Crime and the Coverup

 “Wilmington’s Lie - the Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy” by David Zucchino, 2020 (Part 2) 

This book is a case study of how a ‘liberal’ state like North Carolina turned into its opposite after 30 years of somewhat free elections after Reconstruction in 1865.  Every crime needs a cover-up.  In fact the cover-up is as important as the crime.  It’s not enough to kill 60 people, railroad enemies out of town and violently take over a government, local and state.  You have to hide what happened and then complete your project.  The project was to disenfranchise every dark-skinned person in the state and institute Jim Crow segregation.  This is the essence of North Carolina’s anti-democratic counter-revolution of 1898. 

Ethnic Cleansing

First, ethnic cleansing.  Besides the dark-skinned businessmen forced out of town or who escaped ahead of time never to return - and the Fusionist and Republican light-skinned office-holders – a.k.a. ‘white niggers’ and ‘race traitors’ - who were also put on trains heading north, there were others.  Many black families, after hiding in the swamps for days, returned only to leave.  Zucchino’s figures are that 2,800 black people left Wilmington and went north to Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.  Their jobs were taken by white country bumpkins who were not as skilled as the exiles had been. 

Business Opportunities

As you might imagine, the fact that nearly every African-American small businessman, along with a number of Fusionist ‘carpetbaggers,’ were railroaded, literally, out of town, without any time to settle affairs, leaving most of their possessions, shops, homes and businesses behind – that white supremacists would gain financially by taking their place.  Zucchino reports that a State Commission in 2000 later declared that this did not happen, which I find to be nonsense.  Empty houses and apartments were filled by rural white people coming to Wilmington.  Those left in town had to change where they shopped.  Every job formerly held by a dark-skinned person in Wilmington’s government was given over to a white Democrat.  For instance the wealthiest black Wilmingtonian lost his home, saloon, restaurant, pawn shop and real estate holdings.  This kind of thing happened when Jews were expelled from German cities; when Idi Amin in Uganda kicked out Indian merchants; and even after the witch trials in Salem.  The white aristocracy in Wilmington gained the most in financial wherewithal, which makes me wonder about this Commission. 

Legal Impunity

The new city government, led by ‘mayor’ Waddell, convened an inquest to determine the cause of death of the black men.  It was determined that no suspects could be identified for the corpses laid out in the coroner’s office.  Many still wore blood-stained coveralls.  Witnesses finally reported that white men shot first, but no legal proceeding or investigation ever took place by the new Democratic Party chief of police.  Black leaders pressured Congress, Republican President McKinley and the Justice Department to do something.  Eventually a Justice Department probe was ordered, but no one – i.e. ‘reliable white people’ - would testify for fear of their lives.  There were no consequences and all the leaders of the coup went on to illustrious careers in politics. 

The Press and Opinion

There was always an attempt to make everything ‘legal’ looking.  White ministers and the southern press, along with part of the northern press, justified the pogrom as legitimate, as defense against a Negro riot. Most of the black ministers, except two who were expelled from town, counseled ‘turning the other cheek’ – even though they had been accused of stock-piling weapons in their churches.   Yet a Richmond paper and some northern ones realized the coup had been pre-planned.  The general consensus of the press was that the violence was regrettable, the result not.  Textbooks in North Carolina either ignored the issue or claimed the ‘rebellion’ was legitimate and ‘martial law’ necessary.  In 1951 the first research paper at a local University finally contradicted the lie about the takeover and the violence.  

The Color Line

The outrage over Manly’s editorial about all the black women raped by white men or plantation owners reveals something about skin color.  Manly himself had a lighter-complexion, and so did another ‘black’ man in town who was actually mixed ‘white’ and Native American.  North Carolina wanted to institute a Jim Crow rules not allowing anyone to vote whose ancestors hadn’t voted before 1867 and Reconstruction.  However the supremacists realized that many light-skinned ‘darkies’ had white fathers of sorts and could vote based on this, so there was a loophole. This idea of looking back in time was the so-called “Grandfather” clause. Later this is where percentage rules for voting came in – the ‘one drop’ of blood rule – to rule out light-skinned ‘mulattos.’ You can’t get more racist than that.  It's a skin-color method still used by the Federal Government.  The Government refuses to recognize the mixed ancestry of so many people and continues to claim that light and dark skinned people, or those of mixed parentage, are different ‘races.’  Just check your census form or citizenship questionnaires for proof.  

Jim Crowism

The ‘Grandfather Clause,’ already mentioned, was dreamed up first in Louisiana because it allowed poor and illiterate whites to vote, which a poll tax or literacy test would bar.  In effect 'grandfathering' them in.  This law also barred immigrants like Italians from voting in Louisiana, so it was nativist too.  The Supreme Court had legalized poll and literacy tests in 1898 in Mississippi.  North Carolina had almost 60,000 literate African-Americans of voting age in 1900, so they needed something to bar them from voting besides gerrymandering, intimidation and taxes.  The Grandfather clause was quickly adopted in North Carolina, then Georgia, Virginia, Alabama and Oklahoma.  Congress refused to oppose the clause on the basis of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.  In 1900 only 5 black citizens in Wilmington voted over a suffrage law that passed barring blacks from voting.  The only dark-skinned man in Congress, who was from North Carolina, lost his seat. 

In Wilmington the African-American celebrations of Jonkonnu and Emancipation Day were banned. In 1899 segregationist laws began to be implemented – dividing railroad cars.  Following that were cruel laws separating blacks and whites in schools, hospitals, cemeteries, cinemas, pools and parks, water fountains, toilets and the like. Jim Crow was fully instituted, a process that spread across the South.      

North Carolina Today?

The modern Republican Party in North Carolina are the Democrats of old. They have used gerrymandering, vote purges, voter ID Laws, reduced early voting, eliminated same day registration and straight-ticket voting, along with other voter suppression tactics for years, even though some have been legally barred.  The repeal of most of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 didn’t help.  Things might even be worse, given the gubernatorial candidacy of Mark Robinson, a vile businessman who called himself a “black Nazi” – outshining in reactionary glory any of the Wilmington blacks who accused Manly of ‘causing’ the pogrom.  Thankfully Robinson lost. Remember, this is the state that sent the reactionary segregationist Jesse Helms to Congress in 1973 for 30 years. 

One sign and one memorial commemorate the events in Wilmington.  There have been some tense local ‘peace’ meetings about this history.  Zucchino interviews descendants of many of the players, especially the initiators of the coup.  None of them apologize for what their predecessors did.  And so it goes.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Wilmington’s Lie (Part 1); “Black Cloud Rising,” “Why the South Lost the Civil War,” “The Bloody Shirt,” “The State of Jones,” “Struggle & Progress,” “The Second Founding" (E. Foner); “Slavery By Another Name” (Blackmon); “Southern Cultural Nationalism.”

And I bought it at May Day’s excellent cut-out and used section, which has received many books donated by comrades for the holiday season.

Red Frog / December 9, 2024