Reading the American Past: Printed Page 83

DOCUMENT 20–2

White Supremacy in Wilmington, North Carolina

Black southerners affiliated with the Republican Party often cooperated with Populists to defeat Democrats. Such a fusion of Republicans and Populists carried North Carolina in 1894 and 1896, resulting in the election and appointment of a number of black officeholders, including the mayor and aldermen of Wilmington. In 1898, Democrats struck back with a campaign of terror and intimidation, which culminated two days after their victory at the polls by what Gunner Jesse Blake called a “rebellion” that established white supremacy by killing at least twenty blacks. Blake, a Confederate veteran who participated in the “rebellion,” recalled the event for a sympathetic white writer in the 1930s. Blake's narrative, excerpted here, illustrates the explosive racism that confronted southern blacks every day and ultimately undermined the Populist revolt in the South.

Gunner Jesse Blake

Narrative of the Wilmington “Rebellion” of 1898

“So, I am going to give you the inside story of this insurrection,” he proceeded, “wherein the white people of Wilmington overthrew the constituted municipal authority overnight and substituted a reform rule, doing all this legally and with some needless bloodshed, to be sure, but at the same time they eliminated the Negroes from the political life of the city and the state. This Rebellion was the very beginning of Negro disfranchisement in the South and an important step in the establishment of ‘White Supremacy' in the Southland. ...

“The Rebellion was an organized resistance,” Mr. Blake said, “on the part of the white citizens of this community to the established government, which had long irked them because it was dominated by ‘Carpet Baggers' and Negroes, and also because the better element here wished to establish ‘White Supremacy' in the city, the state and throughout the South, and thereby remove the then stupid and ignorant Negroes from their numerically dominating position in the government. ...

“The older generation of Southern born men were at their wits' end. They had passed through the rigors of the North-South war and through the tyrannies of Reconstruction when Confiscation ... of properties without due process of law, was the rule rather than the exception. They had seen ‘Forty Acres and a Mule' buy many a Negro's vote.

“Black rapists were attacking Southern girls and women, those pure and lovely creatures who graced the homes in Dixie Land, and the brutes were committing this dastardly crime with more frequency while the majority of them were escaping punishment through the influence of the powers that be.

“These old Southern gentlemen had calculated that time and time only would remove the terrors of Reconstruction, a condition that was imposed upon the conquered Southerners by the victorious Northerners, but they were not willing to sit supinely by and see their girls and women assaulted by beastly brutes.

“The better element among the Northerners in the North could not want them and their little friends to grow up amid such conditions. ...

“A group of nine citizens met at the home of Mr. Hugh MacRae and there decided that the attitude and actions of the Negroes made it necessary for them to take some steps towards protecting their families and homes in their immediate neighborhood, Seventh and Market Streets. ...

“This group of citizens, ... referred to as the ‘Secret Nine,' divided the city into sections, placing a responsible citizen as captain in charge of each area. ...

“The better element planned to gain relief from Negro impudence and domination, from grafting and from immoral conditions; the ‘Secret Nine' and the white leaders marked time, hoping something would happen to arouse the citizenry to concerted action.

“But the ‘watch-and-wait policy' of the ‘Secret Nine' did not obtain for long, as during the latter part of October [1898] there appeared in the columns of [t]he Wilmington (Negro) Daily Record an editorial, written by the Negro editor, Alex Manly, which aroused a state-wide revulsion to the city and state administrations then in the hands of the Republicans and Fusionists [Populists]. The editorial attempted to justify the Negro rape fiends at the expense of the virtue of Southern womanhood.”

Mr. Blake ... read the following ... editorial from [t]he Wilmington Record:

Poor whites are careless in the matter of protecting their women, especially on the farm. They are careless of their conduct towards them, and our experience among the poor white people in the county teaches us that women of that race are not more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men, than are the white man and colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman's infatuation, or the man's boldness, bring attention to them, and the man is lynched for rape. Every Negro lynched is called a “big, burly, black brute,” when in fact, many of those who have been thus dealt with had white men for their fathers, and were not only not “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.

“That editorial,” Mr. Blake declared ... , “is the straw that broke Mister Nigger's political back in the Southland.” ...

“Excitement reigned supreme on election day and the day following,” Mr. Blake said, adding that “the tension between the races was at the breaking point, as two Pinkerton detectives, Negroes, had reported to their white employers that the Negro women, servants in the homes of white citizens, had agreed to set fire to the dwellings of their employers, and the Negro men had openly threatened to ‘burn the town down' if the ‘White Supremacy' issue was carried in the political contest. The very atmosphere was surcharged with tinder, and only a spark, a misstep by individuals of either race, was needed to set the whites and the blacks at each other's throats.

“When Mr. Hugh MacRae was sitting on his porch on Market Street on the afternoon of the election, he saw a band of ‘Red Shirts,' fifty in number, with blood in their eyes; mounted upon fiery and well caparisoned steeds and led by Mike Dowling, an Irishman, who had organized this band of vigilantes. The hot headed ‘Red Shirts' paused in front of Mr. MacRae's home and the level headed Scotsman walked toward the group to learn what was amiss.

“Dowling told Mr. MacRae that they were headed for ‘The Record' building to lynch Editor Manly and burn the structure. Mr. MacRae pleaded with Dowling and his ‘Red Shirts' to desist in their plans. Messrs. MacRae, Dowling and other leaders of the ‘Red Shirts' repaired across the street to Sasser's Drug store and there he, Mr. MacRae, showed them a ‘Declaration of White Independence' that he had drawn up for presentation at a mass meeting of white citizens the next day.

“The ‘Red Shirts' were finally persuaded by Mr. MacRae to abandon their plans for the lynching, but only after Mr. MacRae had called up the newspapers on the telephone and dictated a call for a mass meeting of the citizens for the next morning. ...

“A thousand or more white citizens, representative of all walks of life ... attended the mass meeting in the New Hanover county court house the next morning, November 10, at 11 o'clock.

“Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, a mild mannered Southern gentleman, noted for his extremely conservative tendencies, was called upon to preside over the gathering. In addressing this meeting, Colonel Waddell said: ... ‘We will not live under these intolerable conditions. No society can stand it. We intend to change it, if we have to choke the current of Cape Fear River with (Negro) carcasses!'”

“That declaration,” Mr. Blake said, “brought forth tremendous applause from the large gathering of white men at the mass meeting. ...

“Colonel Waddell ... announced that he heartily approved the set of resolutions which had been prepared by Mr. Hugh MacRae and which included the latter's ‘Declaration of White Independence.'

“These resolutions were unanimously approved by the meeting, followed by a wonderful demonstration, the assemblage rising to its feet and cheering: ‘Right! Right! Right!' and there were cries of ‘Fumigate' the city with ‘The Record' and ‘Lynch Manly.'”

Blake then read the resolutions from the scrap book, as follows:

Believing that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people; believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of African origin, and believing that those men of the state of North Carolina, who joined in framing the union, did not contemplate for their descendants subjection to an inferior race.

We, the undersigned citizens of the city of Wilmington and county of New Hanover, do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled and will never again be ruled, by men of African origin.

This condition we have in part endured because we felt that the consequences of the war of secession were such as to deprive us of the fair consideration of many of our countrymen. ...

“Armed with a Winchester rifle, Colonel Waddell ordered the citizens to form in front of the Armory for an orderly procession out to ‘The Record' plant. ...

“As this band of silent yet determined men marched up Market Street it passed the beautiful colonial columned mansion, the Bellamy home. From the balcony of this mansion, a Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, delivered an address shortly after Lincoln's tragic assassination, advocating Negro suffrage and thereby sowing the seeds that were now blossoming forth into a white rebellion.

“The printing press of ‘The Record' was wrecked by the maddened white men, who also destroyed other equipment, and the type that had been used in producing the editorial that had reflected upon the virtue and character of Southern womanhood was scattered to the four winds by these men, who stood four-square for the virtue of their women and for the supremacy of the white race over the African.

“Some lamps that had been hanging from the ceiling of the plant were torn down and thrown upon the floor, which then became saturated with kerosene oil; and then a member of the band struck a match, with the result that the two-story frame building was soon in flames.

“The leaders and most of the citizens had designed only to destroy the press,” Mr. Blake averred, adding ... “all of which proves that a mob, no matter how well disciplined, is no stronger than its weakest link.

“The crowd of armed men, which had destroyed the plant and building of the nefarious Wilmington (Negro) Daily Record, dispersed, repairing peacefully to their respective homes,” Mr. Blake said. ...

“But in about an hour the tension between the two races broke with the shooting of William H. (Bill) Mayo, a white citizen, who was wounded by the first shot that was fired in the Wilmington Rebellion as he was standing on the sidewalk near his home. ... Mayo's assailant, Dan Wright, was captured by members of the Wilmington Light Infantry and the Naval Reserves after he had been riddled by 13 bullets. Wright died next day in a hospital.

“Then the ‘Red Shirts' began to ride and the Negroes began to run. ... The Africans, or at least those Negroes who had foolishly believed in the remote possibility of social equality with the former masters of their parents, began to slink before the Caucasians. They, the Negroes, appeared to turn primal, slinking away like tigers at bay, snarling as they retreated before the bristling bayonets, barking guns and flaming ‘Red Shirts.'

“Six Negroes were shot down near the corner of Fourth and Brunswick Streets, the Negro casualties for the day — November 11, 1898 — totaling nine. One of these, who had fired at the whites from a Negro dance hall, ‘Manhattan,' over in ‘Brooklyn,' was shot 15 or 20 times. ...

“One ‘Red Shirt' said he had seen six Negroes shot down near the Cape Fear Lumber Company's plant and that their bodies were buried in a ditch. ... Another ‘Red Shirt' described the killing of nine Negroes by a lone white man, who killed them one at a time with his Winchester rifle as they filed out of a shanty door in ‘Brooklyn' and after they had fired on him. ... Another told of how a Negro had been killed and his body thrown in Cape Fear River after he had approached two white men on the wharf. ...

“Other military units came to Wilmington to assist the white citizens in establishing ‘White Supremacy' here. ... Military organizations from as far South as New Orleans telegraphed offering to come here if their services were needed in the contest.

“When the Rebellion was in full blast ‘The Committee of Twenty-five' appointed ... a committee to call upon Mayor Silas P. Wright and the Board of Aldermen and demand that these officials resign. The mayor had expressed a willingness to quit, but not during the crisis. He changed his mind, however, when he saw white citizens walking the streets with revolvers in their hands. The Negroes, too, had suddenly turned submissive, they were carrying their hats in their hands. ...

“African continued to cringe before Caucasian as the troops paraded the streets, as the guns barked and the bayonets flared, for a new municipal administration of the ‘White Supremacy' persuasion had been established in a day! The old order of Negro domination over the white citizenry had ended.”

From Harry Hayden, The Wilmington Rebellion (Wilmington, NC, 1936), 231–36.

Questions for Reading and Discussion