NOVEMBER 10, 1898

THE LOST
HISTORY OF
AN AMERICAN
COUP D’ÉTAT
Wilmington insurrection of
1898

PRESENTED BY FAHAD HAYAT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 02  03 04
Important
History of Background
definitions and
White of the
terms
Supremacists Wilmington
Massacre

05 06
November Conclusion
10, 1898
{The event)

1
Important
Terminologies:
Coup D’État:
a seizure and removal of a government and its
powers; generally its an illegal action by a
military/political faction

Insurrection:
a violent uprising against an authority or
government.

White Supremacist:
a person who believes that white people
constitute a superior race and should therefore
dominate society, typically to the exclusion or
detriment of other racial and ethnic groups, in
particular black or Jewish people.

Bipartisanship:
Bipartisanship, sometimes referred to as
nonpartisanship, is a political situation, usually
in the context of a two-party system, in which
opposing political parties find common ground
through compromise.

2
History of White
Supremacism
From the beginning of the 19th century till the mid 20th
century, the ideology of white supremacy was a political tool
adopted by leaders and social scientists in Europe and the
US. Let us take an example of Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, a
French author of the 19th century who is known for helping
legitimize racism by the use of scientific racist theory and
racial demography and for developing the theory of the
Aryans being a dominant race. Another example may be of
British authors like Charles Kingsley who wrote that the white
man’s burden is to bring civilization to nonwhite people
through beneficent imperialism.

Along with the support for White supremacy in the past,

efforts have been made against the ideology- The Kansas–
Nebraska Act of 1854 made the territories of Kansas and
Nebraska, allowing the states to vote on whether slavery was
legal or not. This law canceled the Missouri Compromise,
which declared that slavery was not legal in those areas. It
was passed on May 30, 1854. But this eventually led to
Bleeding Kansas- was a series of violent civil confrontations in
Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri,
between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and
ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed
state of Kansas.

The Lost History of an American Coup D’État commonly

known as the Wilmington Massacre is what we will be looking
in detail in this presentation/report.

3
Background
Before the violence erupted on November 8, the port city
on the Cape Fear river was remarkably integrated. African
Americans and the lack people were granted rights- three
out of the ten aldermen were African Americans, and Black
people worked as policemen, firemen, and magistrates.

The Democrats, party of the Confederacy wanted to end

this so-called “Negro Domination” in the state legislative
elections of 1898 by enlisting men who could write (white
journalists and cartoonists), men who could speak (white
supremacists who whipped up emotions at rallies), and men
who could ride (the Ku Klux Klan-like “Red Shirts” who were
basically armed ruffians on horseback).
White supremacist rallies kept white outrage at the editorial
at a fever pitch. Former Confederate colonel Alfred Waddell
gave a speech suggesting that white citizens should “choke
the Cape Fear (River) with carcasses” if necessary to keep
African Americans from the polls.

On election day, the Red Shirts patrolled Black

neighborhoods with guns. Democrats won every seat, but
these were state legislative seats. African Americans still
maintained power in Wilmington’s city government.
Some 800 white citizens led by Waddell met at the county
courthouse and produced the “White Declaration of
Independence” which stated: “We, the undersigned
citizens… do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled,
and will never again be ruled by men of African origin.”
The following day — Nov. 10 — Waddell led a mob of 2,000
armed men to the Daily Record and burned the building to
the ground.

4
The Event
Nov 10, 1898
In the deciding legislative elections of 1898, African
American voters turned out in large numbers However, the
Democrats who favored white supremacy stuffed the ballot
boxes and won the election. Two days after the election,
violence erupted into the "Wilmington Race Riot." About 500
white men had assembled at the armory, and Waddell lead
them to the Daily Record office several blocks away. The
crowd following Waddell grew to about 2,000 people as they
moved across town.

During what is now called the Wilmington Coup but has also
been referred to as the Wilmington Race Riot or Wilmington
Massacre, a mob set Alex Manly’s newspaper office on fire,
and tensions between African Americans and whites
exploded. The whites demanded that Manly and his
newspaper cease to publish and that Manly be banned from
the community. Manly escaped from Wilmington because
he was mistakenly thought to be white. African Americans
armed themselves and whites began to hunt and gun them
down. The mob of whites included clergymen, lawyers,
bankers, and merchants who all believed that they were
asserting their rights as citizens. When the riot ended the
next day, it was reported that twenty-five African Americans
had been killed.
However, it was strongly suspected that hundreds of African
Americans had been killed and their bodies dumped into
the river. In addition, hundreds of African Americans were
banished from the city of Wilmington. This event, the
Wilmington Race Riot, marked a turning point in North
Carolina’s history because more restrictions were placed on
African American voters.

5
Conclusion
As the centennial of the massacre approached,
Black American descendants of those who had
suffered through it as well as some academics
called for reexamination of what really happened,
and in 1998 a symposium was held at the
University of North Carolina Wilmington. In 2000
North Carolina’s General Assembly established
the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission,
which leveraged earlier scholarly investigation,
conducted public hearings, and undertook
detailed analyses of primary and secondary
sources. Reports that resulted examined the
history of the coup and massacre. It also provided
recommendations to “repair the moral, economic,
civic and political damage wrought by the violence
and discrimination resulting from a conspiracy to
re-take control of city, county, and state
governments by the Democratic Party’s white
supremacy campaign.

This event had long-lasting effects as to this day, it

is proof of the differences between races existing
within the United States. The question stands:
“Did the U.S citizenship rights and the
ideology of democracy on which the state is
built failed?”