Qualla: Wilmington Massacre

Wilmington Massacre: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On November 10, 1898, in the largest city in North Carolina, a mob of roughly two thousand armed white men marched on Seventh and Nun Streets and burned the offices of the Daily Record, a Black-owned newspaper whose editor, Alex Manly, had already fled for his life. By nightfall, they had also overthrown the elected city government at gunpoint, forced the mayor and aldermen to resign, deposed the police chief, and installed their own ringleader, Alfred Moore Waddell, as mayor. Estimates of the Black citizens killed that day range from sixty to as many as three hundred. Thousands more fled into the swamps north of the city, never to return. It was the only successful coup d'etat in American history.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Wilmington Massacre: The City That Was

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Wilmington in 1898 was unlike anywhere else in the post-Reconstruction South. Black residents made up a majority of the population, roughly 56 percent, and they had built a thriving middle class. There were Black aldermen, Black magistrates, a Black-owned barber shop chain, Black...

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Wilmington Massacre: Alex Manly and the Daily Record

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Alex Manly was the editor of the Daily Record, the only Black-owned daily newspaper in the United States. In August 1898 he published an editorial responding to a Georgia speech by Rebecca Latimer Felton, who had called for the lynching of Black men to protect white women. Manly ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Wilmington Massacre: The Day

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Wilmington Morning Star, Public domain. The morning of November 10 began with Waddell leading hundreds of men, many in the red shirts of the white supremacy campaign, from the armory at Market and Fourth Streets. They moved first to the Daily Record office and set it on fire. From there the mob fanned out into Brooklyn...

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Image: The Wilmington Morning Star | Public domain

Wilmington Massacre: The Coup

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. By late afternoon Waddell and his lieutenants entered city hall, presented the elected officials with prepared resignation letters, and demanded signatures at gunpoint. The mayor, Silas P. Wright, signed. The police chief signed. The aldermen signed. New officers, all white Democ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Wilmington Massacre: What Was Erased

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. In the months that followed, the new state legislature passed a constitutional amendment requiring poll taxes and literacy tests for voting. By 1900 the Black electorate of North Carolina had been almost entirely eliminated. The Republican Party in the state collapsed and would n...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain