1. Elizabeth Hines, Geographer Earth & Ocean Sciences UNCW
Wilmington: 1898
Elizabeth Hines, Geographer
Earth & Ocean Sciences
UNCW

2. 1898: 1898 Riot 1971: 1898 Insurrection 1998: 1898 Coup d’etat
2006: 1898 Massacre
2008: Terrorism
The Reverend William Barber
NC NAACP President

3. Downtown Wilmington, Market Street at the River, circa A post-Reconstruction racial tightrope. Here’s why:

4. 244 years of slavery and commensurate miscegenation

5. The Emancipation Proclamation, Jan. 1, 1863
President Lincoln’s executive order
Freed 3 million slaves and made areas of the South free
Involved 10 states
Not passed by Congress
No compensation to slave owners
Did not actually outlaw slavery
Did not grant citizenship to Freedmen

6. Lincoln: Emancipator Johnson: Presidential Reconstruction, meh Grant: Radical Reconstruction, worked Hayes: Redemption, return to white supremacy

7. A Freedman’s Bureau agent stops a white mob, 1868, Harper’s Weekly
Presidential ( ) & Radical Reconstruction,
A hopeful time made possible by the occupation of the Union Army
A Freedman’s Bureau agent stops a white mob, 1868, Harper’s Weekly

8. The Reconstruction Amendments
The 13th, 1864, Ended Slavery
The 14th, 1868, Citizenship Clause--all persons born in the U.S. are citizens, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The 15th, 1870, Voting Rights for all citizens

9. “Of course, he wants to vote the Democratic ticket
“Of course, he wants to vote the Democratic ticket.” Harper’s Weekly, 1876

10. “Redemption” The failure of Reconstruction as federal troops are withdrawn under the Tilden-Hayes Compromise, 1877, that returned white supremacy to the South

12. Wilmington Wharf, ~1870

13. Wilmington’s post-Reconstruction Black middle class

14. Wilmington Jubilee Singers, ~1870
These folks are believed to be the Wilmington Jubilee Singers.  There are two original photographs of this group from around 1870 as well as a partial program for one of their performances from the 1870s.  We have not as yet identified any of the individuals in the photographs but this is something we are researching.  There is some evidence online documenting their performances in several European countries during the 1870s and they are reputed to have been the second most popular of the Jubilee singer groups that popularized the singing of African American spirituals and early African American singing styles – right behind the most popular Fisk Jubilee Singers.

15. Sprunt Cotton Mill Workers, ~1890

16. “Jim Crow” ?

17. Homer Adolph Plessy,
A New Orleans Creole civil rights activist of African and European heritage. He could have passed for white, but he defied the NOLA segregation laws and was jailed in 1892 for sitting in a whites only railroad car.
Plessy v Ferguson was heard by the US Supreme Court in In an 8 to 1 decision against Plessy only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented.
The doctrine of “separate but equal” became the law of the land, legalizing many laws that sanctioned segregation and were collectively known as Jim Crow Laws.
Brown v Board of Education, 1954, overturned Plessy
(sort of).

18. “Jim Crow” was the era of legal and social systems that evolved after the Plessy v Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court ruling of It was good and bad.
It slowed violence against Blacks, in that there were fewer lynchings.
It essentially removed the gains that Blacks had made during Reconstruction. For example, no Black person was elected to South Carolina’s House of Representatives until James Clyburn was elected in Douglas Wilder was the first Black governor of a state (VA), elected in But the losses in education, economic opportunities and the franchise were devastating, reverberating today.
It nullified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and relegated Black people to second class status until the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Some say that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act ended Jim Crow. What do you think?

19. Examples of Jim Crow Laws
White nurses couldn’t help Black men
Separate transport waiting rooms & ticket offices for Blacks
Blacks & whites couldn’t play pool together
People of different races couldn’t marry
Separate toilets, fountains
Black barbers couldn’t serve white haircut needers
Separate baseball fields
Separation of circus ticket booths
Separation of white & Black blind people
Separation of white & Black prisoners
Black & white students couldn’t use the same textbooks
Blacks could not be served in white restaurants or lunch counters
No Blacks in public libraries
Whites forbidden to sell real estate to Blacks
And on and on…

20. The convict lease system, share cropping, tenancy, the “pig” law, all almost worse than slavery.

21. Jim Crow Era White Supremacist Riots Many, in some cases hundreds of African Americans died.
1873: Colfax, LA
1898: Wilmington, NC
1898: Greenwood, SC
1900: New Orleans, LA
1900: New York City
1904: Springfield, OH
1906: Atlanta, GA
1906: Greenburg, IN
1906: Brownsville, TX
1908: Springfield, IL
1917: St. Louis, IL. Chester, PA, Philadelphia, PA, Houston, TX
1919: Red Summer—Chicago, Omaha, Charleston, Longview, TX, Knoxville, TN, Elaine, AR
1921: Tulsa, OK
1923: Rosewood, FL

22. Raleigh News & Observer, ~1890

23. What caused Wilmington’s “riot”? A succession of things:
White Democratic alarm over success of “Fusion” politics: Black & white Republicans and Rural Black & white Populists were winning elections.
The 1890 “Force Bill” Republican bill for voting rights for Blacks
The 1896 Plessy v Ferguson SCOTUS decision that legalized “separate but equal” and “Jim Crow” legislation
The Raleigh N&O had a radical Democratic bent
Sex & Politics
Rebecca Felton’s lynching admonition and Alexander Manly’s rebutting editorial
An unmet demand for submission by Wilmington’s Committee of Colored Citizens to the white Democrats’ demands in the November 9, Declaration of White Supremacy

27. The Fusionists Became Intolerable
An integrated “Fusionist” coalition of Republicans and Populists controlled much of Wilmington’s municipal government through the 1880s and 1890s.
The city was 60 percent black, with a significant black middle class.
The Plessy decision of 1896 ushered in legal segregation and Jim Crow and invigorated local white supremacist Democrats, who plotted, yes plotted, to overthrow the Fusionists.

28. The Cape Fear Men’s Club, 2nd Street

29. The Secret Nine
Prominent Democrats, spurred by Josephus Daniels of the Raleigh N & O and Furnifold Simmons, head of the NC Democrats, launched a 3-pronged attack to regain control of state and local government by seeking men who could write (Daniels), speak (Waddell), and ride (the Red Shirts), and also a large group of Spanish/American War veterans, recently returned from combat

30. Heavily armed Spanish American War veterans at the Light Infantry building November 9, 1898 prepare to take city government from the Fusionists.
Thugs from adjacent counties, the Red Shirts, targeted blacks indiscriminately.
At least 60 blacks were killed.

31. White participants & Black targets

32. Black businesses, Wilmington, 1890 (Andy Kraft)

33. Black businesses, Wilmington, 1900 (Andy Kraft)

34. Geography of the 1898 “Riot” (Andy Kraft)

36. Sex & Politics The “Black Beast”
The generation that had not known the “civilizing effects of slavery”
An “uppity” coalition of Blacks & Whites who won elections and took jobs from more deserving whites.

38. George Henry White (Tarboro) Local Reconstruction Republican Attorney, Congressman & Investor, Left N.C. for D.C., then founded Whitesboro, NJ in 1902 The last Black “Jim Crow” era congressman until 1928.

39. Rebecca Latimer Felton, feminist, white supremacist, 1st woman to serve in Congress, serving 1 whole day.
“When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue----if it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession form the ravening human beasts----then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary.”

40. Alex Manly, , Editor and owner of the Wilmington Daily Record, grandson of NC Governor Manly and a slave, wrote an article in the Record denouncing lynching and defending interracial relationships.
This drove the white Democrats crazy.

41. Charles C. Manly, NC Governor, 1849-51, Alex Manly’s grandfather

42. Manly (r) escaping Wilmington

43. Manly wrote his editorial in August 1898, but no whites saw it until the white Daily Messenger ran it over and over, just before the November 1898 election.
Although they routed the integrated Fusionist government, the Democrats demanded that the Fusionists step down immediately.
“Red Shirts,” the burning of The Daily Record, a Gatling gun and 60 deaths achieved the coup d'état on November 10, 1898.
In the aftermath, a special train to take members of the black middle class from Wilmington assured white supremacist Democrat hegemony for decades.

44. Manly’s Daily Record was destroyed by a white mob on November 9, 1898
Manly’s Daily Record was destroyed by a white mob on November 9, Manly escaped.

45. This is actually the corner of 4th & Harnett Streets, where the first two victims were shot to death, 11/9/1898.

46. 1898 Insurrection sites

47. Wilmington’s Thalian Hall, where the Declaration of White Supremacy was read on November 9, 1898

48. Black prisoners being led away, 11/10/1898

49. Cover image of Collier’s Magazine, implying rioting Blacks
Cover image of Collier’s Magazine, implying rioting Blacks. Not what happened.

50. Alfred Waddell, conspirator and self-proclaimed Mayor, 11/11/1098 Declaration of White Supremacy

56. Wilmington PD, 1909

58. Wilmington Ten, February 1971

59. 1984

60. 1989, I 40 is completed from I 95 to Wilmington, changing the city forever.

61. 1994

64. Tulsa, OK, 1921

71. Professor John Hope Franklin, Duke University Emeritus Historian and Keynote Speaker at the 1898 Symposium in 1998 at UNCW

72. 1898 Memorial Site N. 3rd & Davis Streets

73. 1898 Memorial Site at Third and Davis, ~2003

75. Design 3: The Winner. Odelay’s mock up for the 1898 memorial at Third and Davis, ~2000

82. 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission
Resources
1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission
North Carolina Reconstruction Politics
Red Shirts in North Carolina
Declaration of White Supremacy, 1898
Declaration of Racial Inclusion, 1998

83. 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission

84. Simple Timeline for American Racial History
: Destruction of Indian People
(1865 in Texas): Slavery (Extreme Violence)
1854: Bleeding Kansas—expansion of slavery
1857: Dred Scott Decision
: Civil War—Yes, it was about slavery
1863: Emancipation Proclamation
: Reconstruction (Extreme Violence)
: Extreme Violence--KKK, Lynching
1896: Plessy v Ferguson
: Jim Crow (Extreme Violence)
1915: Rebirth of the KKK
1954: Brown v Topeka, KS Board of Education
1955: Lynching of Emmett Till
1964: Civil Rights Act
1965: Voting Rights Act
1967: Loving v Virginia
1968: Assassination of Dr. King

85. Jim Crow Era White Supremacist Riots Many, in some cases hundreds of African Americans died.
1873: Colfax, LA
1898: Wilmington, NC
1898: Greenwood, SC
1900: New Orleans, LA
1900: New York City
1904: Springfield, OH
1906: Atlanta, GA
1906: Greenburg, IN
1906: Brownsville, TX
1908: Springfield, IL
1917: St. Louis, IL. Chester, PA, Philadelphia, PA, Houston, TX
1919: Red Summer—Chicago, Omaha, Charleston, Longview, TX, Knoxville, TN, Elaine, AR
1921: Tulsa, OK
1923: Rosewood, FL

87. Formerly located on Castle St., Wilmington

88. Tarboro, NC 1940s