy.
Two weeks before the slaughter in
Wilmington, The Washington Post
ran these headlines: “A City Under

Aware that a picture could be
worth a thousand votes, Josephus
Daniels engaged the services of cartoonist Norman Jennett to pen frontpage caricatures of blacks. Jennett’s
masterpiece was a depiction of a
huge vampire bat with “Negro rule”
inscribed on its wings, and white
women beneath its claws, with the
caption “The Vampire That Hovers
Over North Carolina.” Other images
included a large Negro foot with a
white man pinned under it. The caption: “How Long Will This Last?”
Sensational headlines and accounts
of supposed Negro crimes were
Daniels’ stock in trade: “Negro Control in Wilmington,” “A Negro Insulted the Postmistress Because He
Did Not Get A Letter,” “Negroes
Have Social Equality” and “Negro On
A Train With Big Feet Behind
White” were typical.
The News and Observer was one
of many newspapers spreading antiblack propaganda. “The Anglo
Saxon/A Great White Man’s Rally,”
read a headline in the state’s leading
conservative paper, the Charlotte
Daily Observer. It offered readers a
stream of sensationalized and fabricated stories about black crime,
corruption and atrocities against
white women. Star reporter H.E.C.
“Red Buck” Bryant traveled North
Carolina filing triumphant dispatches
about the white supremacy campaign and disparaging accounts of
the Fusion government.
Populist leader Marion Butler,
who was elected by the Fusion legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1895,
anticipated the crucial role newspapers would play in the 1898 campaign. The year before, he wrote,
“There is but one chance and but
one hope for the railroads to capture the next legislature, and that is
for the ‘nigger’ to be made the issue”
with the Raleigh and Charlotte papers “together in the same bed shouting ‘nigger.’ ”
This propaganda fell on fertile soil.

N&O cartoonist Norman Jennett penned caricatures of blacks.

American men as merely an effort to get close to white women.

7H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

who threatened the pure flower of Southern wom-

o achieve victory in 1898, Democrats appealed to ir-

ecutive committee on Nov. 20, 1897.
At its end, Francis D. Winston of
Bertie County published a call for
whites to rise up and “reestablish Anglo-Saxon rule and honest government in North Carolina.” He attacked
Republican and Populist leaders for
turning over local offices to blacks.
“Homes have been invaded, and the
sanctity of woman endangered,” the
Democratic broadside claimed. “Business has been paralyzed and property rendered less valuable.”
This claim ignored the enormous
commercial expansion in North Carolina in the 1890s. Despite the pain
of farmers pelted by the national
agricultural depression, textile mills
had increased fourfold; invested capital had surged to 12 times its 1890
value; the number of employed workers in North Carolina had skyrocketed during the decade; and the railroad interests had obtained a 99-year
lease on public railways. But the
truth was not the point. The Democrats clearly planned to portray
themselves as the saviors of North
Carolina from the Fusionist regime
— and from “Negro domination.”
By any rational assessment,
African-Americans could hardly be
said to “dominate” North Carolina
politics. Helen G. Edmonds, the
scholar from N.C. Central University, which in her day was called
North Carolina College for Negroes,
weighed the matter in her classic
1951 work, “The Negro and Fusion
Politics in North Carolina, 18941901.” She wrote:
“An examination of ‘Negro domination’ in North Carolina revealed
that one Negro was elected to Congress; ten to the state legislature; four
aldermen were elected in Wilmington,
two in New Bern, two in Greenville,
one or two in Raleigh, one county
treasurer and one county coroner in
New Hanover; one register of deeds
in Craven; one Negro jailer in Wilmington; and one county commissioner
in Warren and one in Craven.”
Indeed, all three political parties
were controlled by whites. Two of
them — the Populists and the Democrats — could fairly be described as
hostile to blacks, though the Populists supported a small degree of
black office-holding in an arrangement based on the arithmetic of political power. Given that North Carolina’s population was 33 percent
African-American, it would be far
more accurate to describe the state
of affairs as “white domination.”
But to white supremacists, the fact
that black votes — usually for white
candidates — could sway elections
was tantamount to domination. They
wanted blacks removed from the political equation.

SUPREMACY
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

The Ghosts of 1898

EDITORIAL STOKED ANGER

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THE NEWS & OBSERVER

Chapter 5

WADDELL’S POLITICS

THE WILMINGTON CAMPAIGN

arly in the fall of 1898, Democratic Party organizers

arrived in Wilmington to press their cause. Most of the

white-owned businesses in town contributed money.

George Rountree, a local conservative, and Francis

Winston of Bertie County, organized white supremacy
clubs in the port city. Lawyers William B. McCoy,

C M Y K

8H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

COURTESY UNC-CHAPEL HILL

Alexander Manly’s editorial
response in The Daily Record
to a pro-lynching speech delivered by a Georgia woman
seemed heaven-sent to Democratic leaders. Though the
African-American editor articulated painful truths, his adversaries used it to support their
anti-black scare tactics.
“The papers are filled often
with reports of rapes of white
women, and the subsequent
lynching of the alleged rapist.
The editors pour forth volumes
of aspersions against all Negroes
because of the few who may be
guilty. If the papers and speakers
of the other race would condemn the commission of crime
because it is crime and not try to
make it appear that the Negroes
were the only criminals, they
would find their strongest allies
in the intelligent Negroes themselves …
“Our experience among poor
white people in the country
teaches us that the women of
that race are not any more
particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored
men than are the white men
with colored women. Meetings
of this kind go on for some time
until the woman’s infatuation or
the man’s boldness bring attention to them and the man is
lynched for rape. … Tell your
men that it is no worse for a
black man to be intimate with a
white woman, than for a white
man to be intimate with a colored woman. You set yourselves
down as a lot of carping hypocrites in that you cry aloud for
the virtue of your women while
you seek to destroy the morality
of ours. Don’t think ever that
your women will remain pure
while you are debauching ours.
You sow the seed — the harvest
will come in due time.”

Iredell Meares, John Dillard Bellamy and others allowed the White
Government Union — as the Democratic Party headquarters in
Raleigh dubbed the local clubs — to meet in their offices.
Benjamin Keith, a white Populist
who served on the Wilmington
Board of Aldermen, claimed that
support for the White Government
Union was not altogether voluntary; the clubs demanded that every
white man in the community join.
“Many good people were marched
from their homes, some by committees, and taken to headquarters
and told to sign,” Keith wrote. The
threat of banishment or worse was
plain, he said: “Those that did not
[sign] were notified that they must
leave the city … as there was plenty
of rope.”
The white supremacy campaign
in Wilmington made fervent appeals for the support of poor whites.
With the blessing of the Chamber of
Commerce, it demanded that whites
be given the jobs now held by
blacks, especially municipal positions. However, the campaign was
not led by that symbol of Southern
racism — the uneducated “redneck.”
In fact, Wilmington’s elite directed
the charge. “The Secret Nine,” as an
admiring local white historian called
the cabal that helped hatch the violence and coup in Wilmington, included J. Alan Taylor, Hardy L.
Fennell, W.A. Johnson, L.B. Sasser,
William Gilchrist, P.B. Manning,
E.S. Lathrop, Walter L. Parsley and
Hugh MacRae. It was these men,
and other scions of Eastern North
Carolina’s aristocracy, who organized armed militias to take control of the streets and drew up lists
of black and white Fusionists to be
banished or killed.
Not only in Wilmington but
across North Carolina, the white
supremacy campaign represented
the triumph of financial and manufacturing interests. Later, the
Charlotte Daily Observer would
assess the white supremacy campaign and proudly celebrate the

triumph of wealth and bigotry:
“The business men of the State are
largely responsible for the victory.
Not before in years have the bank
men, the mill men, and the business men in general — the backbone of the property interest of
the State — taken such sincere interest. They worked from start to
finish, and furthermore they spent
large bits of money in behalf of the
cause.”
The campaign to persuade white
men to commit wholesale violence
was made easier in August 1898
when the black-owned Daily Record
of Wilmington answered an inflammatory article in the Wilmington Messenger. As
part of the conservative propaganda
barrage, the Messenger reprinted
a
year-old
speech by Rebecca Felton of
Georgia that
urged white
Southern men
to “lynch, a thousand times a week,
if necessary,” to protect white women from
black rapists.
In response to this fabricated
rape scare and call for mass murder, the Record’s editor, Alexander
Manly, pointed out that not all
sexual contact between black men
and white women was coerced. He
also noted that white men routinely seduced or raped black
women. Why, Manly asked, was it
worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman than for
a white man to be intimate with a
black woman?
Manly’s charge was particularly incendiary because he embodied its
truth — the black editor was a direct
descendant of North Carolina’s

white governor, Charles Manly.
For Democratic strategists,
Manly’s editorial was a timely gift.
In public, Furnifold Simmons
fumed that Manly had “dared
openly and publicly to assail the
virtue of our pure white womanhood.” In private, however, the
Democratic Party’s chief strategist
was far more cheerful. Walker Taylor, a white Democrat from Wilmington, wrote: “Senator Simmons,
who was here at the time, told us
that the article would make an easy
victory for us and urged us to try
and prevent any riot until after the
election.”
Sen. Ben Tillman of South Carolina, the South’s most gifted racist
demagogue, saw no reason to wait.
Tillman came to North Carolina in
the fall of 1898 at the invitation of
Simmons and bragged that he and
his fellow Red Shirts, a terrorist
militia, had seized power in South
Carolina by force and by fraud. Tillman urged the white supremacy
forces in North Carolina to adopt
his “shotgun policy” and shamed
them for failure to use violence already, especially against Manly.
“Why didn’t you kill that damn nigger editor who wrote that?” Tillman taunted the crowd.
“Send him to South
Carolina and let him
publish any such
offensive stuff,
and he will be
killed.”
Tillman
headlined the
largest rally of
the white supremacy campaign, held in
Fayetteville on
Oct. 20. By early
morning, in one account, “vehicles filling all
the streets and thoroughfares gave
evidence that the white people of
upper Cape Fear had left the plow,
the machine shops, the kitchen, nay,
the very neighborhood schoolroom.” Hundreds of white men
showed up in red shirts, paying
homage to Tillman’s terrorist
achievements. A delegation from
Wilmington led the parade, followed by 300 Red Shirts in military formation, trailed by a float
with 22 beautiful young white
women dressed in white. The constant boom of cannons added a violent percussion to a brass band
from Wilmington.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LOWER CAPE FEAR
HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Born in Hillsborough, Alfred
Moore Waddell began practicing
law in Wilmington shortly after
graduating from the University
of North Carolina in 1853. Rising
to the rank of lieutenant colonel
during the Civil War, Waddell
later served four terms in Congress (1871-1879).
After his electoral defeat, he
practiced law, edited the Charlotte Journal-Observer for two
years (1881-82) and remained
active in Democratic politics. A
gifted orator, he championed
white supremacy in the 1898
election and was installed as the
city’s mayor during the coup
that occurred during the riot.
J. PEDER ZANE

RED SHIRT VIGILANTES
The white sheets of the Ku
Klux Klan have become the
enduring symbol of racist
vigilantism, but Red Shirts also
struck fear in the hearts of
black people. First coming to
prominence in South Carolina
in the elections of 1876 that
would spell the end of Reconstruction, red shirts were
donned by men eager to commit violence against blacks and
their white allies. During Wilmington’s white supremacy
campaign of 1898, Red Shirts
patrolled the city’s streets to
intimidate blacks.
J. PEDER ZANE

THE NEWS & OBSERVER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

C M Y K

Chapter 6
SILVER TONGUES AND RED SHIRTS

hough Ben Tillman helped fire the boiler of white supremacy, Wilmington had plenty of homegrown talent. The
most effective advocate of violence probably was Alfred
Moore Waddell. A lawyer and newspaper publisher born
on Moorefield Plantation near Hillsborough, Waddell had
fought as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate cavalry.

Red Shirts were a paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party that disrupted black church services
and Republican meetings. This photo was taken in Laurinburg in Scotland County in 1898.

VOTING FRAUD IN 1898
Intimidation, violence and
ballot-stuffing were the Election
Day tools of choice of Democrats in Wilmington. The most
egregious cases of election
fraud occurred in heavily black
sections of the First Ward.
In the Fourth Precinct, Democrats dramatically suppressed
the black vote. Although 337
Republicans were registered in
the precinct, the party tallied
only 97 votes.
In the Fifth Precinct, Democrats not only suppressed the
black vote, they also inflated
their own totals. Thirty Democrats were registered in the
precinct, but the party earned
456 votes. A precinct with 343
registered voters produced a
total of 607 votes.

J. PEDER ZANE

GOVERNOR ELUDES MOB
Despite a flurry of threats,
Republican Gov. Daniel Russell
voted without incident in his
hometown of Wilmington on
Nov. 8. His return trip to Raleigh
was not so quiet. His train was
stopped twice by Red Shirts —
including one gang led by a
future governor, Cameron Morrison. Morrison warned the governor of vigilantes up the track,
and persuaded Russell to hide.
The governor huddled in a
mail-baggage car to avoid a
lynch mob.
TIMOTHY B. TYSON

A “White Man’s Rally” on Nov. 2
featured free barbecue and torchlight parades of armed men. The
night before the election, Waddell reminded the armed throng: “You are
Anglo-Saxons. You are armed and
prepared, and you will do your duty.
If you find the Negro out voting, tell
him to leave the polls, and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his
tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we
have to do it with guns.”
The following day, Nov. 8, 1898,
many African-Americans in Wilmington avoided the polls in hope of
evading bloodshed. Other black citizens attempted to vote. But the
armed white men posted on every
block by the White Government
Union certainly kept many away
from the ballot box. Though the intimidation might have sufficed,
given the violent atmosphere and
the withdrawal of the local Republican ticket, the Democrats nevertheless stuffed ballot boxes. Dowling, the Red Shirt leader who also
served as a Democratic Party election official, explained that he and
others were taught “how to deposit
Republican ballots so they could be
replaced.”
Democrats won in Wilmington
by 6,000 votes, a huge swing from
two years before, when the
Fusionists earned a 5,000-vote
advantage. Even among the disappointed Fusionists, there was some
relief that the city had been spared
widespread violence.
“I awoke that morning with thankful heart that the election has
passed,” a white woman, Jane
Cronly, wrote, “without the shedding of the blood of either the innocent or the guilty.”
But even her small and measured
optimism was unfounded.

munities, and drove would-be black
voters away with gunfire. “Before
we allow the Negroes to control
this state as they do now,” Congressman W.W. Kitchin declared,
“we will kill enough of them that
there will not be enough left to
bury them.”
Russell, who was from Wilmington, complained before the election
that “citizens had been fired on
from ambush and taken from their
homes at night and whipped; and
that peaceful citizens were afraid to
register” to vote. To quell the violence, Russell eventually withdrew
the Republican ticket from New
Hanover County. Yet this was not
enough to satisfy his opponents.
When Russell traveled to Wilmington on Election Day, Red Shirt
terrorists swarmed his train at Hamlet and tried to lynch him. To understand the condition of the democratic process in North Carolina
that year, we are forced to contemplate the governor huddling in
a mail-baggage car, hiding from a
lynch mob organized by his electoral opponents.
The Red Shirt mobs ruled the
streets of Wilmington as the 1898
election approached. Mike Dowling,
a former firefighter who had lost his
job for “incompetency, drunkenness
and continued insubordination,” led
them through the streets of Wilmington on horseback.
Wealthy Democrats provided free
food and liquor to the white mobs in
the streets. Leaders of the white
supremacy campaign also spent the
staggering sum of $1,200 on a new,
rapid-fire Gatling gun. They demonstrated its power in early November, leaving no doubt of the consequences for those who openly
resisted the campaign.

[in the other.]” Guthrie warned
the Fusionists: “Resist our march
of progress and civilization and we
will wipe you off the face of the
Earth.”
Men weren’t the only ones calling
for violence. Rebecca Cameron,
Waddell’s cousin, wrote to him on
Oct. 26 to urge him to carry out his
murderous threats. “Where are the
white men and the shotguns!” she
exclaimed. “It is time for the oft
quoted shotgun to play a part, and
an active one, in the elections.”
The situation was sufficiently desperate, she believed, that not mere
threats but “bloodletting is needed
for the hearts of the common man
and when the depletion commences
let it be thorough!” Urging her menfolk to eliminate Gov. Russell, in
particular, Cameron quoted the
Bible in her plea for bloodshed:
“Solomon says, ‘There is a Time
to Kill.’ ”
The threats were not empty.
The Red Shirts, a paramilitary
arm of the Democratic Party,
thundered across the state on
horseback, disrupting AfricanAmerican church services and Republican meetings. In Wilmington, the Red Shirts patrolled every
street in the city in the days before
the election, intimidating and attacking black citizens.
The terror went far beyond
Wilmington; it was felt in many of
the eastern counties. “The Red
Shirt organization caused much unrest and alarm,” the editor of the
Maxton Blade recalled, “and just
before election day made nightly
raids, shot through houses, and
warned Negroes not to go near the
polls.” On the day of the balloting,
Red Shirts blocked every road leading to Maxton and many other com-

Waddell packed an auditorium in
Wilmington early in the fall of 1898,
where he shared the stage with 50 of
the city’s most prominent citizens.
White supremacy, he declared, was
the sole issue and traitors to the
white race should be held accountable. “I do not hesitate to say this
publicly,” Waddell proclaimed, “that
if a race conflict occurs in North
Carolina, the very first men that
ought to be held to account are the
white leaders of the Negroes who
will be chiefly responsible for it. …
I mean the governor of this state
who is the engineer of all the deviltry.” But his fiery closing, which became the tag line of his standard
stump speech that fall, made clear
that blacks would bear the brunt of
the violence. “We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes,”
Waddell thundered, “even if we have
to choke the Cape Fear River with
carcasses.”
Waddell unfurled his next bloodthirsty declaration in Goldsboro,
where 8,000 white Democrats came
to cheer the long-haired colonel
and other Democratic leaders, including Simmons, Aycock and
William A. Guthrie, mayor of
Durham.
Waddell set the tone and electrified the crowd with his promise
to throw enough black bodies into
the Cape Fear River to block its
passage to the sea. Guthrie, flanked
by Red Shirts, imagined a bloody
race war. “The Anglo-Saxon
planted civilization on this continent,” Guthrie claimed, “and wherever this race has been in conflict
with another race, it has asserted
its supremacy and either conquered or exterminated the foe.
This great race has carried the
Bible in one hand and the sword

COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

some called “the silver tongued orator of the east.”

throw the Russell regime by violence and demagoguery, becoming what

ernor of North Carolina. Unemployed in 1898, Waddell set out to over-

to Daniel Russell, the Republican who would become the Fusionist gov-

9H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

After the war, he served three terms in Congress, finally losing his seat

The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THE NEWS & OBSERVER

Chapter 7

VIOLENCE IN THE STREETS

he white supremacy campaign was so inflammatory that
violence seemed unavoidable. “You cannot think or
imagine anything to equal or compare to the policy the
Democrats seem to have adopted to carry this section,”
Benjamin Keith, a Fusionist alderman, wrote to Sen.
Marion Butler in late October. “I look for a lot of in-

C M Y K

10H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

nocent men killed here if things continue as they are now.”
Stealing the election would not be
enough for the conservatives. For
one thing, Wilmington’s local Fusionist government remained in office, since many local officials — the
mayor and the board of aldermen, for
example — had not been up for reelection in 1898. And Wilmington
remained the center of African-American economic and political power, as
well as a symbol of black pride. White
Democrats were in no mood to wait.
The day after the election, Hugh
MacRae, a Massachusetts Institute
of Technology-trained industrialist
and one of the Secret Nine, called a
public meeting. “Attention White
Men,” the headline in the Wilmington
Messenger proclaimed. Court testimony later described the meeting at
the courthouse as a “respectable representative assemblage of businessmen, merchants, lawyers, doctors,
divines, and mechanics.” One local
white man wrote to a friend in
Raleigh that “businessmen are at present holding a big meeting to take
steps to run the mayor and some
prominent Negroes out of town.”
The meeting began with former
Mayor S.H. Fishblate calling Alfred
Waddell to the podium. Waddell
unfurled a “White Declaration of
Independence,” drawn up by the
Secret Nine. The U.S. Constitution
“did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of African origin,” Waddell
read aloud. The framers of the
Union “did not contemplate for
their descendants a subjection to
an inferior race.” Never again, the
declaration said, would white men
of New Hanover County permit
black political participation. The
crowd roared and rose to its feet.
An appointed committee revised
the declaration, adding calls for the
resignations of the mayor, the chief
of police, and the board of aldermen,
in addition to the demand for Manly’s
newspaper to “cease to be published”
and “its editor banished from the
city.” The committee selected Waddell to head a Committee of Twenty-

Five to “direct the execution of the
provisions of the resolutions.”
The committee summoned 32
prominent “colored citizens” to the
courthouse. “There the black men
saw arrayed against them the real financial powers of the city,” H. Leon
Prather writes, “backed by weapons
superior in both number and firepower. It was clear, too, that the
voice of white supremacy did not
waver; there was murder in the air.”
Waddell read them the White Declaration of Independence. He firmly
explained the white conservatives’ insistence that “the Negro” stop “antagonizing our interests in every
way, especially by his ballot,” and
that the city “give to white men a
large part of the employment heretofore given to Negroes.” He demanded that the Record stop publication and its editor leave the city.
The African-American leaders struck
a compliant pose, as their options
were limited. Waddell gave them a
12-hour deadline, an empty gesture,
since the Democrats had already
stolen the election, editor Manly had
already fled the city and the Record
had already ceased publication.
The following morning at 8:15,
Waddell met a heavily armed crowd
at the city’s stately white marble armory. He lined up the Committee of
Twenty-Five at the head of the procession, shouldered his Winchester
rifle, and assumed the head of the column, his white hair flowing in the
light breeze. Passing up Market
Street, a swelling crowd of men
marched to Love and Charity Hall,
the black community center on Seventh Street between Nun and Church
streets, where the Record had been
published. Led by Waddell, the mob
battered down the door of the twostory frame structure, dumped
kerosene on the wooden floors and
set the building ablaze. After it was
destroyed, some of the whites posed
for a photograph with their guns in
front of the blackened building to
commemorate the moment.
But soon the streets filled with an-

gry blacks and whites. Red Shirts
on horseback poured into the black
community. Sporadic gunfire quickly
turned to disciplined military action
at the intersection of Fourth and
Harnett streets. “Now, boys, I want
to tell you right now I want you all
to load,” T.C. James, who commanded one group of foot soldiers,
reportedly told them, “and when I
give the command to shoot, I want
you to shoot to kill.”
Thomas Clawson, editor of the
Wilmington Messenger, was standing nearby with a group of newspaper reporters, and wrote that “a
volley tore off the top of a [black]
man’s head and he fell dead about 20
feet in front of the news-hawks.” The
initial orderly barrages quickly fell toward a swirling cacophony of gunfire,
as white men randomly chased black
citizens through the streets and fired
into homes and businesses.
Sometimes the white marauders
targeted particular blacks. A howling
mob surrounded the home of Daniel
Wright, a well-known black politician, whom some accused of having
fired on the mob. By the time they
had managed to haul Wright out of
his house, a large crowd had gathered and murder mutated into
amusement. Someone knocked
Wright down with a pipe. “String
him up to a lamp post!” a member of
the mob yelled. But the white men
who wanted Wright to run the gantlet prevailed. The mob turned him
loose, chanting “Run, nigger, run!”
Wright ran for 15 yards or so until
about 40 shots ripped him to pieces.
“He was riddled with a pint of bullets, like a pigeon thrown from a
trap,” one observer wrote.

Red Shirts and other vigilantes
romped through the black sections of
town to “kill every damn nigger in
sight,” as one of them put it. “What
have we done, what have we done?”
one black man cried. And George
Rountree, an architect of the campaign, found himself unable to answer, since “they had done nothing.”
Eventually, Gov. Russell was notified of the violence and, from his office in Raleigh, called out the Wilmington Light Infantry to restore
order. However, the horse-drawn
rapid-fire Gatling gun under the command of Capt. William Rand Kenan
brought more fear than peace to
black neighborhoods.
At the end of the day, no one knew
how many people had died. The New
York Times, then a conservative paper, put the death toll at nine. Waddell, writing in his memoirs, estimated about 20 black casualties.
Rountree, MacRae and J. Alan Taylor put the number at 90. Local historian Harry Hayden, an admirer of
the white supremacy campaign, reported that some of his white sources
boasted that they’d killed “over 100”
black folks.
Echoing the oral traditions of their
grandparents’ generation, some
African-Americans in Wilmington
believe that an honest body count
would have exceeded 300. Since
about 1,400 blacks fled Wilmington
in the wake of the massacre and
coup, it will probably always remain
impossible to determine the body
count. The only certainty in the matter of casualties is that democracy in
North Carolina was gravely
wounded on the streets of Wilmington on Nov. 10, 1898.

Wilmington Light Infantry
with rapid-fire gun, 1898.
COURTESY N.C. OFFICE
OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

INTIMIDATING FIREPOWER
Leaders of the white supremacy movement signaled
their deadly intentions both
before and during the riot
through their machine gun
squad.
Weeks before the election,
local business interests purchased a gun capable of firing
420 rounds per minute. The
weapon was trumpeted in the
press and its power demonstrated to black leaders in an
exhibition Nov. 1.
Just two days before the riot,
the Naval Reserves acquired a
Hotchkiss gun that could fire
80 to 100 shots per minute. On
the day of the riot, both guns
were wheeled through black
sections of Wilmington and
aimed at crowds under orders
to disperse.
J. PEDER ZANE

of aldermen, and the police chief to resign at gunpoint.
By 4 p.m. that day, the committee had replaced
elected Fusionist city officials, both black and white,

with its hand-picked white appointees. The new mayor, fresh from leading the mobs in the streets, was Col. Alfred M. Waddell. In short, the
paramilitary force that wealthy conservatives had built to seize power
in North Carolina now ran the city of Wilmington.
For days after the coup, hundreds
of African-Americans who had fled
the white mobs huddled in the
forested thickets around Wilmington.
Many had escaped too quickly to
bother with coats or blankets, and
slept on the ground in the wet November woods. “Bone-chilling drizzling rain falls sadly from a leaden
sky,” Charles Francis Bourke of Collier’s Weekly wrote from the scene.
“Yet in the swamps and woods, innocent hundreds of terrified men,
women and children wander about,
fearful of the vengeance of whites,
fearful of death, without money, food,
[or] sufficient clothes.” Children
whimpered in the cold, their parents
reluctant to light fires for fear that
the mobs would find them. “In the
blackness of the pines,” Bourke observed, “I heard a child crying and a
hoarse voice crooning softly a mournful song, the words of which fell into
my memory with the air: ‘When de

battle over we kin wear a crown in the
new Je-ru-sulum.’ ”
But the work was not complete in
this new Jerusalem along the Lower
Cape Fear. Everyone seemed to understand that a purge was in order.
“Immediately after Waddell became
mayor,” H. Leon Prather writes, “the
Secret Nine furnished him with a
list of prominent Republicans, both
white and black, who must be banished from Wilmington.”
The white mob gathered at the
city jail to watch soldiers with fixed
bayonets march Fusionist leaders to
the train station. Those local citizens slated for banishment fit three
rough categories: African-American
leaders who insisted on citizenship
for their people or who openly opposed the white supremacy campaign; black businessmen whose
prosperity offended local whites; and
white politicians who had, as the
Wilmington Morning Star wrote of

C M Y K
11H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

corridors of City Hall, forcing the mayor, the board

Ari Bryant, who owned a butcher
shop, was “looked upon by the Negroes as a high and mighty leader,”
the Wilmington Morning Star
mocked, by way of explaining
Bryant’s banishment. The most prosperous exile may have been Thomas
C. Miller, who had been born in slavery and yet had become a financial
force in Wilmington, dealing in land,
loaning money and entering mortgages with blacks and whites alike.
One member of the detachment that
took Miller recalled that he was “one
Negro that we could not make keep
quiet and he talked and talked until
Ed McKoy’s gun went ‘click click’
and when we told him to shut up, he
kept a little quieter.”
Like most triumphant revolutionary governments, having silenced its
principal opponents, the new administration declared its devotion to
public order. They fired all the black
and Fusionist city employees, starting with firefighters and police officers. They declared that school committees henceforth would be
composed “exclusively of white citizens,” even in black districts. The
white terror in the streets persisted,
even though Waddell notified whites
“who seem disposed to abuse the opportunity of carrying arms which recent events afforded” that “no further
turbulence or disorderly conduct will
be tolerated.” In an article he wrote
for Collier’s Magazine two weeks after the riot, Wilmington’s new mayor
explained that “there was no intimidation used in the establishment of
the present city government.”

mittee of Twenty-Five launched a coup d’etat in the

the soon-to-be-exiled United States
Commissioner R.H. Bunting, a “political record of cooperating with the
Negro element.”
Silas Wright, the white Republican
mayor whom Waddell had deposed,
fit the same “white niggers” category
as Bunting and stood among the first
names on the banishment list. George
Z. French, another white Fusionist
stalwart and a deputy sheriff, narrowly escaped lynching. A raging mob
placed a noose around his neck and
started to string him up from a light
pole on North Front Street. Frank
Stedman, a member of the Committee of Twenty-Five, saved the white
law enforcement officer’s life, but the
mob dragged French to the train station and told him to “leave North Carolina and never return again upon
peril of his life.”
Chief of Police John Melton, a
staunch white Populist, found himself
accosted, The News and Observer reported, by a mob that would have
lynched him but for some soldiers who
intervened. One local white Democrat recalled that he would “never forget” how Melton looked when “one of
the boys went upstairs and took a rope
with a noose in it and threw it at his
feet, [and Melton] turned just as white
as a sheet.” The mob dispatched him
and two other white Fusionists on a
train to Washington, D.C., amid cries
of “white nigger.”
The black men who were hustled
to the train station at the point of a
bayonet included Salem J. Bell and
Robert B. Pickens, who operated a
successful fish and oyster business.

hile the streets became a killing ground, the Com-

COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

Wilmington Light Infantry and Naval Reserves members escort captured blacks. Fusionist leaders were marched to the train station.

BANISHMENT AND COUP

Flush with victory in the
stolen election, Alfred Waddell
unveiled the “White Declaration
of Independence” on Nov. 9.
Given that Wilmington’s politics
and economy were controlled
by whites before and after the
election, the declaration’s seven
main points suggest the wide
gap that existed between reality
and rhetoric in the city that fall.
Here are excerpts from the
declaration:
“First That the time has
passed for the intelligent citizens of the community owning
90% of the property and paying
taxes in like proportion, to be
ruled by negroes.
“Second That we will not
tolerate the action of
unscrupulous white men in
affiliating with the negroes so
that by means of their votes
they can dominate the intelligent and thrifty element in the
community, thus causing business to stagnate and progress
to be out of the question.
“Third That the negro has
demonstrated by antagonizing
our interest in every way, and
especially by his ballot, that he
is incapable of realizing that his
interests are and should be
identical with those of the
community. …
“Fifth That we propose in
the future to give to white men
a large part of the employment
heretofore given to negroes …
“Sixth We are prepared to
treat the negroes with justice
and consideration in all matters
which do not involve sacrifices of
the interest of the intelligent and
progressive portion of the community. But are equally prepared
now and immediately to enforce
what we know to be our rights.
“Seventh That we have been,
in our desire for harmony and
peace, blinded both to our best
interests and our rights. A climax
was reached when the negro
paper of this city published an
article so vile and slanderous
that it would in most communities have resulted in the lynching
of the editor. We deprecate
lynching and yet there is no
punishment, provided by the
courts, adequate for this offense.
We therefore owe it to the people of this community and of this
city, as a protection against such
license in the future, that the
paper known as the “Record”
cease to be published and that
its editor [Alexander Manly] be
banished from this community.“

‘WHITE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE’

Chapter 8

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

The Ghosts of 1898

THE NEWS & OBSERVER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THE NEWS & OBSERVER

Chapter 9

THE AFTERMATH

espite Mayor Waddell’s assertion of “no intimidation,” martial celebrations seemed in order. On Nov. 11, a military
parade of five companies marched throughout Wilmington, displaying two rapid-fire guns and the Hotchkiss gun
of the Naval Reserves. It was not merely a celebration of
white supremacy but an assurance that the new regime was

firmly in charge. The Morning Star called the parade “a formidable

C M Y K

12H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

demonstration of the resources for the maintenance of order.”
Three days later, the statewide
Democratic Party flung a huge street
party in Raleigh after nightfall. More
than 2,000 torches illuminated the
cheering throngs, and 500 barrels
of burning tar along the parade route
filled the air with plumes of colored
smoke, creating a carnival atmosphere. The victorious Democrats assembled a booklet, “North Carolina’s
Glorious Victory, 1898,” that trumpeted the white supremacy campaign
and highlighted its leaders.
On Sunday, Nov. 13, the white
Christians of Wilmington filed into
their churches and heard celebrations of the slaughter. The Rev.
J.W. Kramer declared that the
mobs in the streets had been “doing God’s service.” At First Baptist
Church, congregants heard the Rev.
Calvin S. Blackwell compare the
victory of white supremacy to the
triumph of the Lord and his heavenly hosts over Satan and his “black
robed angels.” He dismissed the
killings as “a mere incident” and observed, without much originality,
that “you cannot make an omelet
without breaking a few eggs. The
primary purpose was not to kill but
to educate.”
In his own defense of mass murder, the Rev. Payton H. Hoge at
First Presbyterian Church parsed a
passage from Proverbs: “He that
ruleth his spirit is better than he
that taketh a city.” The author of
Proverbs plainly was endorsing selfcontrol, as opposed to the taking of
cities, but Hoge had his own interpretation. “Since last we met in
these walls, we have taken a city,”
crowed Hoge. “To God be the
praise.”
The public silence of those who
opposed the massacre said as much
as the celebrations of those who
supported it. Though besieged by
visitors and telegrams begging for
help for black North Carolinians,
Republican President William
McKinley said nothing. The lack

of federal response sent the unmistakable signal that conservative
white Southerners ruled at their
own whim and the nation would
no longer quibble about who killed
whom.
The following year, the bloody
hands that welcomed Red Shirt terror in 1898 moved to take the ballot
away from black North Carolinians
forever. The first order of business
in 1899 was to disfranchise blacks
and many poor whites, making certain that an alliance of “low-born
scum and quondam slaves,” as a
News and Observer editorial put it,
would never again threaten elite
white rule.
The Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment that cre-

This Democratic Party booklet trumpeted the white supremacy
campaign and highlighted its leaders.
COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

ated literacy tests for voting and
placed a poll tax on aspiring voters.
The “grandfather clause” protected
illiterate whites for a time; any lineal descendant of a man eligible
to vote before 1867 — a white man
— need not prove his literacy.
Even so, the suffrage amendment
eventually removed voting rights
from nearly all blacks and many
whites. In 1896, 85.4 percent of
North Carolina’s electorate had
cast a ballot. By 1904, less than
50 percent would vote.
It was not only in the South that
democratic horizons narrowed. In
a 1900 editorial about the disfranchisement campaign, The
New York Times stated: “Northern men no longer denounce the
suppression of the Negro vote in
the South as it used to be denounced in Reconstruction days.
The necessity of it under the
supreme law of self-preservation
is candidly recognized.”
Its “necessity” seems less evident
to most of us today, but the Wilmington race riot of 1898 stands
among the most important events
in the history of North Carolina and
is a pivotal moment in the history
of the United States. It was nothing
less than a counter-revolution
against interracial democracy, and
it reverberated far beyond the state.
Its aftermath witnessed the birth
of the Jim Crow social order, the
end of black voting rights and the
rise of a one-party political system
in the South that strangled the aspirations of generations of blacks
and whites.

A militia unit in Wilmington. Immediately after the election of 1898, military might showed that the new regime was firmly in charge.
COURTESY N.C. OFFICE OF ARCHIVES & HISTORY

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

MEASURING
THE EFFECTS OF
WHITE SUPREMACY

Chapter 10

It is impossible to fully measure
the effects of the white
supremacy campaign on blacks,
but these statistics begin to
suggest them:

THE IMPACT OF 1898

C M Y K

The Ghosts of 1898

THE NEWS & OBSERVER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

Wilmington becomes a whitemajority city.
Wilmington population by race
White

Black

20,000

10,000

5,000

1860

1880

1900

1910

North Carolina becomes a
one-party state.
Republican
Democrat
Percent of votes for governor
1.4

0.1
57.8

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

Other

40.8

99.9

13H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

15,000

Percent of votes for president
2.6

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 practice multiracial politics. But the white supremacy campaign slammed
the door on democracy and installed a new order.

The new social order was frequently referred to as “Jim Crow,”
after a stock minstrel show character whose antics demeaned AfricanAmericans. 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 shampoo. A white man might share his

African-American education
suffers.
Wilmington city school disbursements
White
Black
2,000

90
70

1900

ers chose to build their own worlds of community and

1896

97.4

the North in the 1840s. Newly freed black Southern-

60.2

lic life, often modeling their efforts on laws passed in

39.8

War, Southern whites had attempted to segregate pub-

Most white Christians came to believe 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 supremacy. Though it was a social order imposed and maintained by
force, its defenders made it seem
not only natural but even divinely ordained. Any challenge to white supremacy, North Carolina’s superintendent of schools told an
auditorium filled 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 Carolina. In the years following the campaign, they crowed about it. “We
have fought for this issue and against
that policy,” Charles Aycock told supporters before he died in 1912, “but
everywhere and all the time we have
fought for white supremacy.”

1,500

the South but instead cemented it. Right after the Civil

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 machines 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 uncle or a real college professor. Thus
the titles contained a mixture of
mockery and affection. But a black
man must never hear the words “mister” or “sir” from white lips. Black
women were “girls” until they were
old enough to be called “auntie.” Under no circumstances should they
ever hear a white person of any age
address them as “Mrs.” or “Miss.”
The eternal racial views of almighty
God were well-known to white North
Carolinians in the Age of Jim Crow.

1,000

he Wilmington race riot did not invent segregation in

500

Nov. 1898 Nov. 1899 Jan. 1903

Source: 1898 Wilmington Race
Riot Commission Report
The News & Observer

The Ghosts of 1898

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THE NEWS & OBSERVER

Chapter 11

THE MEMORY OF 1898

C M Y K

14H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

or decades afterward, participation in the 1898 campaign became the irreplaceable political credential; at
least five of the state’s next six governors were drawn
from its ranks. As late as 1920, Cameron Morrison
campaigned on his laurels as a Red Shirt Democrat
in the “party of white supremacy.”

And yet, even as white supremacy
tightened its grip on North Carolina,
the memory of what that victory had
entailed — murders, banishments,
stuffed ballot boxes — soon became
murky. The central episode was
gradually cleansed from our state’s
history, from our textbooks and our
memories. Eventually, Charles B.
Aycock became known as the education governor.
However, the raw violence of
Wilmington was not completely forgotten. It could, of course, be seen
every day, everywhere, in the Jim
Crow world it had made. More than
60 blacks were lynched in North
Carolina between 1900 and 1943.
Whites would often raise the specter
of 1898 when mounting demands
from African-Americans for justice
made it necessary to remind them of
what could happen. “Sometimes,”
historian Glenda Gilmore writes,
“murder does its best work in memory, after the fact.”
During World War II, black
protests against racial discrimination blossomed, especially among
black men in uniform. Black soldiers
stationed at Camp Davis, 30 miles
north of Wilmington, overturned
buses at Grace and Second streets in
Wilmington to protest segregation
policies that limited black seating.
Mayor Bruce Cameron pleaded with
Gov. J. Melville Broughton to “tell
them as long as you are governor the
colored people will have to behave
themselves.”
On July 11, 1943, Broughton
mounted a podium beside the Cape
Fear River that Alfred Waddell had
promised to clot with black bodies.
In language evoking the inflammatory tirades of 1898 against blacks
preying on white women, Broughton
condemned “radical agitators” who
he claimed were seeking “to advance
theories and philosophies which if
carried to their logical conclusion
would result only in a mongrel race.”
Then he cut to the chase: “Fortyfive years ago, blood flowed freely in
the streets of this city.” It was hard
to escape the conclusion that if the

“radical agitators” persisted, it could
happen again.
Broughton was not simply a pandering politician intent on maintaining law and order. He reflected
the view of much of North Carolina’s elite, who still understood
the violence upon which their world
rested.
During the war, Josephus Daniels’
sons, Jonathan and Frank Daniels, often conferred about race relations in
North Carolina. Jonathan worked
as an assistant to President Franklin
Roosevelt on race relations. Alarmed
at “the rising insistence of Negroes
on their rights,” Jonathan favored
small concessions in order to maintain white domination. “We thought
we had to get a little justice [for
blacks] just to keep them in line,’’ he
said later.
Frank Daniels, who stayed in
Raleigh to publish The News and
Observer, took a harder stance. If
African-Americans continue to “keep
on insisting for more privileges,” he
wrote, “a worse condition is going to
exist in North Carolina before very
long than the period from 1895 to
1902, because white people just

After a violent demonstration
by black soldiers in Wilmington
during World War II, Gov. J.
Melville Broughton made a
speech invoking the 1898 riots.
NEWS & OBSERVER FILE PHOTO

A Rights of White People meeting at Hugh MacRae Park in Wilmington, 1971. ‘What we need in this
town are some dead agitators. They should be shot and left in the streets …,’ a white man said.
PHOTO BY ANDY HOWELL/WILMINGTON STAR-NEWS

aren’t going to stand for it.” If blacks
continued to press for “equality,”
Daniels insisted, “white people are
going to rise in arms and eliminate
them from the national picture.” In
the end, Daniels warned, continued
civil rights activism would “mean
that all of [the blacks] that can read
and write are going to be eliminated
in the Hitler style.”
Despite several riots and persistent
black protests across the state, the
bloodbath some predicted did not
occur. Newly committed to America’s image as a beacon of democracy, the federal government, the
national Democratic Party and many
newspapers, including The News
and Observer, began to actively oppose white terror after the war.
Lynching was no longer a viable
political option, though it continued to happen occasionally. When a
black man in Jackson, N.C., miraculously escaped the clutches of a
lynch mob in 1947, Gov. R. Gregg
Cherry attempted to prosecute
members of the mob, though he
failed. When the Klan committed
dozens of kidnappings, whippings
and shootings in Eastern North Carolina in the early 1950s, 60 Klansmen were indicted. During the
1960s, white terrorism persisted
but rarely won public applause.

And yet from the very first hints
of the modern black freedom struggle, the memory of violence
haunted Wilmington. Hubert
Eaton, an African-American physician who pressed for integration
in Wilmington for many years, recalls a 1951 school board meeting
in which he was rebuffed by the
board’s attorney, who alluded to
the violence of 1898 “as an effort to
intimidate — to warn that it could
happen again.”
In 1971, when the upheavals over
school integration tore through
Wilmington, a white man at a
Rights of White People rally in
Hugh MacRae Park told the Wilmington Morning Star: “What we
need in this town are some dead
agitators. They should be shot and
left in the streets as a reminder for
three days and then bury them. I’ve
got my gun.”
When Wilmington’s streets
raged with violence in early 1971,
one black woman recalled, her
schoolteachers warned her about
what had happened at the turn of
the century. “Those old experienced teachers,” she told an interviewer, “… talked in hush-hush
tones about 1898.” But the ghosts
along the river persisted in their
whispering, and that is what

echoed in our church in 1971 when
an African-American woman told
my father, the Rev. Vernon C.
Tyson, ‘They say that river was
full of black bodies.’ ”
It is no wonder that the furious
conflict that marked the black freedom movement in Wilmington in
1971 brought back memories of
bodies drifting in the current of the
Cape Fear. Wilmington’s AfricanAmericans realized that the legacy
of the racial massacre still haunted
the city. And this is only a little less
true today. Far beyond North Carolina and 1898, the tragic events
that transpired in Wilmington force
us to contemplate the meaning of
America’s racial past and its hold on
the living.
From our vantage point more than
a century later, we can see that the
white supremacy campaigns of the
1890s and early 1900s injected a vicious racial ideology into the heart
of American political culture. Our
separate and unequal lives attest to
its persistence.
If 1898 has saddled us with its
legacy, it also suggests how we might
overcome it. Its central lesson is
this: Human beings make history.
The mistakes that North Carolinians
made in 1898 can be mended if we
choose.

The Ghosts of 1898

THE NEWS & OBSERVER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

C M Y K

Epilogue

15H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

BUILDING FROM THE PAST

Modern Wilmington has risen on the banks of the Cape Fear River.

lessons for the future. We cannot go back and change the
history and yet, as William

Faulkner observed, “The past is never
dead. It’s not even past.”

What I do know is that in order to change
the past, we must understand and confront it.
I first heard about the Wilmington race riot of
1898 in 1971, soon after I entered RolandGrise Junior High School in Wilmington. Some

50
40

terracial politics and create strong public institutions — offer examples that we can learn
from. We have made great strides since 1898,
but the effort to separate people into “us” and
“them” continues.
A new Fusion movement, one rooted in
hope and generosity, and encompassing not
only blacks and whites but new immigrants to
the state, could still redeem the best dreams
that have made us. We look to Wilmington in
1898, then, not to wring our hands in a fruitless nostalgia of pain, but to redeem a democratic promise. And so we hold fast to what
Charles Chesnutt, an African-American from
North Carolina and one of our great writers,
called “the shining thread of hope,” which permitted him, over a century ago, to close his
own story of the Wilmington catastrophe:
“There’s time enough, but none to spare.”

the past than to draw easy

people had none. “The niggers keep talking
about how Waddell said in 1898 they were
gonna fill up the river with carcasses,” he said.
“I don’t know if they did or not. But if this integration and rioting business doesn’t stop,
we’re going to clog that river with dead niggers this time, and I mean it.”
What I saw that day was hatred. What I
have seen too often since then is the neglect
of public schools and civic responsibilities.
What I learned in the years that followed was
that the venom and the apathy were an inheritance, passed down through the generations from days of slavery and the riot of 1898.
It was only much later that I learned that this
sad epic in our state’s and nation’s history
harbors stories of hope. In their imperfect
way, the losers of 1898 — the leaders of the
Fusion movement who tried to practice in-

understand what happened in

friends and I were playing baseball in Hugh
MacRae Park. As day dimmed toward dusk,
we huddled in a dugout to smoke cigarettes
and discuss the mysteries that seventh-graders
ponder. As we chattered away in the dark,
we began to hear engines racing and car doors
slamming. At first, we assumed that it was only
the stirrings of a Little League game. But
when we peered out of the dugout, hundreds
of white men and a few women had gathered
on the baseball diamond, many brandishing rifles and shotguns and others waving U.S. and
Confederate flags. Several held a banner that
proclaimed the name of their organization:
The Rights of White People.
Their leader, Sgt. Leroy Gibson, walked up
to the makeshift microphone and began bellowing about how the “niggers” and “nigger
lovers” had all the rights and white working

s a historian, I find it easier to

PAUL STEPHEN/WILMINGTON STAR-NEWS

The Ghosts of 1898

WHAT WE TOLD THE CHILDREN: TEXTBOOKS SINCE 1907

In the years after 1898, the state of North Carolina told the story
of the white supremacy campaign to its children in a variety of ways.
The earliest textbooks I have found, published in 1901, 1903 and
1906, ignored these events. The history text my son uses at his
Chapel Hill middle school, “North Carolina: A Proud State in Our
Nation” by W.S. Powell, is equally silent — though other contemporary textbooks mention the riot in detail. What follows is a sample of
the state’s official history:

1907 — “Young People’s History of North Carolina” by Daniel
Harvey Hill refers to the election of Daniel Russell, the Fusionist
governor, and then notes that “in the second year of Governor Russell’s term, the Democrats elected a majority in the Legislature and
the State returned in part to Democratic control.”

C M Y K

16H, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006

1916 — “A Child’s History of North Carolina” by W.C. Allen
instructs that the Fusion legislature “put the city largely under negro rule. … The government of the city was badly carried on, and
lawlessness prevailed.” The account says that blacks fired on whites,
and whites returned the fire, killing several. “After the riot was over
the incompetent negro and white officers of the city were forced to
resign, one by one, and competent white men chosen in their places
… a conservative board of aldermen [was] installed, negro policemen
discharged ... Thus the revolution was at an end. Since that time
Wilmington has greatly prospered.”
1933 — “The Story of North Carolina” by Alex Mathews with Walter Clinton Jackson teaches: “There were many Negro office-holders in
the eastern part of the state, some of whom were poorly fitted for their
tasks. This naturally aroused ill feeling between the races.”
1940 — “North Carolina for Boys and Girls” by Sarah William
Ashe and Orina Kidd Garber (1940) says that under the Fusion
government “negroes could hold office. The days of the Carpetbaggers seemed about to return. But the people of North Carolina remembered those terrible days too well to allow them to return.”
1958 — “North Carolina History” by Daniel Jay Whitener states:
“Negroes who came to the rallies saw the ‘Red Shirts’ and silently
slipped away. The Negro by nature was friendly and eager to avoid
trouble … the Negroes were frightened and on election day many
stayed at home. The careful planning and leadership of Simmons
helped the Democrats. White supremacy was the issue. … A few days
later a bad race riot took place in Wilmington. Negroes were killed and
both Negroes and white men were wounded. Many Negroes fled from
the town. The revolution of 1898 restored ‘white supremacy.’ ”
1978 — “Carolina Quest” by Thomas C. Parramore says: “Two
days after the election a force of six hundred whites gathered at
Wilmington and ushered in the new era by wrecking and burning the
printing office … In the rioting that followed, ten blacks were reported killed and many others fled the city, including black city officials. A number of blacks were jailed for ‘starting a riot’ and a new
white administration took over Wilmington’s government.”
1987 — “North Carolina: The Story of a Special Kind of Place”
by William S. Powell reports: “In Wilmington, on the night of the
election, armed white men appeared on the street. They were determined to end ‘Negro rule’ in the city promptly. On Nov. 9 and 10
there was a bloody riot in which ten or more blacks were killed, the
office of Alex Manly’s black newspaper was burned, and many blacks
fled. Republican rule in Wilmington came to an immediate end when
Silas Wright, the black mayor, fled to New York. Three days later, the
Raleigh News and Observer reported: ‘Negro rule is at an end in
North Carolina forever.’ ”
2006 — “North Carolina: the History of an American State” by
Kenneth Townsend teaches: “At no time did blacks ever enjoy representation equal to their numbers nor did ‘Negro rule’ ever exist in
North Carolina. Nevertheless, the Democrats used the race issue to
frighten voters and regain power. … Riding horses, wearing red shirts,
and carrying guns … Democratic ruffians broke up Fusionist political
rallies, disrupted black church meetings, whipped outspoken blacks,
and drove blacks from the polls when they tried to register.”
TIMOTHY B. TYSON

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THE NEWS & OBSERVER

WILMINGTON RACE RIOT

The future
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION
In May, the 13 members of the
1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission offered recommendations to
“repair the wrong” done 108 years
ago. Many of the recommendations
would require action by the General
Assembly, which returns to Raleigh
in January.
The text of the commission’s recommendations:
EMPOWERMENT: Acknowledging that
the democratic process failed in Wilmington, resulting in persistent, unfavorable treatment especially to the
African American community, government leadership at all levels will
pursue actions that repair the wrong.
1. Acknowledge that the violence
of 1898 was a conspiracy of a white
elite that used intimidation and force
to replace a duly elected local government; that people lost their lives,
livelihoods, and were banished from
their homes without due process of
the law, and governments at all levels failed to protect citizens.
2. Establish a Restructuring and
Development Authority including local leadership to supervise implementation of a strategic vision funded
through an endowment, supported by
federal, state and local governments,
as well as media and businesses, especially those which benefited from
the consequences of 1898.
3. Support amendment of the federal Voting Rights Act to add New
Hanover County.
4. Create a study commission to
examine the broader impact of slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination
on the lives of African Americans.
ECONOMIC REDEVELOPMENT: Recognizing the long-term economic disadvantages created by banishment,
loss of civil service positions and intimidation, funding from all sources
will be directed by the Restructuring
and Development Authority to improve economic development opportunities.
5. Support judicial redress to compensate heirs of victims who can
prove loss and relationship to victims
via intestacy statutes.
6. Provide incentives for business
development of areas impacted by
the Wilmington race riot of 1898
(e.g., establish enterprise zone;
create small business incubator with
tax incentives to attract minorityowned businesses).
7. Increase minority home ownership in impacted areas (e.g., use eminent domain to acquire vacant commercial properties in Brooklyn and

Southside; sell properties to lowincome residents of those sections
with guaranteed mortgages).
EDUCATION: Educational information about the events of 1898 will be
made available to all ages and regions using print, audio-visual media,
and the worldwide web.
8. Maintain and update the final report of the Wilmington Race Riot
Commission with the N.C. Office of
Archives and History; distribute the
published report to appropriate local,
state and national repositories, and
to individuals who contributed toward the research and development
of a more complete record.
9. Incorporate the 1898 events into
Department of Public Instruction curriculum learning expectations; develop appropriate grade-level curriculum materials; and provide teacher
workshops for effectively integrating
the materials into instruction.
10. Newspapers (News and Observer, The Charlotte Observer,
The Wilmington Star, The Washington Post, etc.) should acknowledge the role of media in the events
of 1898 and work with the North
Carolina black press association to
prepare a summary of the commission report for distribution
statewide. The commission calls
upon said papers to study the effects
of 1898 and impact of Jim Crow on
the state’s black press and to endow
scholarships at the state’s public
universities.
11. Fund development for a documentary to be aired nationally, regionally and locally. The documentary should be suitable for inclusion
in school curriculum materials.
12. Increase support for tutoring and
mentoring programs in New Hanover
County, targeting at-risk youth.
COMMEMORATION: Recognition of
the documented events of 1898 will
be conspicuously displayed and made
available in prominent public locations.
13. Fund establishment of an 1898
exhibit at the Cape Fear Museum
and creation of a traveling exhibit designed by the museum for use
statewide.
14. Provide additional funding for
the New Hanover County Public Library to make resources available
relative to 1898 and its impact.
15. Erect plaques, markers and/or
monuments to identify key participants and locations of 1898 events
statewide and in Wilmington.

SOURCES
As I wrote this account, I relied
heavily on the “1898 Wilmington
Race Riot Report,” whose principal researcher and author is
LeRae S. Umfleet. This report is
a groundbreaking compilation,
including a full narrative of the
events in their historical context
and informative appendices.
In addition to a variety of
archival and newspaper
sources, I relied upon two books
that should interest general
readers. H. Leon Prather’s book,
“We Have Taken A City: The
Wilmington Racial Massacre
and Coup of 1898” (1984), is
probably our best account of
the tragedy. A short version of
Prather’s book appears in
“Democracy Betrayed: The
Wilmington Race Riot of 1898
and Its Legacy” (1998), an
anthology of articles I edited
with historian David Cecelski.
I also drew upon scholarly
works, especially “The Negro
and Fusion Politics in North
Carolina, 1894-1901” by Helen
Edmonds (1951), which puts the
race riot in a wide context, and
“Gender and Jim Crow: Women
and the Politics of White
Supremacy in North Carolina,
1896-1920” by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore (1996).
“Race and Politics in North
Carolina, 1872-1901” by Eric
Anderson (1981) furnishes a
good overview of the politics of
the period. “Maverick Republican in the Old North State: A
Political Biography of Daniel
Russell” by Jeffrey J. Crow and
Robert Durden (1977) provides
similar context.
I frequently consulted “The
History of A Southern State:
North Carolina” by Hugh T.
Lefler and Albert R. Newsome
(1954); “White Violence and
Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery” by
Herbert Shapiro (1988); “Black
Wilmington and the North Carolina Way” by John L. Godwin
(2000) and “North Carolina
Through Four Centuries” by
William S. Powell (1989).
TIMOTHY B. TYSON

OUR 1898 TEAM

Editor: J. Peder Zane,
pzane@newsobserver.com

Design: Teresa Kriegsman
Copy Editor: Bill DuPre
Photo Editor: Robert Miller
Graphics: Judson Drennan
Research: Brooke Cain
Project Directors: Steve Riley,
News & Observer; Glenn
Burkins, Charlotte Observer

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