This article is on the front page of today's Raleigh News and Observer, one of the newspapers that contributed to the fight to disenfranchise black people during Reconstruction.
The 1898 riot and coup d'etat in Wilmington that killed an unknown number of black residents actually was a planned insurrection that white supremacists spent months organizing.
The violence was part of a statewide effort -- with a pivotal role played by The News & Observer and other newspapers -- to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens, according to a draft report released Thursday by the state-appointed 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission.
The incident is the only known violent overthrow of a government in U.S. history. Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed the laws that would disfranchise a race of people for generations -- 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, former mayor of Wilmington and a member of the commission. "It's a major event that went unnoticed."
Now, with history fully told, members of the riot commission will turn toward action, perhaps asserting that there must be some atonement.
"We want to engage people to come up with creative ways to respond to 106 years of degradation," Peterson said.
To make amends, some commission members have suggested financing historical exhibitions about the riot and its consequences, portraying the Wilmington riot in school history texts, and developing economic interests in affected areas.
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The article goes on to tell how the media got involved in the effort to discredit and disenfranchise blacks.
In The N&O, for example, Daniels published stories about community crime and graft among elected officials in Wilmington. He hired a cartoonist to pen racist images of "Negro Rule," showing white men as victims and white women desperate for help.
One cartoon, for example, showed a white woman surrounded by black men at the post office. It was drawn in response to the hiring of African-Americans at the postal service and argued that white women now were afraid to call for their mail.
Other papers, including The Charlotte Observer, the Wilmington Star and the Wilmington News, also spread racially divisive propaganda.
Read whole report from the Race Riot Commission:
http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-w...ort/report.htm
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