Blacks in Wilmington killed, swept from power
North Carolina should make amends for an 1898 race riot that killed an unknown number of black people and hobbled Wilmington's black community for generations, a state commission said Wednesday.
For six years the 13-member group studied the events of November 1898 and their aftermath. It released its final report Wednesday, saying that the riot, which ousted the city's Reconstruction Republican leadership, stemmed from a conspiracy by white supremacist Democrats to drive blacks from power.
The report says that the riot destroyed a thriving black community and pushed blacks out of local politics for more than 60 years -- and that blacks in Wilmington still suffer from its effects. Now, the commission says, it's too late for apologies.
"From those who benefited from holding down the dreams of African-Americans, we expect some return," said Irving Joyner, vice chairman of the commission.
The panel asks for incentives for minority-owned businesses, public assistance for minority homebuyers and tutoring for children. It also asks the state to provide an avenue for those who want compensation for family property lost in the riots. The report did not estimate what that might cost.
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White backlash
Even now, the riot is a point of contention between black and white residents, said LeRae Umfleet, a historian with the state Office of Archives and History who wrote the report.
White historians long described the event as an uprising against a corrupt government, Umfleet said. Black residents, she said,
misremembered it, too.
Umfleet said many residents think black men were beheaded in the riot and their heads displayed on pikes. In fact, that happened nearly 70 years earlier, when whites feared a slave revolt. Umfleet's research also dispelled the popular notion that whites seized black property.
What actually happened in 1898 was part of a statewide backlash against rising black political and social power, Umfleet said. Blacks had the right to vote for nearly three decades after the Civil War and were gaining clout in the Republican-controlled government.
This enraged Democrats, including Daniels, editor of The N&O. They campaigned to install white supremacist leaders across the state, and made an extra push in Wilmington.
Newspaper burned
In Wilmington, then the state's largest city, blacks outnumbered whites. The city was a bustling center of black business and home to many black people of influence, Umfleet said. Daniels published stories about crime and political corruption in the city and hired a cartoonist to draw racist images of "Negro Rule."
On Nov. 10, 1898, a mob of nearly a thousand white men set fire to the city's black newspaper. The editor had written an editorial several months before saying that white women might enjoy associating with black men.
The blaze caused panic, and scores of blacks fled. An unknown number of blacks were killed, and others were driven from the city. The mob overthrew the city council and fired all black city workers.
Soon after, Jim Crow laws began cutting off voting and other rights to blacks.
Even today, commission members said, blacks have little power in city and county government. There are no black representatives on the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, and two of seven Wilmington City Council members are black. About a quarter of Wilmington's residents are black.
Joyner, an N.C. Central University law professor as well as the commission's vice chairman, said the recommendations in the report are only a "modest starting point" for healing Wilmington's wounds.
"There is no amount of money that can repair what happened 108 years ago," Joyner said.
http://www.newsobserver.com/701/story/445734.html
I don't expect much to come out of this. The Raleigh paper hasn't decided if they want to publish the full report.
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