Holloway:
Tonight we're in Wilmington to talk about a massacre, or a coup-d'etat as it is known, that happened in 1898, over 100 years ago. We'll talk about that next on Black Issues Forum. [MUSIC]

Voice over:
1898 was an election year. Racial tension was running high in Wilmington, because many of the top political positions in the city were held by black Republicans. Meanwhile, Democrats across the state were appealing to North Carolina voters to restore control of the state to white people. A congressman's wife said publicly that "the biggest threat to white farm wives in the south was the black brutes who raped them," and that "if it meant lynching a thousand Negroes to clean up the scourge, so be it." Then Alex Manly, editor of the Negro newspaper Daily Record suggested "white men should watch their women more closely, that sometimes white women are attracted to black men." These statements inflamed the worst racial violence in Wilmington's history. Local author Philip Gerard chronicles the events in his novel Cape Fear Rising.

Gerard:
A legally elected democratic government in the United States was overthrown by a military coup. It didn't happen during riots, it didn't happen during strikes, it was planned and executed. And nothing was done about it.

Voice over:
One of the leaders of the uprising was an ex-confederate officer, Colonel Alfred Moore Waddel. He was a down-on-his-luck struggling lawyer in 1898. But on November 8th, Wilmington's elegant Thalian Hall set the stage for Waddel's transformation.

Gerard:
In this hall, Colonel Alfred Moore Waddel made two important speeches for the White Supremacy Movement. In the first, he claimed that he would rid the state of Negro domination if it meant that he would have to choke the current of the Cape Fear River with the carcasses of his enemies. The second one he delivered the night before election day in which he said, "if you see the Negro out voting, send him home from the polls. If he won't go, shoot him down in his tracks." And he electrified the crowd.

Voice over:
November 10th, 1898. Nearly 600 light infantrymen and vigilantes spent the night here, at the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory, and a nearby church. At 8:00 AM, Colonel Waddel called the group to action, and led them to Freelove Hall, where Alex Manly's newspaper was located. The mob then set fire to the building and then posed for a photograph beside the ruins. The riots had begun. By that evening, Negroes were fleeing into nearby swamps, and even into the local white cemetery.

Gerard:
And a number of them came here to Oakdale Cemetery to hide among the burrs and under the trees where they could find some shelter form the cold drizzle that had begun falling since late afternoon and continued throughout the night.

Voice over:
As many as several hundred people perished in the riots, while many others left the city, greatly reducing Wilmington's black population. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the 1898 riots is that few people know about them.

Holloway:
Good evening and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I'm Jay Hollaway, your host. Tonight we take a break from some of the Town Hall Meetings and talk about an event in our state's history that is often been overlooked. But in Wilmington it has not. They've had a commemoration, and we'll talk about that next week on Black Issues Forum. And they've had, it's been quite a legacy here in Wilmington, and we'll continue with that discussion. But tonight we have two guests to talk about this event that occurred over 100 years ago, talk about what happened, some of the details, and fill you in on some of the history you may not know about. First let me introduce you to David Seselsky, is that right? David, you're the author of a book that has come out of this commemoration, I think that the University has published.

Seselsky:
Yes.

Holloway:
Tell us about that.

Seselsky:
It's called Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and its Legacy. Tim Tyson, another local boy from Eastern North Carolina and I pulled 12 of the best scholars, really, across the country, together, to talk about why this massacre was such a central event, not just in North Carolina but across the nation. And we were surprised that everybody we asked was eager to write for us, John Hope Franklin wrote a wonderful introduction for us, and to an important degree we really wanted to bring a historical perspective to the commemoration here, but also to honor Ms. Todd and all the local efforts that have gone on here to mark the 100th anniversary of the race riots.

Holloway:
And Bertha Todd, you are somewhat of an institution here, but a local historian, and he mentions honoring you. Tell us your role in this commemoration event and your involvement in the 1898 commemoration.

Todd:
Well I really am a retired administrator, I can't say that I am retired. But I served as co-chair of the 1898 Centennial Foundation, and it has been a challenge. We have had many African Americans, European Americans, Asians, Hispanics, we have had the involvement of quite a few. We did not reach everyone, however, but we think we opened the door to a wound in order to heal it.

Holloway:
Now, let's talk about, and we're going to talk more about that commemoration next week in our town hall meeting, but we want to talk tonight about this actual event, because those who follow this program will hear more about the commemoration. But I know this is a difficult subject, and you have written about it, you all have studied that. Let's try to take our time to explain to the state-wide audience about the political history and how this built up and what significance, how significant was this. I had read that this is the only recorded coup d'etat on the soil of the United States in its history. Is that true?

Todd:
We might say that it was the only successful coup d'etat that occurred in the United States, and I would like for David to give you some background, and I'll fill in as he leaves some gaps, maybe.

Holloway:
Well, let's start off with what happened and then we can say what led to happening.

Seselsky:
Let's first of all just say right off what happened that day, November 10th, 1898. A very well-organized mob of the city's, led by the city's white leaders, the most prosperous men in town, killed somewhere between, oh I've seen estimates as low as 14 and estimates as high as 300 or more, African Americans. We call the book Democracy Betrayed because in some ways it wasn't simply an anti-black event, it was a coup d'etat. The whites took power away from a black and white coalition. And it was almost, I think if it had happened in a banana republic in Central America we would have called it a revolution. The background, though is even more interesting. Most of us think that right after, and I did, you know, before studying it, you kind of see a continuous line there is slavery, then there is Reconstruction, then freedom, with a long period of Jim Crow, racial segregation, followed not until the 1950's and 60's with the Civil Rights Movement. But that's not really the way it happened, particularly in North Carolina. For almost 35 years after the Civil War, blacks and whites had, some blacks and whites had struck political alliances in North Carolina that we really haven't seen to this day to some extent. In 1894, a black and white coalition, they called themselves the "Fusionists," captured the North Carolina General Assembly, both houses, they eventually held the governorship, the two U.S. Senators, and all the major judgeships. Black and white. Primarily black Republicans, remember this was the era when Republicans were still the "party of Lincoln," it's just a little confusing for us today, and white Populists, a third part. It tended to be middling to poor farmers. They had captured the state. Many of us know them for their progressivism, they helped start North Carolina State and expanded public education across North Carolina. They expanded who could vote, really making for the first time, males, pretty much every male above the age of 18 or 20 years old could vote.

Holloway:
Now this is the same year that North Carolina Mutual starts, so you have in the middle of the state.

Seselsky:
Exactly. And in fact, this black and white coalition was really bolstered by the, at that time Wilmington was the largest city in the state, the majority was black, it was the center of African American culture.

Holloway:
At that point, I understand it was about 66% black, I don't want you to just move over that. This was a majority black town where a lot of blacks were politically, held political office, held businesses, so this was a thriving area.

Todd:
It was a thriving city for African Americans at that time. And can you imagine with the Populist vote and the Republican vote, then they managed, that coalition, the Fusion politics, managed to get the votes in order to get African Americans and Populist whites into office. Well this did not set too well with the Democrats who were predominantly white. And as a result of that, I think Rebecca Felton, Rebecca was from Georgia, was she not, and the legislature there. There was an effort to use Rebecca Felton's letter, or her speech at that time, and she talked about the fact that the white men should be more protective of their white females, and she said if it took killing to do that then that's what had to be done.

Holloway:
Now this sex and race issue was what was published in the black newspaper at that time?

Todd:
This is correct. So Alex Manly, Alex Manly and his brothers were sons of Governor Manly, and he was the owner of the newspaper at that time.

Holloway:
Governor Manly was governor of..

Todd:
Of North Carolina.

Holloway:
Now, the reason I'm looking confused is that Manly was black or.

Todd:
Manly was black, but he looked more white than black.

Holloway:
Okay, now the governor was not black.

Todd:
No, the governor was white.

Holloway:
Okay, I just wanted to clarify that.

Todd:
Yes, yes.

Seselsky:
It's all in the family.

Holloway:
All right.

Todd:
Yes, we are one race, one human race. And at that time, this letter was fueled by the News and Observer and other papers. They used this letter in order to incite and frighten the African American community and the Populists I guess, so that the vote in November would move back to the Democrats, and of course this is what happened. David, what happened after that?

Seselsky:
Well, the important point to me, kind of to set the stage even one more, one more part of the foundation, is that, as terrible as things were in Wilmington, none of the preparations for this coup d'etat really started in Wilmington. It was a statewide campaign, that, faced with this coalition, this black and white coalition, and new electoral reforms that enlarged the franchise for everyone, for whites and blacks, the leader of the state's Democratic party decided, and fortunately they bragged about it so much later that we know exactly when they decided, I believe it was December, 1897, they met at Getacca Hotel in New Bern, led by Josephus Daniels, who was the founder of the Raleigh News and Observer, Fernapold Simmons, who at that time Executive Secretary of the state's Democratic Party, he later served in the U.S. Senate for almost 30 years, and Charles Aycock, who would soon be elected governor of North Carolina.

Holloway:
Influential people.

Todd:
Very much so.

Seselsky:
These were very influential people. They laid down a campaign that would, they sat there and laid down a campaign that said-"how can we put a wedge between black and white voters?" And what they looked to, of course, was exactly this issue of race and sex. They said-"if we can make white men," -I guess today we would call them race traitors-"if we could make these Populists, these Fusionists feel that they aren't being real men, that they aren't' protecting their white womanhood, we can make it impossible for them to strike an alliance with black voters," and for a year they put out stories on alleged black rapes, black crime, I mean, any of us who went through, what was it, the Bush campaign with the Willie Horton ads and all that? They really pioneered this.

Todd:
Well, David, I'll tell you what else happened there. This letter that Alex Manly had written was months before the election, but all of the media, the newspapers began to publish this letter and talk about it, so they were building up enough fear so that African Americans and the Populists would not go to the polls. And they would regain the offices that they wanted. If you remember correctly, we heard that. yes?

Holloway:
Now what is the relation to this "Secret Nine" that I read about?

Seselsky:
Well, across North Carolina, the campaign, this white, and they called it a "White Supremacy Campaign," this was not something that they hid, they were very proud of it, the Democratic Party's White Supremacy Campaign had local organizers everywhere. In Wilmington, part of that local organization included a group of very prosperous men that was later known as the Secret Nine. And they laid the framework for what became the takeover of the city government. On November, the elections of that fall occurred on November 8th, and in most parts of the state, racial intimidation and voter fraud brought the Democrats back into power. That also happened in Wilmington, except that there were many local offices that weren't up for election that year. They were off-year elections. And the Secret Nine and its white supporters throughout the city decided that was unbearable, to leave any elected black officials, or elected Fusionists, their white allies, in power. Two days after the election on November 10th, they go down and burn Alexander Manly's newspaper office, and then proceed on a wave of violence that swept through the black neighborhoods, killed as we said, unknown numbers of African Americans, and pushed thousands of African Americans over the next several months to leave Wilmington forever. Wilmington would never really recover.

Todd:
There were even extra cars added to the train so that they could ship them out of town, and of course the others were sort of killed and even thrown in the Cape Fear River, and some even ended up in the coroner's office.

Holloway:
Let me just remind our viewers, if you are just tuning in, we are talking about the 1898 race riots in Wilmington that occurred over 100 years ago, we said 1898. And I wonder why Wilmington was chosen out of all the other places in the state? You eloquently talked about it being built up state wide with these leaders. Why Wilmington so violent, why was Wilmington chosen to be this point, this.?

Todd:
I would say, and David may not agree with me, but I would think that simply because Wilmington was predominantly African American at the time, and simply because there were so many African Americans who held office. The only pawn broker in Wilmington was Thomas Miller, a pawn broker, and they had accrued quite a bit of land and quit a bit of money. And the cultural mecca that was here at that time. I think that because Wilmington at that time was the largest city in North Carolina, and because it was run predominantly by blacks, I think that was the, should I say the very main reason why North Carolina wanted to get rid of any cities that were predominantly run by blacks, and of course Wilmington was the focal point of the time.

Holloway:
So you knock off the biggest one and it sends a message.

Todd:
Yes, it sends a message.

Seselsky:
I agree completely, and as part of that there was this very powerful legacy of black resistance in Wilmington, it had been a center of black militant political activism as well as of economic prosperity over the years. And we might say that if the black regiment that was off fighting in the Spanish American War had been here in Wilmington, things probably would have gone a little bit different. The white regiment had returned to Wilmington and actually had played a part in the so-called race riots. F: Were they the red shirts?

Todd:
They weren't the red shirts, no.

Seselsky:
No, the red shirts were more kind of a Ku Klux Klan of the day.

Todd:
You need to tell them about the red shirts.

Holloway:
Were they here?

Todd:
Yes they were, very much in evidence.

Seselsky:
And also statewide, don't let people forget that, but they were kind of the Ku Klux Klan of the day, they tended to be again, better off people, but they disguised themselves and acted as a white militia. But they weren't the only white force brought to bear. This regiment from the Spanish American War was involved here in Wilmington, there was a number of different white groups that were part of the violence. And it really was, there had been this black tradition of militancy here, and it made Wilmington a special target.

Holloway:
Now there was, I don't know if we mentioned his mane yet, the one person that really led this effort, was it Waddel, I believe? F: Alfred Waddel?

Holloway:
Yeah. Who was that who pretty much led this effort?

Todd:
I'm going to let David tell you about Alfred Waddel!

Seselsky:
Well, you may feel differently about him. I have problems taking Alfred Waddel seriously. I mean, Waddel was a, he had been a U.S. congressman, he was kind of an un-reconstructed confederate.

Todd:
Sort of.

Seselsky:
.and after he got out of the congress, way in the '70's, the 1870's, he became, I always think of him as somewhat of a buffoon.

Todd:
Well, I think that he served as the front for what the others would like to do, and Alfred Waddel was quite boisterous in talking. And he said the things that other individuals wished they could say, but they would not dare say. So Alfred Waddel was really used, I would say.

Seselsky:
He would stand up and say things like-"if you see a black out voting tomorrow, kill him." He would just say that in front of thousands of people. He would say, he said-"we are going to choke the mouth of the Cape Fear river with black carcasses." But there is Waddel waiting in the wings in every situation. Waddel would never have made, he had neither the political sophistication or the wherewithal to make something like this happen. That would have been the Charles Aycock, the future governor, or the Behema Cray who was a founder of what became CP&L, and a local man here in town, people of that sort were more important than Waddel.

Holloway:
Well, that also raises a question. If blacks were the majority and Fusionists or Republicans who were in political power, did they just stand aside and let this guy do this without taking any legal action on him? How could he just do this without being challenged? Or was he challenged?

Todd:
Jay, I would say this: 33 years of African American achievement yes. But 33 years of real power and politics and money for the African Americans in Wilmington and anywhere else, no. I would say simply that the individuals, that African Americans who had done well were to be praised for their achievements, but there were some offices still that European Americans held and they were offices of power. So although Wilmington at that time was66% African American, it was really not the strongest city, maybe now it would be, but certainly not after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Holloway:
But I mean, was it safe to say that the Fusionists or the people that were of like mind were in power, I guess I'm wondering about challenging Waddel.

Seselsky:
Well, I have two or three responses. The first is that if it had been a, if this had happened in the context of democratic government, it couldn't have happened. It could only happen by not respect. by breaking the law. And the white leaders acknowledged this. They just said-"there are times when the Constitution doesn't matter." And these were reactionaries to a degree where it is hard for us to imagine today. Second, the violence could have been much worse. I think we look at it and say it was terrible, but actually, I think there were an awful lot of African Americans standing up for themselves that year, simply to keep it from becoming a much worse situation than did happen. I also believe that it mattered a lot, I think it was hard for that new generation of African Americans who had risen to prosperity in the 1890's, who had not been slaves, who had not been part of the Civil War, to believe what whites would resort to. I think they underestimated the degree to which whites would sink. Now remember, they were part of a much more interracial society. Wilmington was all mixed at that point. Blacks and whites mixed in a way that they never would after Jim Crow. They would go to the same, many would go to the same churches, church revivals. They would, there were many businesses dominated by African Americans.

Holloway:
Even marriages too, or.?

Todd:
Quite a few African Americans were married in white churches, predominately European churches.

Seselsky:
But not much interracial.

Todd:
Not too much interracial.

Seselsky:
Let's not create a scenario.

Holloway:
Compared back to Manly related to the Governor, but that wasn't a marriage.

Gerard:
The other things that Manly said was the fact that it was consensual between some adults and they used that letter to fuel the fire for what happened later.

Holloway:
We only have a few minutes, go ahead.

Seselsky:
Just very briefly. My chapter in Democracy Betrayed focuses on this man, Abraham Galloway, who was a runaway slave from Wilmington who comes back as a Union spy, organizes an African American regiment here during the Civil War. Organizes a black militia after the war to fight the Ku Klux Klan. African Americans who had come through those kinds of experiences, slavery and the Civil War, would not have not let down their guard in 1898. But a new generation, to their credit, was more optimistic and hopeful that things had changed. They did not, Galloway understood that democracy was only sustained by self-defense and violence, if you had to resort to it. Three decades later, African Americans in Wilmington hoped that democracy included them. And they discovered, painfully late, that it didn't.

Holloway:
What else happened immediately after this, say November 11, when they really discovered this thing was over. What happened, what was the social climate that .?

Todd:
According to the research that I have done, the papers said there was an "uneasy calm" that covered the city. And, of course, many African Americans then were still in the cemetery areas where they hid. And there were many white families who befriended African American families. This was one of my first introductions to 1898 when I came to Wilmington 54 years after this had occurred. There was a black family who began to tell me about 1898 and how this white family befriended them. And that is when I began to get more interested in what occurred at that time. But there was an uneasy calm and many African Americans were still frightened and on their way out of town and of course, many more were killed and thrown into the Cape Fear River.

Holloway:
We have just a couple of minutes left. Dave what would you like to say in about minute or so about Democracy Betrayed as we conclude the program?

Seselsky:
To me, the important message that we, kind of as national scholars, were trying to bring to this local commemoration was that this was something that occurred throughout North Carolina that Wilmington in many ways has started to come to grips with, but that I don't think the rest of us have. The Wilmington Race Riot was a national event. It sent out a signal that no matter what happened, no matter what whites did to African American communities, particularly if you dared be successful, the Supreme Court and other courts would not act, the President would not act, Congress would not act. It was a free for all from that moment on. It changed the racial climate in America completely.

Holloway:
Bertha, what would you say in conclusion?

Todd:
In conclusion, I would like to urge everyone to get a Centennial Record and read it through. The 1898 Centennial Foundation is making a special effort to use the slogan, "Moving Forward Together for the Next Millennium." And as Joyce Santiana, the historian, said, "If we are going to face those who don't know their past and learn of it are doomed to repeat it. And since our past is a part of our present and our future, it would behoove us to learn about the past so that we can plan effectively for the future and the next millennium."

Holloway:
Well, we will list that number on our screen and this is where you can contact The Centennial Record and get a copy of this. Is it for a charge or is it for free?

Todd:
No, it is free.

Holloway:
Okay, so if you will call the number on your screen, we will be happy to get you in contact. And you actually stole my close, I was going to say that if you don't know your history you are doomed to repeat it. But thank you, David Selesky and Bertha Todd, thank you all so much for sharing with us this very emotional and significant event in our state's history.

Todd:
It is a pleasure. Selesky: It is a pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Holloway:
Thank you so much for joining us on Black Issues Forum. And as Bertha Todd said more eloquently than I can, "those of you who don't know your history are bound to repeat it." Get a copy of The Centennial Record. Please review the book, Democracy Betrayed. And learn more about this event in our history. Next week on Black Issues Forum we will have our town hall meeting here in Wilmington, at UNC-Wilmington, and talk about the commemoration of that 1898 event. And the following week we will talk about its political legacy. So until next week, you have a blessed evening and a good night. Thank you. [END]