The only successful coup d’etat to unfold on American soil marks its 123rd anniversary Wednesday, and with this somber memory of the Wilmington Massacre—where an estimated 300 Black Americans were murdered by white supremacists—a poignant reminder is offered: White nationalism remains a deadly scourge that directly undermines democracy, decency, and liberty in the U.S.
In North Carolina in 1898, the political strategy for Democrats of the era was to “redeem North Carolina from Negro domination,” a racist belief widely upheld by party officials and spread by the men they chose to deliver their propaganda.
One of those men was Alfred Moore Waddell, a Confederate colonel and avowed white supremacist who once served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina.
Waddell was a renowned orator and thus possessed a tool much coveted by Southern Democrats of the day who wished to disseminate their vitriol in hopes of regaining control of North Carolina’s body politic from the reigning Fusionist government.
The Fusion coalition in the state was comprised of Populists and North Carolina Republicans who, unlike their political adversaries, were willing to abide in biracialism.
To disrupt that reign, Waddell and others mobilized whites, held rallies, and led militias of “Red Shirts,” who, as the Zinn Education Project points out, were “basically ruffians on horseback” echoing the Ku Klux Klan.
As the election neared in Wilmington that November, Waddell made open threats in his speeches.
“We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the nearby Cape Fear river with carcasses,” he said in his intimidation campaign aimed at keeping Black Americans from the polls.
During his speech, Red Shirts had taken off on horseback through the region, disrupting Black church services and instilling terror.
“The White Supremacists used an editorial by Alex Manly, the editor of Wilmington’s Black newspaper the Daily Record to stir a firestorm at the time of the elections,” the Zinn Education Project critically points out in its recounting of the day.
Indeed, the editorial by Manly was a scathing response to remarks delivered by a white woman in Georgia at a local Agricultural Society. The woman, identified as Mrs. Felton, advocated for lynching—something the U.S. Senate has still refused to make a federal hate crime—as a means to protect women from Black men.
Manly, outraged, wrote: “Every Negro lynched is called a ‘big burly, black brute,’ when in fact many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for their fathers, and were not only ‘black’ and ‘burly’ but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them as is very well known to all.”
“Mrs. Felton must begin at the fountain head if she wishes to purify the stream,” he added. “Teach your men purity. Let virtue be something more than an excuse for them to intimidate and torture helpless people. Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman than for the white man to be intimate with a colored woman.”
After armed Red Shirts stalked Black neighborhoods, the Nov. 8 election ultimately resulted in Democrats returning to power at the state legislative level. But the success of the fusionists at the municipal level persisted and Wilmington’s white mayor, Silas Wright, remained seated.
Waddell had other plans. Joined by 800 whites, he went to the local courthouse just one day after the election to declare Wilmington would “no longer be ruled, and will never be ruled again by men of African origin.”
Then, on this day, 123 years ago, Waddell and his armed mob executed a white supremacist coup in earnest. By morning, Waddell and some 2,000 men assembled at the Black-run Daily Record. For Manly’s editorial, they busted up the establishment, vandalized Manly’s presses, and burned the whole building to the ground.
It was, as Adrienne LaFrance and Vann Newkirk II wrote for The Atlantic in 2017, “just the beginning of an assault” which by evening, led to the murder of dozens upon dozens of Black people. The attack destroyed lives and livelihoods, upended a thriving community, forced Black Americans to flee or be banished, and only ended with a gun held to Mayor Wright’s head by Waddell.
The aging Confederate colonel installed himself as mayor and by brute force, had ejected White from his post.
This past weekend, The New York Times reported that finally, two Black men killed by the white mob in 1898, Joshua Halsey and Samuel McFarland, finally received proper funerals.
As noted by the Times, the insurrection of 1898 “laid the foundation for the Jim Crow laws and voter disenfranchisement that followed in North Carolina.” For years, Black residents of Wilmington were wrongly portrayed as “gun toting instigators” and much work has been done to see the record corrected.
The great grandson of one of the Wilmington Massacre’s victims, Joshua Halsey, perhaps summed it up best as he reflected on the need for reconciliation of an ugly past that, incidentally, still has ties to the present.
“The town needs closure,” Hesketh Brown Jr. told The New York Times. “And the truth helps bring closure if we accept the truth.”
In an email to Daily Kos Wednesday night, Rep. Alma Adams, a North Carolina Democrat, reflected on the import of the anniversary and its through-line to today.
“History that only tells the good stories isn’t history, it’s fantasy. Studying and acknowledging events like the Wilmington Massacre, which was a white supremacist overthrow of a democratically elected government, helps us recognize the insidiousness of the Jim Crow South and how it disenfranchised Black Americans for most of the decades between emancipation and the Civil Rights movement,” Adams said. “In light of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, it’s even more important that we recognize the white supremacist agenda includes the overthrow of democracy itself.”
In North Carolina in 1898, the political strategy for Democrats of the era was to “redeem North Carolina from Negro domination,” a racist belief widely upheld by party officials and spread by the men they chose to deliver their propaganda.
One of those men was Alfred Moore Waddell, a Confederate colonel and avowed white supremacist who once served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina.
Waddell was a renowned orator and thus possessed a tool much coveted by Southern Democrats of the day who wished to disseminate their vitriol in hopes of regaining control of North Carolina’s body politic from the reigning Fusionist government.
The Fusion coalition in the state was comprised of Populists and North Carolina Republicans who, unlike their political adversaries, were willing to abide in biracialism.
To disrupt that reign, Waddell and others mobilized whites, held rallies, and led militias of “Red Shirts,” who, as the Zinn Education Project points out, were “basically ruffians on horseback” echoing the Ku Klux Klan.
As the election neared in Wilmington that November, Waddell made open threats in his speeches.
“We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the nearby Cape Fear river with carcasses,” he said in his intimidation campaign aimed at keeping Black Americans from the polls.
During his speech, Red Shirts had taken off on horseback through the region, disrupting Black church services and instilling terror.
“The White Supremacists used an editorial by Alex Manly, the editor of Wilmington’s Black newspaper the Daily Record to stir a firestorm at the time of the elections,” the Zinn Education Project critically points out in its recounting of the day.
Indeed, the editorial by Manly was a scathing response to remarks delivered by a white woman in Georgia at a local Agricultural Society. The woman, identified as Mrs. Felton, advocated for lynching—something the U.S. Senate has still refused to make a federal hate crime—as a means to protect women from Black men.
Manly, outraged, wrote: “Every Negro lynched is called a ‘big burly, black brute,’ when in fact many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for their fathers, and were not only ‘black’ and ‘burly’ but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them as is very well known to all.”
“Mrs. Felton must begin at the fountain head if she wishes to purify the stream,” he added. “Teach your men purity. Let virtue be something more than an excuse for them to intimidate and torture helpless people. Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman than for the white man to be intimate with a colored woman.”
After armed Red Shirts stalked Black neighborhoods, the Nov. 8 election ultimately resulted in Democrats returning to power at the state legislative level. But the success of the fusionists at the municipal level persisted and Wilmington’s white mayor, Silas Wright, remained seated.
Waddell had other plans. Joined by 800 whites, he went to the local courthouse just one day after the election to declare Wilmington would “no longer be ruled, and will never be ruled again by men of African origin.”
Then, on this day, 123 years ago, Waddell and his armed mob executed a white supremacist coup in earnest. By morning, Waddell and some 2,000 men assembled at the Black-run Daily Record. For Manly’s editorial, they busted up the establishment, vandalized Manly’s presses, and burned the whole building to the ground.
It was, as Adrienne LaFrance and Vann Newkirk II wrote for The Atlantic in 2017, “just the beginning of an assault” which by evening, led to the murder of dozens upon dozens of Black people. The attack destroyed lives and livelihoods, upended a thriving community, forced Black Americans to flee or be banished, and only ended with a gun held to Mayor Wright’s head by Waddell.
The aging Confederate colonel installed himself as mayor and by brute force, had ejected White from his post.
This past weekend, The New York Times reported that finally, two Black men killed by the white mob in 1898, Joshua Halsey and Samuel McFarland, finally received proper funerals.
As noted by the Times, the insurrection of 1898 “laid the foundation for the Jim Crow laws and voter disenfranchisement that followed in North Carolina.” For years, Black residents of Wilmington were wrongly portrayed as “gun toting instigators” and much work has been done to see the record corrected.
The great grandson of one of the Wilmington Massacre’s victims, Joshua Halsey, perhaps summed it up best as he reflected on the need for reconciliation of an ugly past that, incidentally, still has ties to the present.
“The town needs closure,” Hesketh Brown Jr. told The New York Times. “And the truth helps bring closure if we accept the truth.”
In an email to Daily Kos Wednesday night, Rep. Alma Adams, a North Carolina Democrat, reflected on the import of the anniversary and its through-line to today.
“History that only tells the good stories isn’t history, it’s fantasy. Studying and acknowledging events like the Wilmington Massacre, which was a white supremacist overthrow of a democratically elected government, helps us recognize the insidiousness of the Jim Crow South and how it disenfranchised Black Americans for most of the decades between emancipation and the Civil Rights movement,” Adams said. “In light of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, it’s even more important that we recognize the white supremacist agenda includes the overthrow of democracy itself.”