After 1898, Democrats seized power across the South and enacted segregation laws--the infamous "Jim Crow" laws--depriving blacks of civil rights. By 1908, blacks were effectively shut out of the political, economic, and social life of the South. Over the next several decades, blacks went "up North," in massive numbers. The black percentage of population in NC for instance fell from about 35% to about 22%.
The model for Otto Adler in the novel, my grandfather Haas, went to Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1900 at age 14 to work in his uncle's business. I realized he would have witnessed the complete dis enfranchisement of blacks in the space of his teenage years, though not in as spectacular form as in Wilmington.
Reconstruction and Federal occupation of the South after the Civil War meant the old landed aristocracy was no longer in power (referred to as the "bourbon aristocracy," for their preferred drink, not their French lineage). With Reconstruction's end in 1876-77, the old aristocracy faced a desegregated South and two party system in which Republicans, and later, Progressives, united poor black farmers with poor white farmers to create a solid governing coalition to keep the old aristocracy out. The only way Democrats could see they had a chance at power again was to split the poor farmers along racial lines (nearly all the population was engaged in farming, textile manufacturing was a few decades off still). Since there were more poor whites than poor blacks, racism seemed to be the only answer and avenue for the Democrats.
The chief architects of this plan were Sen. Furnifold Simmons of New Bern (who would control NC politics for over 30 years) and the owner/editor of the Raleigh News & Observer (a rabid racist, later President Wilson's Sec. of the Navy--famous as the tee-totaler who removed rum from the navy and who claimed airplanes could never sink ships).
"We need men who can write, men who can speak, and men who can ride," Daniels said. Daniels himself wrote the fliers and editiorials; furnifold lined up the brilliant orators in politics, and saw to financing the "Red Shirt" bully boys--"men who can ride." NC's future governor, Cameron Morrison, was leader of the Red Shirts. It was Morrison who hid the Republican governor from a lynch mob as he came down to Wilmington. Morrison feared President McKinley would send in Federal troops if a Republican governor were actually killed.
Wilmington, NC was the state's largest and wealthiest city at the end of the 19th century. Public memory has faded that it was the scene of the only successful coup d' etat in American history. For purposes of plot and pace, Adlerhof offers only the barest outline of events. The state of North Carolina's Archives and History department launched a large scale review of all original material it could find and issued a draft report in 2005 and a final report in 2006. I have read the entire report and it makes for grim and disgusting reading.
You can download and read the entire report if you wish (warning--it is as long as Adlerhof itself at least) in pdf format here http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc/
For some reason, the state's report spawn a number of remarkably long and elaborate web sites set up as apologists for the white rioters. This all strikes me as specious an argument as saying the American Civil War was really all about state's rights, not slavery.
I also commend the Raleigh News&Observer's political reporter, Rob Christensen's new book on the history of NC politics from 1898-2006 The Paradox of TarHeel Politics for an examination of the later fates of the the politicians involved.
From the State of North Carolina's Library:
Alex Manly and the Wilmington Race Riots
The events of November 10, 1898, in Wilmington constitute a landmark in North Carolina history. Almost a century later some details are still in question. The number of casualties, for example, is disputed with the total running from the coroner's fourteen to unconfirmed reports of scores or even hundreds of deaths. All of the reported victims were African American. Reports circulated in the midst of the violence of the shooting of a white man, Will Mayo. His fate still remains a mystery. More certain is the fact that the event marked the climax of the white supremacy campaign of 1898 and a turning point in the state's history. Restrictions on African American voting followed marking the onset of the Jim Crow era of segregation.
What is traditionally termed a "race riot" has also been called a massacre, rebellion, revolt, race war, and coup d'etat. The peculiar circumstances of the Wilmington events, involving the removal of the legally elected mayor and city council and installation of revolt leader Alfred Moore Waddell, make this last term technically correct.
In the days preceding the election of 1898 Waddell, a former Confederate officer and U.S. Congressman, called for the removal of the Republicans and Populists then in power in Wilmington and proposed in a speech at Thalian Hall that the white citizens, if necessary, "choke the Cape Fear with carcasses." What had particularly incensed Waddell and others was the publication in August of an editorial in the Wilmington Daily Record, a local black-owned newspaper. Alex Manly, the editor, charged that, "poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women," and that, "our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with the colored women." The sexually charged editorial, reprinted across the state, provided Democrats with an issue to inflame racial tensions as election day approached. Yet the day passed without notable incident.
At 8:00 A.M. two days later about 500 white men assembled at the armory of the Wilmington Light Infantry and, after several others declined, Waddell took on the task of leading them to the Daily Record office in Free Love Hall four blocks south on Seventh Street between Nun and Church Streets. The crowd swelled to perhaps 2,000 as they moved across town. Manly, in the meantime, had fled the city, as had numerous other African Americans in expectation of violence. The mob broke into the building, a fire broke out, and the top floor of the building was consumed. The crowd posed for a photograph in front of the burned-out frame.
Dr. Silas P. Wright, the white Republican mayor, resigned under pressure as did members of the city council and other officers, both black and white. Waddell then took office as mayor. The revolt had the support of many of the most powerful men in the city, among them William Rand Kenan and Hugh McRae. George Roundtree, an attorney and advisor to the coup leaders, in 1899 served as chairman of the state legislative committee on constitutional reform that drafted and sponsored the so-called "Grandfather Clause," providing that the male citizens could vote if they could read and write or if their grandfather voted, thereby denying most African Americans the right to vote.
The preceding sketch was adapted from information provided by the Research Branch of the Division of Historical Resources in the Office of Archives and History.
Comprehensive information may be found in the following sources:
- H. Leon Prather, We Have Taken a City: Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898
- Jerome McDuffie, Politics in Wilmington and New Hanover County NC 1865-1900
- David Cecelski, ed. Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy
- 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission
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