The Wilmington massacre, also known as the Wilmington insurrection or the Wilmington coup, was a municipal-level coup d'état and a massacre that was carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, on Thursday, November 10, 1898. The white press in Wilmington originally described the event as a race riot perpetrated by a mob of black people. In later study, the event has been characterized as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by white supremacists.
The state's white Southern Democrats conspired to lead a mob of 2,000 white men to overthrow the legitimately elected Fusionist biracial government in Wilmington. They expelled opposition black and white political leaders from the city, destroyed the property and businesses of black citizens built up since the American Civil War, including the only black newspaper in the city. They killed at least 14 Black people; estimates of the actual toll run from 60 to more than 300. Many leaders of the coup remained important figures in North Carolina politics, some into the 1920s.
The Wilmington coup is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. It was part of an era of more severe racial segregation and effective disenfranchisement of African Americans throughout the South, which had been underway since the passage of a new constitution in Mississippi in 1890 that raised barriers to the registration of black voters. Other states soon passed similar laws. Historian Laura Edwards writes, "What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole", as it affirmed that invoking "whiteness" eclipsed the legal citizenship, individual rights, and equal protection under the law that black Americans were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Background
In 1860, just before the American Civil War, Wilmington was North Carolina's largest city, with a population of nearly 10,000, most of whom were black. Numerous slaves and freedmen worked at the city's port, in households as domestic servants, and in a variety of jobs as artisans and skilled workers.
With the end of the war in 1865, freedmen who lived in many states left plantations and rural areas and moved to towns and cities to seek work, but also to gain safety by creating black communities without white supervision. Tensions grew in Wilmington and other areas because of a shortage of supplies; Confederate currency suddenly had no value and the South was impoverished following the end of the long war.
In 1868, North Carolina ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, resulting in the recognition of Reconstruction policies. The state legislature and governorship were dominated by Republican officials, with the governor a white man and the legislature made up of both white and black people. Freedmen were eager to vote and overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party that had emancipated them and given them citizenship and suffrage. However, conservative white Democrats, who had previously dominated politics in the state, greatly resented this "radical" change, which they deemed as being brought about by black residents, Unionist "carpetbaggers", and race traitors referred to as "scalawags".
Democrats developed a plan to subvert home rule, seeking to have local officials appointed by the state rather than elected by the people. They began circumventing legislation by taking over the state's judiciary and adopting 30 amendments to the state constitution, which effected widespread policy changes, including lowering the number of judges on the North Carolina Supreme Court, putting the lower courts and local governments under the control of the state legislature, rescinding the votes of certain types of criminals, mandating segregated public schools, outlawing interracial relationships, and granting the General Assembly the power to modify or nullify any local government. By adopting these elements, the Democrats became identified as would-be bastions for white Americans. However, their control was largely limited to the western part of the state, within counties where, demographically, there were relatively few black Americans.
As the Democrats chipped away at Republican rule, things came to a head with the 1876 gubernatorial campaign of Zebulon B. Vance, a former Confederate soldier and governor. Vance called the Republican Party "begotten by a scalawag out of a mulatto and born in an outhouse". Through Vance, the Democrats saw their biggest opening to begin implementing their agenda in the eastern part of the state.
However, in that region, poor white cotton farmers aligned with the labor movement, with many joining the People's Party (also known as the Populists). In 1892, as the U.S. plunged into an economic depression, the Populists banded with black Republicans who shared their hardships, forming an interracial coalition with a platform of self-governance, free public education, and equal voting rights for black men, called the Fusion coalition. Republicans and Populists agreed jointly to support municipal candidates.
Wilmington
In the last decade of the 19th century, Wilmington, still the largest city in the state, continued to have a majority-black population, with 11,324 blacks and 8,731 whites in 1890. There were numerous black professionals and businessmen among them, and a rising middle class.
The Republican Party was biracial in membership. Unlike in many other jurisdictions, black people in Wilmington were elected to local office, and also gained prominent positions in the community. For example, three of the city's aldermen were black. Of the five members on the constituent board of audit and finance, one was black. Black people also served in the civic positions of justice of the peace, deputy clerk of court, and street superintendent, and as coroners, policemen, mail clerks, and mail carriers.
Blacks also held significant economic power in the city. Many former slaves had skills which they were able to use in the marketplace. For example, several became bakers, grocers, dyers, etc., making up nearly 35 percent of Wilmington's service positions.
Many black people began moving out of service jobs and into other types of employment. In Wilmington they accounted for over 30 percent of its skilled craftsmen, such as mechanics, carpenters, jewelers, watchmakers, plumbers, blacksmiths, masons, and so on. In addition, they owned ten of the city's 11 restaurants, a majority of the city's 22 barbershops, and one of the city's four fish and oyster dealerships. There were also more black bootmakers and shoemakers than white ones, one-third of the city's butchers were black, and half of the city's tailors were black. Two brothers, Alexander and Frank Manly, owned the Wilmington Daily Record, which was the only known black daily in the United States at the time. The paper described itself as "the only negro daily in the world".
With the help of patronage and equitable hiring practices, some black people also held prominent business and leadership roles in the city, such as carpenter and school founder Frederick C. Sadgwar. Thomas C. Miller was one of the city's three real estate agents and auctioneers, and was also the only pawnbroker in the city, with many whites alleged to be indebted to him. In 1897, following the election of Republican President William McKinley, John C. Dancy was appointed to replace a prominent white Democrat as the U.S. collector of customs at the Port of Wilmington, at a salary of nearly US$4,000 (equivalent to $154,800 in 2025). The editor of the Wilmington Messenger often disparaged him by referring to Dancy as "Sambo of the Customs House". Black professionals increasingly supported each other. For example, of the more than 2,000 black professionals in North Carolina in that era, more than 95 percent were clergy or teachers, professions where they were not shut out from competing, unlike doctors and lawyers.
White resentment
As black people in the area rapidly emerged into their newfound social status and progressed economically, socially, and politically, racial tensions grew. Former slaves and their children had no inherited wealth. With the collapse of the Freedman's Bank, which had a Wilmington branch, in 1874, some black residents of Wilmington lost most of their savings and as a result, many distrusted banks. The debt-slave metaphor, well-known within the community, made many residents wary of debt. In addition, credit or loans available to them were marked up in price. The annual interest rate of credit charged to black people was nearly 15 percent, compared to under 7.5 percent for poor whites, and lenders refused to let African-Americans pay off their mortgages in installments. This practice, known as "principal or nothing", positioned lenders to take over black property and businesses through forced sales. The lack of inherited wealth, limitations of access to credit, and loss of savings through federal mismanagement and fraud, created a combined effect in which black people "could not save anything", or otherwise acquire the means to own taxable property.
Property ownership among black residents in Wilmington was rare, at less than ten per cent. Of nearly $6 million in real and personal property taxes, they paid less than $400,000 of this amount. And while the per capita wealth for whites in the city was around US$622 (equivalent to $24,071 in 2025), it was US$25.41 (equivalent to $983.37 in 2025) for black people.
Despite this, affluent whites believed that they were paying taxes in a disproportionate amount given the amount of property they owned, relative to the city's black residents, who now held the political power to prevent affluent whites from changing this ratio. Additionally, there was tension with poor, unskilled whites, who competed with African-Americans in the job market and found their services in less demand than skilled black labor. Black people were caught between not meeting the expectations of affluent whites and exceeding the expectations of poor whites, paradoxically progressing too fast and too slow at the same time in the eyes of white residents. An example of the view that blacks were "moving too slow" can be found in the following excerpt from an 1898 magazine article: "While thus numerically strong, the Negro is not a factor in the development of the city or section. With thirty years of freedom behind him and with an absolute equality of educational advantages with the whites, there is not today in Wilmington a single Negro savings bank or any other distinctively Negro educational or charitable institution; while the race has not produced a physician or lawyer of note. ... The Negro in North Carolina, ... is thriftless, improvident, does not accumulate money, and is not accounted a desirable citizen."
This sentiment was echoed even among whites who aligned politically with African-Americans, such as Republican governor Daniel L. Russell "An impression prevails that these colored people have grown greatly in wealth, that they have acquired homesteads, have become tax-payers and given great promise along these lines. It is not true. ... True, they may claim that this is all net gain as they started with no property. But they did not start with nothing. They started with enormous advantages over whites. They were accustomed to labor. The whites were not. They had been for generations the producers of the State and the whites the consumers. They were accustomed to hardship and privation and patient industry. They had the muscle. ...
Throughout the South, violence was perpetrated by portions of the white population against black citizens. This intimidation occurred after the Civil War and during Reconstruction in the midst of the post-war economic upheaval, when former slaves were competing with poorer white laborers.
Fusionist dominance
These dynamics continued with the elections of 1894 and 1896, in which the Republican-Populist Fusion ticket won every statewide office, including the governorship in the latter election, won by Daniel L. Russell. The Fusionists began dismantling the Democrats' political infrastructure, namely by reverting their appointed positions in local offices back to offices subject to popular elections. They also began trying to dismantle the Democratic stronghold in the less-populated western part of the state, which allowed the Democrats more political power through gerrymandering. The Fusionists also encouraged black citizens to vote, who constituted an estimated 120,000 Republican sympathizers.
By 1898, Wilmington's key political power was in the hands of "The Big Four", who were representative of the Fusion ticket: the mayor Dr. Silas P. Wright; the acting sheriff of New Hanover County, George Zadoc French; the postmaster, W. H. Chadbourn; and businessman, Flaviel W. Fosters, who wielded substantial support and influence with black voters. The "Big Four" worked in concert with a circle of patrons—made up of about 2,000 black voters and about 150 whites—known as "the Ring". The Ring included about 20 prominent businessmen, about six first- and second-generation New Englanders from families that had settled in the Cape Fear region before the War, and influential black families such as the Sampsons and the Howes. The Ring wielded political power using patronage, monetary support, and an effective press through the Wilmington Post and The Daily Record.
The Populists and Republicans in North Carolina did not get along completely, especially after the Populists actually fused with the Democrats at the presidential level in 1896 and endorsed liberal Democrat William Jennings Bryan for president. The Populists and Republicans disagreed on many national issues such as tariffs, the gold standard, and silver coinage; but the Republicans and Populists agreed on most state issues, such as voting rights and education spending.
This shift and consolidation of power horrified white Democrats, who contested the new laws, taking their grievances to the state Supreme Court, which did not rule in their favor. Defeated at the polls and in the courtroom, the Democrats, desperate to avoid another loss, became aware of discord between the Fusion alliance of black Republicans and white Populists, although it appeared that the Fusionists would sweep the upcoming elections of 1898, if voters voted on free coinage, railroad bonds scandal, and debt relief.
Issues
The economic issues, on which the Fusion coalition built its alliance, included:
Free coinage: Currency reform was an emotional issue, and the Fusionists built a pragmatic political coalition around it. The U.S. Coinage Act of 1834 had increased the silver-to-gold weight ratio from its 1792 level of 15:1 to 16:1, which brought the minting price for silver below its international market price, a move favorable to holders of silver bullion. In 1873, due to a change in market dynamics and currency circulation, the Treasury revised the law, abolishing the right of holders of silver bullion to have their metal struck into fully legal tender dollar coins, ending bimetallism in the United States and placing the nation firmly on the gold standard. Because of this, the act became contentious in later years, and it was denounced by people who wanted inflation as the "Crime of '73". The appearance of the revision was that it hurt poor people, as silver was known as "the poor man's money" given its use and circulation among the poor. While state Populist leadership believed its party was more ideologically aligned with the Democrats, some Populists refused to align with a party that did not support increased coinage of silver.
1868 North Carolina railroad bonds scandal: Since before the American Civil War, the state had been trying to expand the Western North Carolina Railroad, which was incorporated in 1855. The railroad, which was supposed to link Asheville to both Paint Rock, Alabama, and Ducktown, Tennessee, saw its construction stalled at Henry Station, a few miles from Old Fort, around 1872, plagued with construction problems in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The railroad became insolvent due to underfunding, misappropriation of bonds, and poor management. The state purchased the railroad in June 1875 for $825,000. However, the purchase also made the state liable for the railroad's debts—a substantial amount of that due to fraud because, in 1868, two men had defrauded the state legislature into issuing bonds for the railroad's western expansion. Controversy mounted when Zebulon Vance was re-elected as Governor in 1877 and made the railroad's completion a personal crusade. Many Democrats blamed Republicans for running up the debt to pay for the railroads.
Debt relief: Whites and blacks had differing experiences with debt after the American Civil War. For whites, before the war, being in debt invoked undertones of personal moral failings. However, after the war, the fact that most Southern whites were in debt created a sense of community. That community banded together to push for political and economic reforms and negotiate favorable interest rates. Conversely, black people deemed debt another form of slavery, one that was immoral, and sought to avoid it. They were often subject to high, non-negotiable interest rates. Recognizing that poor whites—who advocated doing away with credit systems altogether, in favor of a "pure-cash" system—had an incentive to keep debt low, and that poor black people were less well off than poor whites, Fusionists sought a platform to align their interests. By 1892, poor whites were incensed at Zebulon Vance and the Democrats, who had pledged to stand with the Farmers' Alliance (a precursor to the Populist party) on the issue of debt but had failed to do anything about the issue. In July 1890, Eugene Beddingfield, an influential member of the North Carolina State Farmers' Alliance, warned Vance about the extent of their anger, saying "The people are very restless. We are on the verge of a revolution. God grant it may be bloodless ... You cannot stand before the tide if it turns in your direction. No living power can withstand it."
With 90 percent of North Carolinians in debt, the Fusionist platform restricted interest rates to 6 percent. In 1895, once in office, the Fusionists successfully passed the measure with about 95 percent of black Republicans and white Populists supporting it; however, 86 percent of Democrats, who accounted for most of the lending class, opposed it.
1898 white supremacy campaign
In late 1897, nine prominent Wilmington men were unhappy with what they called "Negro Rule" in the city hall. As well, they were anxious of black success in the 1898 U.S. Congressional election. An editorial in a black newspaper merely expressing that some white women voluntarily chose sexual relations with black individuals ignited the racist social culture in Wilmington.
White supremacists were aggrieved about Fusion government reforms that affected their ability to manage and "game" (i.e., fix to their advantage) the city's affairs. Interest rates were lowered, which decreased banking revenue. Tax laws were adjusted, directly affecting stockholders and property owners who now had to pay a "like proportion" of taxes on the property they owned. Railroad regulations were tightened, making it more difficult for those who had railroad holdings to capitalize on them. Many Wilmington Democrats thought these reforms were directed at them, the city's economic leaders.
These men, the "Secret Nine" —Hugh MacRae, J. Allan Taylor, Hardy L. Fennell, W. A. Johnson, L. B. Sasser, William Gilchrist, P. B. Manning, E. S. Lathrop, and Walter L. Parsley—banded together and began conspiring to re-take control of the city government.
Democrats prepared for the 1898 elections
Around the same time, the newly elected Democratic State Party Chairman, Furnifold Simmons, was tasked with developing a strategy for the Democrats' 1898 campaign. Both the North Carolina U.S. House of Representatives seat and seats in the North Carolina Senate were to be up for grabs. Wilmington and the adjacent New Hanover County were important in these fights.
Simmons believed that in order to win, he needed an issue that would cut across party lines, moving votes from the Republican and Populist parties to Democratic Party candidates. A student of Southern political history, he knew that racial resentment was easy to inflame. He later admitted he had remembered what Populist Senator Marion Butler had written the previous year in his newspaper, The Caucasian "There is but one chance and but one hope for the railroads to capture the net [sic] legislature, and that is for the nigger to be made the issue."
Simmons then decided to build a campaign around the issue of white supremacy, knowing that the question would overwhelm all other issues. He began working with the Secret Nine, who volunteered to use their connections and funds to advance his efforts. He developed a strategy to recruit men who could "Write, Speak, and Ride". "Writers" were those who could create propaganda in the media; "speakers" were those who would be powerful orators; and "riders" were those who could ride a horse and be intimidating.
In March 1898, after realizing that the Raleigh-based News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, which represented both the liberal and conservative wings in the Democratic party, were "together in the same bed shouting 'nigger'", Simmons met with Josephus "Jody" Daniels, the editor of the News & Observer, who also had the 21-year-old cartoonist Norman Jennett (nicknamed "Sampson Huckleberry") on staff, and with Charles Aycock.
Simmons began by recruiting media outlets sympathetic to white supremacy, such as The Caucasian and The Progressive Farmer, which cynically called the Populists the "white man's party", while touting the party's alliance with black people. He also recruited aggressive, dynamic, and militant young white supremacists to help his effort. These publications presented black people as being "insolent", accused them of exhibiting ill-will and disrespect for whites in public, labeled them as corrupt and unjust, constantly laid claims about black men's alleged interest in white women, and accused white Fusionists allied with them of supporting "negro domination".
Simmons summarized the party's platform when he stated "North Carolina is a WHITE MAN'S STATE and WHITE MEN will rule it, and they will crush the party of Negro domination beneath a majority so overwhelming that no other party will ever dare to attempt to establish negro rule here.
Party leader Daniel Schenck added "It will be the meanest, vilest, dirtiest campaign since 1876. The slogan of the Democratic party from the mountains to the sea will be but one word ... 'Nigger'!
On November 20, 1897, following a Democratic Executive Committee meeting in Raleigh, the first statewide call for white unity was issued. Written by Francis D. Winston, it called on whites to unite and "re-establish Anglo-Saxon rule and honest government in North Carolina". He called Republican and Populist rule anarchy, evil, and apocalyptic, setting a vision for the Democrats to be the saviors—the redeemers—that would rescue the state from "tyranny".
Alfred M. Waddell
Simmons created a speakers bureau, stacking it with talented orators whom he could deploy to deliver the message across the state. One of those orators was Alfred Moore Waddell, an aging member of Wilmington's upper class who was a skilled speaker and four-time former Congressman, losing his seat to Daniel L. Russell in 1878.
Waddell remained active after his defeat, becoming a highly sought-after political speaker and campaigner. He positioned himself as a representative of oppressed whites and a symbol of redemption for inflamed white voters. He had developed a reputation as "the silver tongued orator of the east" and as an "American Robespierre".
In 1898, Waddell, who was then unemployed, was also dealing with financial difficulty. His law practice was struggling, and his third wife, Gabrielle, largely supported him through her music teaching. The Chief of Police, John Melton, later testified that Waddell was seeking an opportunity to return to prominence as a politician, in order to "lighten the burden of his wife".
Waddell aligned with the Democrats and their campaign to "redeem North Carolina from Negro domination". Melton stated that Waddell, who had been out of public life for while, saw the White Supremacy Campaign as "his opportunity to put himself before the people and pose as a patriot, thereby getting to the feed trough".
Waddell was "hired to attend elections and see that men voted correctly". With the aid of Daniels, who would distribute racist propaganda that he later acknowledged helped fuel a "reign of terror" (i.e., disparaging cartoons of blacks) before speeches, Waddell, and the other orators, began appealing to white men to join their cause.
White supremacist clubs
As the fall of 1898 approached, George Rountree, Francis Winston, and attorneys William B. McCoy, Iredell Meares, John D. Bellamy and other prominent Democrats organized white supremacist clubs, as branches of the White Government Union. The clubs demanded that every white man in Wilmington join them.
Many [of the] good people were marched from their homes ... taken to headquarters, and told to sign. Those that did not were notified that they must leave the city ... as there was plenty of rope in the city.
Membership in the clubs began to spread throughout the state. The clubs were complemented by the development of a white labor movement which was founded for the purpose of opposing blacks who were competing for jobs with whites. The "White Laborer's Union" got the backing of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce and the Merchant's Association and it vowed to found a "permanent labor bureau for the purpose of procuring white labor for employers".
The efforts of the white supremacists peaked in August 1898. A pro-lynching speech by Rebecca Latimer Felton from 1897 was reprinted in newspapers at various times throughout the South. On August 18, 1898, Alexander Manly, one of the brothers who owned Wilmington's only black newspaper, Daily Record The Daily Record, published an editorial in response to Felton's speech. Manly rebutted the speech by stating that white women were not raped by black men, that some willingly slept with black individuals. Manly was the acknowledged grandson of Governor Charles Manly and his slave, Corinne.
Some whites were outraged by Manly's editorial. The outrage provided an opening for Democrats, who had taken to calling themselves "The White Man's Party". Democrat speakers denounced Manly's editorial by claiming there was "evidence" of the existence of predatory and emboldened blacks.
White supremacist commentaries
For some time, Josephus Daniels had used Wilmington as a symbol of "Negro domination" because its government was biracial, ignoring the fact that it was dominated by a two-thirds white majority. Many newspapers published pictures and stories implying that African-American men were sexually attacking white women in the city.