Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898 Coup D'état (Newspapers)

Collection

Identifier: SC-MS-132

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection contains photocopies of issues of the Wilmington Daily Record, The Evening Dispatch, and fragments of the New York Journal around the time of and covering the Wilmington coup in 1898. The Journal makes explicit reference to the "riots" in Wilmington, gives the death toll as sixteen killed, and reprints the text of the Alex Manley editorial from the Record.

Dates

Creation: 1898 (photocopies)

Creator

Manly, Alex (Editor, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research use.

Copyright Statement

Copyright retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Historical Note

In 1898, members of the Democratic party in North Carolina orchestrated a white supremacist political campaign that resulted in the violent overthrow of the locally elected government in Wilmington on November 10. In a bid to remove Fusion party members of Black businessmen and their white political allies from public positions of influence, a group of armed, white men—coaxed on and led by powerful community leaders known as The Secret Nine—attacked and killed Black citizens throughout the city, ran out many others, and finally placed their own Democratic candidates in the newly vacated seats. The events of the 1898 coup marked a turning point in the post-Reconstruction South that changed the trajectory of race relations in North Carolina and marked the start of Jim Crow laws in the state, which further enforced racial segregation through the mid-20th century.