Report calls 1898 North Carolina
Riot an ‘insurrection’
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Violence in 1898 that resulted in the only
known forceful overthrow of a city government in U.S. history has
historically been called a race riot but actually was an insurrection
that white supremacists had planned for months, a state commission
concludes.
The violence in Wilmington, which resulted in the deaths of an unknown
number of black people, “was part of a statewide effort to
put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political
advances of black citizens,” the 1898 Wilmington Riot Commission
concludes in a draft report.
Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed laws that disfranchised
blacks until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of
the 1960s.
“Essentially, it crippled a segment of our population that
hasn’t recovered in 107 years,” said Harper Peterson,
a commission member and former mayor of Wilmington. “It’s
a major event that went unnoticed.”
At the time of the violence, black men in North Carolina had been
able to vote for some three decades as part of Reconstruction following
the Civil War, said Jeffrey Crow, deputy secretary of the state
Office of Archives and History, which researched the report.
But within a year of the insurrection, the General Assembly was
controlled by Democrats and had passed the first Jim Crow law that
ended voting rights to blacks.
The General Assembly established the commission in 2000. Its draft
report was opened for public comment last week.
Some commission members have suggested financing historical exhibitions
about the riot and its consequences, portraying it in school history
texts and developing economic interests in affected areas.
In addition, the state should issue some sort of apology for its
inaction, said Irving Joyner, vice chairman of the commission and
a law professor at N.C. Central University.
“Because Wilmington rioters were able to murder blacks in
daylight and overthrow Republican government without penalty or
federal intervention, everyone in the state, regardless of race,
knew that the white supremacy campaign was victorious on all fronts,”
the report says.
The commission must make recommendations to the Legislature by May.
The report documents the deaths of 22 blacks.
“We’ll never know how many people died,” said
LeRae Umfleet, the state archives researcher who has worked with
the commission since 2003. “There are not enough tombstones
to tell us everyone that was murdered.”
The commission is still studying tax records and working to determine
the riot’s financial impact on the black business community.
It took the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act to restore
blacks’ voting rights, Jeffrey Crow said. But he noted that
Congress argues about the Voting Rights Act every time it comes
up for renewal.
“More than a hundred years later, we’re still trying
to resolve the issues,” Crow said. “It’s extremely
important that people understand history.”
(Associated Press)
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