Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

On November 13th, Black families slowly began to return to Wilmington from the nearby swamps. Many returned only to arrange travel north. Thousands left by April. All Black and Fusionist city workers were fired and replaced with white Democrats. Many working-class jobs were likewise given to white people, even though in some cases they were less-skilled than the Black workers they replaced. Some Black workers were permitted to keep their jobs as long as they were “deferential” (278).

The whereabouts of Alex Manly, the editor of Record, were unknown for several days following November 10th. Fearing for his life, he fled to his sister’s home in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He felt his editorial defending Black men was the cause of the attack. In an interview on November 20th, John Dancy, who had relocated to New York City, echoed this sentiment. Other national Black leaders sought to distance themselves from Manly.

Armond Scott fled to Washington, D.C. He issued a public statement denying rumors he intended to petition President McKinley for assistance.

Three of the men banished from Wilmington, John Melton, Robert Bunting, and Charles Gilbert, got off the train in New Bern and were put on a boat to Elizabeth City on November 11th. That evening, New Bern celebrated the return of the mastermind of the white supremacy strategy, Furnifold Simmons, to his hometown. Governor Russell’s properties were vandalized and he fled to Asheville.

Melton, Bunting, and Gilbert arrived in Washington, D.C. on November 14th. They hoped to meet with President McKinley, but it appears they did not. Black people from around the country likewise petitioned McKinley for support. Despite having campaigned for Black votes during his election, McKinley required troops from all over the country to fight the Spanish-American War and he feared alienating Southern leadership by intervening, and so declined to intervene.

Attorney General Griggs quietly pursued an investigation into the events in Wilmington. He sent a North Carolina lawyer, Claude Bernard, to investigate. Bernard had limited support from Washington and was unable to find many witnesses. Those he did find disavowed all knowledge of violence or attacks. On April 1st, 1899, Bernard petitioned Griggs for detectives to help with his investigation, but the plea went ignored for over a year and was finally rejected. In late 1900, Bernard ended his investigation.

Alex Manly pleaded with Washington officials to investigate Wilmington, without success. He was angry that the McKinley administration refused to intervene.

Following their success, the Democrats sought to entrench their new political power by suppressing the Black vote by law. Guided by Simmons and Daniels, the legislature created a special committee chaired by George Rountree to come up with laws to create barriers to Black suffrage. They passed poll taxes—a tax to be paid before voting—and literacy tests.

So that these barriers would not disenfranchise white voters as well, they created a constitutional amendment stating that men who had voted prior to 1867 or who had ancestors who voted before 1867—the year of Black male suffrage—would be grandfathered in, and therefore were not required to take a literacy test or pay a poll tax. Daniels and Simmons launched a campaign to win popular support statewide for the amendment. Daniels used his newspapers to support the campaign.

In March 1899, the Wilmington city and municipal government won an official election. They outlawed or discouraged Black public celebrations like the annual Emancipation Day celebrations.

That same year, the North Carolina legislature passed the first Jim Crow laws mandating segregation of Black and white people on train cars. Over the years, other Jim Crow laws were passed mandating segregation “from the cradle to the grave” (312). Governor Russell received no support from the McKinley administration against the constitutional amendment and decided not to run for reelection in 1900. The Democrat Charles Aycock ran for governor on a white supremacist platform.

On August 2nd, 1900, the constitutional amendment passed by an overwhelming margin after ballot box stuffing and Black voter intimidation. Aycock won the governorship. In following years, Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma enacted Black voter suppression laws modeled on North Carolina’s.

None of the banished men returned to Wilmington. Lawyer Armond Scott ended up as a bellman at a hotel in Saratoga until he was recognized by a North Carolina justice and encouraged to return to his law practice. In 1935, he was appointed judge in Washington, D.C. Lawyer William Henderson established a practice in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he fought against segregation and lynching.

The only Black representative in Congress, George White of North Carolina, lost his seat soon after the passage of the 1900 amendment. White was ridiculed by Daniels for attempting to pass an antilynching law. Before the end of his term, White hired Manly as his secretary in Washington.

Later, Manly moved to Philadelphia, where he worked as a housepainter and janitor. He devoted himself to helping other Black people displaced from the South. He never spoke to anyone in his personal life about the events in Wilmington. He only spoke about it in detail once publicly to a crowd in January 1899.

The 1900 constitutional amendment was largely successful in suppressing the Black vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. There was not another Black US House Representative from North Carolina until 1992. Wilmington’s Black population plummeted from 56% in 1898 to 18.3% in 2018.

In the 2010s, Republicans regained control of North Carolina politics. The Republican party had changed significantly since the 19th century and Black voters, following the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in 1965 by a Democratic president, no longer supported the party of Lincoln. Once in office, North Carolina Republicans passed Voter ID laws and used gerrymandering to suppress Black votes and representation. However, many of these laws were struck down in the courts.

The Wilmington coup was largely described as “a legitimate corrective to corrupt black politicians and the ‘black beast rapist’” (334) in popular histories and school textbooks. In 1951, Black historian Helen Edmonds published a detailed account of the “carefully planned” coup that challenged this narrative. In 1998, the University of North Carolina—Wilmington planned a controversial event for the centennial to bring together Black and white descendants. George Rountree III spoke at a Black AME church describing his grandfather as “a product of his times” (338) and denying any personal responsibility for the events.

In 2000, the North Carolina legislature created a state commission investigating the events in Wilmington in 1898. Their report, published in 2006, challenged the narrative that the violence had been a response to a Black riot and reaffirmed Edmond’s claim that it was a carefully planned coup to restore white power. They estimated at least 60 Black men had been killed.

Daniels’s ancestors apologized in the News & Observer for the newspaper’s role in spurring violence, although Josephus Daniels himself never apologized in his lifetime. In 2018, students at University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill tore down a Confederate statue on their campus. That same year, memorial markers about the events of 1898 were installed in Wilmington. Alex Manly’s grandson, Lewin Manly, Jr., only learned what his grandfather had gone through by reading the state’s report in 2006. In an interview with the author, Lewin stated he did not forgive the white men who attacked his grandfather.