Insurrection and successful coup by white supremacists in North Carolina, U.S.
Wilmington massacre of 1898
Part of terrorism in the United States and the nadir of American race relations
Mob posing by the ruins of The Daily Record
Location
Wilmington, North Carolina
Date
November 10, 1898
Target
Black residents
Black businesses
Elected Fusionists
The Daily Record newspaper
Attack type
Arson
Assault
Murder
Political terrorism
Propaganda
Property damage/theft
Widespread intimidation
Weapons
Gatling gun
Over 400 personal guns
Deaths
est. 14–300 black residents killed[1][2][3][4][5]
Victims
est. 2,000 displaced black Americans
est. 20 Fusionists banished
Newspaper torched and gutted
Perpetrators
"The Secret Nine"
Charles Aycock
Furnifold Simmons
Josephus Daniels, owner of The News & Observer
Alfred M. Waddell
Assailants
The Red Shirts
Mob of white civilians
Wilmington Light Infantry
No. of participants
2,000
Motive
Shift in social, economic and political power during Reconstruction
White supremacy
Goals of Attack: (1) Government overthrow (2) Maintenance of Antebellum Racial Hierarchy
Part of a series on the
Nadir of American race relations
Violence in the 1906 Atlanta race massacre
Historical background
Reconstruction era
Voter suppression
Disfranchisement
Redeemers
Compromise of 1877
Jim Crow laws
Segregation
Anti-miscegenation laws
Convict leasing
Practices
Common actions
Expulsions of African Americans
Lynchings
Lynching postcards
Sundown town
Whitecapping
Vigilante groups
Black Legion
Indiana White Caps
Ku Klux Klan
Red Shirts
Lynchings
Andrew Richards
Michael Green
Nevlin Porter and Johnson Spencer
Eliza Woods
Amos Miller
George Meadows
Joe Vermillion
Jim Taylor
Joe Coe
People's Grocery
Ephraim Grizzard
Alfred Blount
Samuel J. Bush
Stephen Williams
Frazier B. Baker and Julia Baker
John Henry James
Sam Hose
George Ward
David Wyatt
Marie Thompson
Watkinsville
Ed Johnson
William Burns
Walker family
Laura and L. D. Nelson
King Johnson
John Evans
Jesse Washington
Newberry Six
Anthony Crawford
Ell Persons
Jim McIlherron
George Taylor
John Hartfield
1920 Duluth
James Harvey and Joe Jordan
Joe Pullen
Massacres and riots
Opelousas massacre
Rock Springs massacre
Thibodaux massacre
Spring Valley Race Riot of 1895
Phoenix election riot
Wilmington insurrection of 1898
Pana riot
Robert Charles riots
Evansville race riot
Atlanta Massacre of 1906
Springfield race riot of 1908
Johnson–Jeffries riots
1912 racial conflict in Forsyth County
1917 Chester race riot
East St. Louis riots
Elaine massacre
Red Summer
Chicago race riot of 1919
Washington race riot of 1919
Ocoee massacre
Tulsa race massacre
Perry race riot
Rosewood massacre
Reactions
Anti-lynching movement
Exodusters movement
Great Migration
Back to Africa movement
Related topics
Black genocide
Civil rights movement (1865–1896)
Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
Mass racial violence in the United States
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The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington coup of 1898,[6] was a coup d'état and a massacre which was carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, on Thursday, November 10, 1898.[7] The white press in Wilmington originally described the event as a race riot caused by black people. Since the late 20th century and further study, the event has been characterized as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by a group of white supremacists.[8][9]
The coup was the result of a group of the state's white Southern Democrats conspiring and leading a mob of 2,000 white men to overthrow the legitimately elected local Fusionist biracial government in Wilmington. They expelled opposition black and white political leaders from the city, destroyed the property and businesses of black citizens built up since the American Civil War, including the only black newspaper in the city, and killed from 14[1] to an estimated 60 to more than 300 people.[2][3][4][5]
The Wilmington coup is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. It was part of an era of more severe racial segregation and effective disenfranchisement of African Americans throughout the South, which had been underway since the passage of a new constitution in Mississippi in 1890 which raised barriers to the registration of black voters. Other states soon passed similar laws. Historian Laura Edwards writes, "What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole", as it affirmed that invoking "whiteness" eclipsed the legal citizenship, individual rights, and equal protection under the law that black Americans were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.[10][11][12]
^ abCollins, Lauren (September 19, 2016). "A Buried Coup d'État in the United States". The New Yorker.
^ abCoates, Ta-Nehisi (April 4, 2014). "Black Pathology Crowdsourced: Why we need historians in debates about today's cultures".
^ abDeSantis, John (June 4, 2006). "Wilmington, N.C., Revisits a Bloody 1898 Day and Reflects". The New York Times. pp. 1, 33. Archived from the original on September 11, 2012. Retrieved August 6, 2021.
^ abMcCoury, Kent. "Alfred Moore Waddell (1834–1912)". North Carolina History Project.
^ abWatson, Richard L. Jr. (1989). "Furnifold Simmons and the Politics of White Supremacy". In Jeffrey J. Crow; Paul D. Escott; Charles L. Flynn, Jr. (eds.). Race, Class and Politics in Southern History: Essays in Honor of Robert F. Durden. Louisiana State University Press.
^Waggoner, Martha (November 5, 2019). "Marker calls 1898 violence a 'coup', not a 'race riot'". ABC News. Retrieved November 8, 2019. The state of North Carolina is moving away from using the phrase "race riot" to describe the violent overthrow of the Wilmington government in 1898 and is instead using the word "coup" on the highway historical marker that will commemorate the dark event. "You don't call it that anymore because the African Americans weren't rioting," said Ansley Herring Wegner, administrator of the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program. "They were being massacred."
^When white supremacists overthrew a government, retrieved September 8, 2019
^Will Doran (January 1, 2018). "White supremacists took over a city – now NC is doing more to remember the deadly attack". The News & Observer.
^Benton, Andrew Morgan (2016). The Press and the Sword: Journalism, Racial Violence, and Political Control in Postbellum North Carolina(PDF) (MA thesis thesis). North Carolina State University.
^Edwards, Laura F. (1998). "Captives of Wilmington: The riot and historical memories of political conflict, 1865–1898". In Cecelski, David S.; Tyson, Timothy B. (eds.). Democracy betrayed: The Wilmington race riot of 1898 and its legacy. University of North Carolina Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-8078-4755-8.
^Wooley, Robert H. (1977). Race and Politics: The Evolution of the White Supremacy Campaign of 1898 in North Carolina (PhD dissertation thesis). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. OCLC 3979968.
^McFarland, Ebone (2011). Why Whites Riot: The Race Riot Narrative and Demonstrations of Nineteenth Century Black Citizenship(PDF) (MA thesis thesis). Greensboro: The University of North Carolina.
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