The events of November 10, 1898, in Wilmington constitute a landmark in North Carolina history. Almost a century later some details are still in question. The number of casualties, for example, is disputed with the total running from the coroner's fourteen to unconfirmed reports of scores or even hundreds of deaths. All of the reported victims were African American. Reports circulated in the midst of the violence of the shooting of a white man, Will Mayo. His fate still remains a mystery. More certain is the fact that the event marked the climax of the white supremacy campaign of 1898 and a turning point in the state's history. Restrictions on African American voting followed marking the onset of the Jim Crow era of segregation.
What is traditionally termed a "race riot" has also been called a massacre, rebellion, revolt, race war, and coup d'etat. The peculiar circumstances of the Wilmington events, involving the removal of the legally elected mayor and city council and installation of revolt leader Alfred Moore Waddell, make this last term technically correct.
In the days preceding the election of 1898 Waddell, a former Confederate officer and U.S. Congressman, called for the removal of the Republicans and Populists then in power in Wilmington and proposed in a speech at Thalian Hall that the white citizens, if necessary, "choke the Cape Fear with carcasses." What had particularly incensed Waddell and others was the publication in August of an editorial in the Wilmington Daily Record, a local black-owned newspaper. Alex Manly, the editor, charged that, "poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women," and that, "our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with the colored women." The sexually charged editorial, reprinted across the state, provided Democrats with an issue to inflame racial tensions as election day approached. Yet the day passed without notable incident.
At 8:00 A.M. two days later about 500 white men assembled at the armory of the Wilmington Light Infantry and, after several others declined, Waddell took on the task of leading them to the Daily Record office in Free Love Hall four blocks south on Seventh Street between Nun and Church Streets. The crowd swelled to perhaps 2,000 as they moved across town. Manly, in the meantime, had fled the city, as had numerous other African Americans in expectation of violence. The mob broke into the building, a fire broke out, and the top floor of the building was consumed. The crowd posed for a photograph in front of the burned-out frame.
Dr. Silas P. Wright, the white Republican mayor, resigned under pressure as did members of the city council and other officers, both black and white. Waddell then took office as mayor. The revolt had the support of many of the most powerful men in the city, among them William Rand Kenan and Hugh McRae. George Roundtree, an attorney and advisor to the coup leaders, in 1899 served as chairman of the state legislative committee on constitutional reform that drafted and sponsored the so-called "Grandfather Clause," providing that the male citizens could vote if they could read and write or if their grandfather voted, thereby denying most African Americans the right to vote.
The preceding sketch was adapted from information provided by the Research Branch of the Division of Historical Resources in the Office of Archives and History.
Comprehensive information may be found in the following sources:
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