Hell Jolted Loose

The not-so-secret cabal of Wilmington, NC city fathers had put much work into guaranteeing the results of election held Tuesday, 8 November 1898. Their Red Shirt minions had already threatened violence to all African Americans attempting to vote. Employers sympathetic to the plot had warned black employees that trying to exercise their franchise would result in termination. They also threatened to fire white employees who didn't vote the Democratic Party. The Red Shirts kept up their end of the bargain by setting up road blocks leading to the polls, and firing at all blacks who approached them.* In precincts that were overwhelmingly African American, the “ruffians” surrounded the polling stations, before entering and causing mayhem.** In majority white precincts, poll workers took orders to separate ballots by party, whereupon Democratic operatives switched out GOP ballots, and replaced them with their own.

If you’re assuming that the rigging of this led to a sweeping Democratic victory in Wilmington, then you’d be right. Really no contest.

The Secret Nine regarded the Democratic “electoral victory” as a mere start. One Fusionist alderman, and Republican mayor Silas Wright still held their seats, because neither had been up for re-election that year. Moreover, the remaining Fusionists would remain in power until their terms ended a couple months later.

The S9 wanted power, and they wanted it immediately.

On Wednesday, 9 November 1898, Secret Nine conspirator Hugh MacRae penned what he characterized as “The White Declaration of Independence.” It’s preamble began pretty much how you would expect any supremacist manifesto would:

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.

 The bulk of the document consisted of eight demands that are equally unsurprising. The last two dealt specifically to Wilmington Daily Record publisher Alex Manly; one calling for his permanent removal from Wilmington (and you can take that any number of ways), the other calling for this action within twenty-four hours.

MacRae gave the Declaration to Alfred Waddell, an orator who had helped promote the pro-lynching propaganda adopted by the Democrats the previous two years. Along with twenty-three others (which included S9 member E.S. Lathrop), they formed the Committee of Twenty-Five, an organization created to execute the coup. Waddell, a skilled speaker, enthralled the crowd of 600+ spectators, 457 of whom instantly signed up to participate in the plot.*** Later that night, the Committee of Twenty-Five summoned prominent African American professionals and officials in order to coerce their acceptance of the eight demands by 7:00am the following day.

Which they did. Armond Scott, a local attorney bent over backwards to assure the Committee that they would do everything they could to find Manly, and turn him over for lynching justice.

We, the colored citizens, to whom was referred the matter of expulsion from the community of the person and press of A. L. Manly, beg most respectfully to say that we are in no way responsible for, nor in any way condone, the obnoxious article that called forth your actions. Neither are we authorized to act for him in this manner; but in the interest of peace we will most willingly use our influence to have your wishes carried out.****

Per arrangement, over 500 Democratic troops gathered at the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory on Market street, where they were armed with rifles, and a Gatling gun, a forerunner of today’s automatic weapons. From there, they proceeded to the Daily Record office. They didn’t find Manly. They subsequently contented themselves with burning down the entire newspaper. This got the attention of black factory workers and white sympathizers, who raced to the building to put out the flames. But the arsonists physically restrained them from doing anything but watching the paper go up in smoke.

By 9:00am, the rumor mill was in full swing. Blacks and Republicans heard reports of a slain comrade. Whites heard rumors that black churches had been stockpiling weapons, and that the members were planning an attack. By 11:00am, the fuse ignited when white groups on the corner of Fourth and Harnett Streets argued with black groups assembled on the opposite corner. Two shots rang out, each side claiming the other fired it. The ensuing fight flamed out “in all directions,”escalating along the way. When William Mayo, one of the whites taking part in the interracial war of words on the corner, took a non-fatal hit, the white Democrats in town took it as license to kill indiscriminately.

The massacre had begun.

And in the middle of it, at 3:00pm, Waddell led some of the insurrectionists to storm City Hall, where they forced Mayor Wright and the entire Board of Aldermen to resign at gunpoint. Waddell then declared himself mayor, and then installed handpicked S9 appointees to city government.

The coup d’etat had ended by 4:00. But the massacre continue.

When Waddell and fellow conspirators exited City Hall, their troop strength had increased to 2,000 men, with hardly any opposition coming from Republicans black or white. The result: between 30-600 black men were brutally murdered.***** Over 2,100 African Americans fled in terror.  No telling how many were wounded.

Not included in the above statistics was one Alex Manly. With the help of white allies, who gave him transportation, money, a disguise, and most importantly a whites-only password, Manly escaped under cover of pitch darkness. Along the way, he encountered violent white supremacists who let him through their lines when he gave the correct code.

Manly relocated to Philadelphia, where he continued his career as activist and journalist. He lived quietly, and died in 1944.

A little over sixty years later, the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission (WRRC) would do an investigation of the above events, which you’ll find in more detail in their official report. Their purpose was to counter inaccuracies put forth in the media in 1898. Northern reporters covering the event relied heavily on information given by the newly minted local government, its allies, and its henchmen, all of whom characterized it as a riot. In truth, it was a massacre based on misrepresentation and treason.

After exhaustive archival research, the WRRC found:

...that the violence of 1898 was a conspiracy of a white elite that used intimidation and force to replace a duly elected local government; that people lost their lives, livelihoods, and were banished from their homes without due process of the law; and that governments at all levels failed to protect its citizens.

Also, in November 2006 the Raleigh News and Observer, one of the papers egging on the lynch-mob, race-baiting onslaught of poorly armed people, issued an op-ed piece apologizing for the paper’s complicity in the conspiracy, writing:

We apologize to the black citizens and their descendants whose rights and interests we disregarded and to all North Carolinians, whose trust we betrayed by our failure to fairly report the news and stand firm against injustice.

 The North Carolina legislature and WRRC’s dedication to setting the record straight official finding of brutal conspiracy, coupled with an apology by the PSYOP arm of that conspiracy were nice gestures, I guess, although they seem a bit late to me.

And, to my knowledge, this is the first, at least the most successful coup d-etat within American government on American soil. It is a conspiracy. And it’s official.

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*The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Report, issued by the Wilmington Race Riot Commission in 2006, did not mention any casualties at this point. The commission went on to say that S9 and allies were trying to minimize casualties while the polls were open because they thought that an outburst might invalidate the election results. Most likely, the shots fired by the Red Brigade here were designed to intimidate, not kill.

**As the WRRC puts it:

Soon after the crowd arrived, the lamps were knocked off the tables by ‘someone pushing another against the table where the lamps were’ and the room went dark. Fulton tried to make his way to the back of the store to find a way out. and, as soon as the lights were re-lit, [Election Judge Albert] Lamb left the precinct before the ballots were fully counted….

Other precinct workers, white grocer Joe Benton and white dairyman George Bates, were on hand at Lamb’s precinct during the ballot counting and supported the testimony of Fulton and Lamb…. Benton, as judge of the election, testified that scattered among the crowd were ‘between nine and twelve policemen’ who did not attempt to ‘prevent the disturbance.’

***The crowd had gathered because all Democratic papers announced the meeting for 10:00am.

****Scott attempted to deliver the letter in person but Red Shirts and a growing number of other vigilantes had begun to spread out across the city. So he mailed it instead.

*****The number is inexact, mostly because of disputes over the scope of the massacre, the nature of the body count, and unknown fate of some of the victims. In all, the 2006 Commission only attributed twenty-two slayings to the conspiracy.