Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government

By Toby Luckhurst
BBC News

17 January 2021

A violent mob, whipped into a frenzy by politicians, tearing apart a town to overthrow the elected government.

Following state elections in 1898, white supremacists moved into the US port of Wilmington, North Carolina, then the largest city in the state. They destroyed black-owned businesses, murdered black residents, and forced the elected local government - a coalition of white and black politicians - to resign en masse.

Historians have described it as the only coup in US history. Its ringleaders took power the same day as the insurrection and swiftly brought in laws to strip voting and civil rights from the state's black population. They faced no consequences.

Wilmington's story has been thrust into the spotlight after a violent mob assaulted the US Capitol on 6 January, seeking to stop the certification of November's presidential election result. More than 120 years after its insurrection, the city is still grappling with its violent past.

-snip-

"No one was held accountable for the 1898 insurrection. Therefore it opened up the floodgates, especially in the south, for them to... strip African Americans' civil rights," he told the BBC. "That's the first thing that came to my mind after the DC insurrection - you're opening the door for something else to happen, or even worse."

-snip-

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55648011


The mob burned down the offices of the Wilmington Daily Record

[jmbar2]

1. I just read this story last nite in the New York Review of Books

It's a horrifying story, but not all that uncommon in the reconstruction south. This was a crime against humanity.

I have come to have enormous gratitude to AAs for the very existence of our democracy, as incomplete as it is. We would never have gotten even this far without their sacrifice to force us to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

All Americans owe a deep debt of gratitude and reparations to those who have led us out of darkness over the centuries, at such enormous cost.

[irisblue]

2. Eugene, this needs to be seen in GD. Some need a bit of eyeopening.

I see this most definitely as a fact of the Reconstruction and the compromise election of 1876 and Rutherford Hayes election. As part of the 1876 compromise, Hayes pulled tbe Federal troops from the defeated South, leaving so much undefended. The historical echos seem obvious to (arm chair historian) me

[littlemissmartypants]

3. I posted about the book in your other thread. Could you please cross post

to the North Carolina group? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing this.

❤ lmsp