TheLoop21.com

By: Susan Anderson (follow this member)
Wed, 05/27/2009 - 00:00

Last November, the month that Americans elected the first African American president, residents of Wilmington, N.C., dedicated a monument to the memory of a violent white take-over of the city in 1898. That was the year that white supremacists orchestrated what has been called “the only government overthrow recorded in U.S. history."

The coup d’ etat destroyed a legitimate government, along with the political cooperation of African American and white Republicans and Populists in Wilmington. (Watch a UNC-TV video discussion of it.)

After Reconstruction, Wilmington was a special target of the white supremacist Democratic Party which wanted to gain power and establish legalized segregation. For African Americans across the country, Wilmington was a symbol of pride. It was the largest and most important city in North Carolina. It had a black majority and a large affluent class. African Americans 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. And African Americans occupied many government positions.

The day before the 1898 municipal elections, Alfred Moore Waddell, leader of the Democrats, said in a speech, “Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the Negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses kill, shoot him down in his tracks." On Election Day, Nov. 8, Democrats won the election by stuffing ballot boxes and threatening black voters. On Nov. 9, a White Declaration of Independence was issued to the organization of leading African American civic and business leaders, the Committee of Colored Citizens. When the Committee failed to give in to the whites’ demands, an armed mob of 2,000 whites roamed the streets. The total of blacks killed ranges up to 100. No whites were killed. Republican and Populist elected officials — white and black — were forced to resign, and all black government employees were fired.

In 2000, the Wilmington Race Riot Commission was appointed by the North Carolina legislature to study the bloody events of 1898. The Commission’s mandate was to establish the historical record for the riot, whose history had been suppressed. In 2006, a 600-page report was released in which the Commission recommended compensation for descendants of African Americans who were killed, whose property was destroyed or stolen, or who were forced to flee Wilmington. Various bills have surfaced in the legislature to address the injustices of the past. So far, the North Carolina General Assembly has acknowledged and apologized for the Wilmington riots.

The North Carolina Conference of the NAACP is pursuing reparations for the descendants of the victims of the Wilmington Riot, and other forms of justice and reconciliation. In the words of NAACP state conference chairman, Rev. Dr. William Barber II, “You can’t get your present right, if you don’t properly deal with your past.”

Susan D. Anderson teaches, speaks and writes about African American history, politics and culture. She is the author of Nostalgia for a Trumpet: Poems of Memory and History, published by Northwestern University Press. She has been a Visiting Professor at Pitzer College, a contributor to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion since 1999, and currently manages an archival program at the USC Libraries.

Photo by Tony Crescibene at flickr.