Wilmington Massacre: 125 years ago, white mob killed dozens of African Americans in NC
Friday marks 125 years since a white supremacist mob unleashed terror on Wilmington.
Dozens of African-Americans were murdered, and the city government was overthrown – the only time that's ever happened in American history. Wilmington was targeted for a coup because it was one of the most successfully integrated cities in North Carolina after the Civil War, with a strong Black middle class.
Until recently, most people had never heard of the time a group of white men stormed into Wilmington, slaughtering Black men, burning Black-owned businesses and ousting the just-elected biracial city government, installing in its place white supremacist leaders.
It was a story lost to history for more than 100 years, an example of history written by the victors.
It was not until 2000 that the North Carolina state legislature created the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to develop an accurate historical record of the event.
The newspapers of the day descried a "race riot" where law-abiding white citizens sought to restore order. Research published by North Carolina State University found "the national narrative largely cast black men as aggressors, legitimizing the coup as a direct result of black aggression."
The truth of the matter was reflected in the contemporary writings of J. Allen Kirk, then pastor of Central Missionary Baptist Church in Wilmington, who hid his family in a cemetery as violence raged.
Kirk wrote of African-American bodies "dotting" the streets and of Black-owned businesses incinerated.
He wrote of armed white men burning down the Daily Record, the state's only Black-owned newspaper.
Its editor, Alex Manley, hid in pastor Kirk's house.
"It was a coup. It was basically a massacre of Black people at the hands of well-armed white supremacists," said David Zucchino, author of Wilmington's Lie, which documents the coup of 1898.
In all, historians estimate at least 60 Black men were killed, but it's possible over 100 died. Some crawled under houses after being shot and died there.
"Not all the bodies were recovered," said Zucchino.
If not for witnesses like Kirk, people today would not know much about the atrocities that happened to African-Americans that day.
