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)