A Coup Before the Capitol
There was a murderous attack against democracy, not in Washington at the Capitol, but in 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina, The Wilmington Massacre. Though slavery was supposedly over in 1865, with the crushing defeat of Robert E. Lee, being Black was not over. The Wilmington Journal, a white supremacist newspaper, headed up by a KKK leader, was quoted as saying,
“The true soldiers, whether they wore grey or blue, are now united in their opposition—call it conspiracy and resistance if you will—to Negro government and NEGRO EQUALITY.”
For most Whites in Wilmington, Blacks were not “slaves” anymore, but they were not free of Black skin and were not the equal of Whites. This illustrates that the Civil War was about slavery and white supremacy and the two were never to be separated even after the slave owning states lost the Civil War. White supremacy was more powerful than class oppression and still is today.
Resistance, Rebellion, and the Crime of Being Black
After the Civil War, the former slave owners found a way to keep their invented superiority lasting. Blacks were to obey and not run for elected positions. In North Carolina a group of white supremacists, called the “Home Guard” made it their business to terrorize the Black population. A militia to hunt down Whites was created who refused to fight for slavery. One Black man by the name of Abraham Galloway would eventually defy white supremacy and be elected as a state senator. Galloway demanded rights for Blacks. In 1864, Galloway would attend conventions of free Blacks and captured the attention of another Black man who published a New York Black paper called the “Anglo-African,” which was the most widely read Black Publication in the United States. Galloway made the point; it was not just about classism but a “crime to be Black’ in America.
1898: When Democracy Burned
By 1880, Wilmington had the largest Black population, larger than Atlanta and others. In the meantime, the KKK used symbols, like skeletons and skulls on their clothes, to frighten Blacks much like modern-day white racists. However, symbols were not going to deter Blacks from seeking their rights. In fact, Blacks protested with guns in 1868, seeking to hunt down murderous Klansmen. In 1897, Blacks started their own newspaper called “The Daily Record,” and proclaimed it as the “only daily newspaper of Blacks in the world.” Black success in creating a flourishing community threatened the power of the white elite. A group of White thugs mounted the first successful coup d’état in history of the United States. U.S. Racialized Whites engaged in beatings and murder in order to drive Black people out of office, along with White allies that made up city council.
Armed White men in red shirts (red hats now) stalked the streets threatening Black men from voting. They burned the Black newspaper to the ground and forced Blacks to resign from elected positions at gun point. The “Red Shirts” burned the Black newspaper’s office, posed for pictures in front of its smoking ruins, and overthrew democracy by installing a white supremacist as mayor, sending hundreds of Black into the surrounding woods. North Carolina tried to cover up the massacre and the overthrow of a democratically elected city government. It all sounds so familiar now days. According to the City of Wilmington,
“The 1898 Memorial Park commemorates the coup d’état that took place on November 10, 1898 in which prominent white citizens of Wilmington overthrew the legally elected biracial government of the city. It is the only coup d’etat in U.S. history, and killed an unknown number of black residents.”
