| 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 |
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Attack type |
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| Weapons |
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| Deaths | est. 14–300 black residents killed[1][2][3][4][5] |
| Victims |
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| Perpetrators |
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| Assailants |
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No. of participants | 2,000 |
| Motive |
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| Part of a series on the |
| Nadir of American race relations |
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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 municipal-level coup d'état and a massacre that 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 perpetrated by a mob of black people. In later study from the 20th century onward, the event has been characterized as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by 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]
- ^ a b Collins, Lauren (September 19, 2016). "A Buried Coup d'État in the United States". The New Yorker.
- ^ a b Coates, Ta-Nehisi (April 4, 2014). "Black Pathology Crowdsourced: Why we need historians in debates about today's cultures".
- ^ a b DeSantis, 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.
- ^ a b McCoury, Kent. "Alfred Moore Waddell (1834–1912)". North Carolina History Project.
- ^ a b Watson, 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, June 20, 2019, 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.