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

Book 1 describes history in Wilmington leading up to the attack on Black residents in 1898. Chapter 1 opens with a description of the chaos in the city in February 1865, toward the end of the Civil War. Confederate troops set fire to supplies while they retreated from the advancing Union Army. On February 22nd, the Union seized the city. Despite the Union victory, Black people lived in precarity and were treated little better than enslaved persons; white police officers, many of them former Confederates, beat Black people.

White militiamen raided the Cape Fear countryside and ransacked Black homes. Some white Union soldiers enabled or joined in on these actions. In February 1866, Black Union soldiers stormed the jail and freed Black prisoners in protest. In response, the Union removed Black soldiers from the area and replaced them with white soldiers. The Ku Klux Klan celebrated the “emerging alliance of whites, Northern and Southern” (10).

Chapter 2 describes one of the leaders of the white supremacist movement in Wilmington, “Colonel” Alfred Moore Waddell. From an aristocratic North Carolina family, Waddell served briefly in the Confederate army. Following the end of the Civil War, he became an “unofficial spokesman” for the white Wilmington elite and advocated against full rights for Black Wilmington residents. He gave a speech to a group of Black freedmen in July 1865 where he advocated against Black suffrage and advised Black people to move elsewhere to look for work. That night, the body of a Black soldier was found shot in the Cape Fear River.

Chapter 3 describes the actions of Matthew Sykes, “a notorious Yankee sympathizer” (17) during and after the Civil War. Mattew Sykes lived in the small town of Piney Woods on the Cape Fear River 40 miles from Wilmington. Although his family supported the Union, he was forced to join the Confederate Army. After his service ended in June 1864, he worked as a Union spy. In spring of 1865 he returned to Piney Woods to protect his wife. On April 10th, 1865, Sykes, his wife, and his father-in-law were attacked by the Confederate Home Guard. Sykes was taken into the woods, beaten, stabbed, and hanged. His family found his body soon after.

In October 1865, the Home Guard members were tried by the Union military authorities for murder. Their defense attorney was Alfred Waddell. The men were convicted, but someone—believed to be Waddell—bribed the prison guard and they escaped.

Chapter 4 describes the background of Black political leader Abraham Galloway. In August 1865, Galloway, a former enslaved person, spoke to a group of freed Blacks in New Bern, a town full of former enslaved people north of Wilmington, about their need for full equality. After the speech, the group issued a written demand for full citizens’ rights. They also announced a political convention of freedmen to be held in Raleigh in September.

Galloway was the son of an enslaved woman and a white ship pilot. He was trained as a brickmason. He was living in Wilmington when he ran away with a fellow enslaved person to Canada. Later, he returned to the South to spy on the Confederates for the Union.

In 1863, in New Bern, he met Edward Kinsley, who was trying to encourage freed or escaped Black men to join the Union Army. The Black men were skeptical they would be treated fairly and equally by the Union, as Black soldiers were typically not paid equally and given fewer rations. Galloway negotiated with Kinsley for better terms for Black soldiers and then recruited men to enlist in the Union Army.

By fall of 1863, Galloway had attracted national attention for his advocacy. In April 1864, he met with President Abraham Lincoln at the White House to lobby for Black suffrage (the right to vote). In fall 1865, Galloway moved to Wilmington where he continued his political advocacy. In July 1867, he warned assembled freemen about the rising threat of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), “a secretive band of former Confederate soldiers and white supremacists” (32). The Wilmington Klan was led by the wealthy, 30-year-old Roger Moore.

In 1866, North Carolina passed the Black Code which “restored blacks to near-slave status” (35). In 1868, the law was nullified, but remained effectively in force. Black people were drawn to the Wilmington area for work in the shipyards and pine forests. By 1880, 60% of Wilmington residents were Black.

In 1868, Black people in North Carolina could vote and run as delegates to the state constitutional convention for the first time. Galloway was elected as a delegate. Then, he ran for state office. White people in North Carolina were worried that racial equality would lead to interracial marriage, which they referred to as “amalgamation.”

The KKK attempted to intimidate Black voters in Wilmington in the lead up to the election. They left warning placards around the city. In April 1868, they put a skeleton dressed in a sheet in an alleyway. In response, the Black people of the city organized and armed themselves. The KKK planned an attack for April 18th, three days before the election. The Black militia patrolled heavily, and no attack materialized. There was a huge Black turnout for the election and Galloway was elected to the state Senate. KKK leader Roger Moore had failed.

Galloway died in Wilmington on September 1st, 1870. A generation later, a new Black leader would arise in Wilmington, Alexander Lightfoot Manly. Manly came from a working-class family outside of Raleigh. He studied at the Hampton Normal school in Virginia for a year. He moved to Wilmington to look for work.

With his brother, Frank, Manly published a Black progressive newspaper, the Record. In 1895, Manly published an editorial in his newspaper pointing out that there were more Black voters than white in Wilmington. By 1897, the Record was a popular daily that reported on racial violence, including lynchings. Manly engaged in a public argument through dueling newspaper editorials with more conservative, appeasement-oriented Black clergymen. Manly accused them of “abandoning their race to curry favor with whites” (51).

Black public demonstrations like the large celebration in 1895 for Emancipation Day, commemorating the signing of the Emancipation Act of 1863, upset the white residents of Wilmington. Wilmington had segregated schools and segregated jobs. Black teachers were paid less than white ones. Black neighborhoods received less infrastructure investment than white ones.

As the city slowly modernized, however, some Black residents became very wealthy and powerful, such as Thomas C. Miller, a real estate developer and money lender. William Everett Henderson was a prominent Black lawyer who worked in politics and befriended Alex Manly. Some prominent Black leaders, like John C. Dancy, a federal customs collector, encouraged Black residents to accommodate white demands rather than protest them. He was an ally of Booker T. Washington, who likewise “rejected open confrontation with whites in favor of education and entrepreneurship” (58).

White people lived in fear of a violent Black uprising against white people, such as that of the enslaved man Nat Turner in August 1831 in Southampton, Virginia. Following Nat Turner’s rebellion, a panic about possible uprisings by enslaved people in Wilmington led to the execution of 14 enslaved persons. Four of the men’s heads were put on spikes along the road, which was renamed after a racial slur as a warning to other Black people who might rebel.