Whitewash, weve arty been a progressive city, as one radio host that you cant put something behind you if you dont put in front of you first in 1898 wilmington had achieved a very status. You have to understand that this was a huge slaveholding area during the civil war because the river was a block away. All the plantations in North Carolina were along e rir. Roanoke, cape fear and a huge concentration of 330,000 slaves in North Carolina in 1860 were right here in the Cape Fear River valley. There is a fear of her uprising. There was a terrible nightmare of the landed white gentry. They had very repressive laws against both free blacks and slaves. When general sherman came and invaded North Carolina from the south he liberated some 25000 enslaved blacks with the army. He gutted the head of navigation with cape fear. He put all those people on votes and mule trains and brought them to wilmington where they were then processed to the freedmens bureau. Many stayed here and in a 1998 wilmington was one of the largest cities in north on a period of the 17,000 or so citizens, two thirds of them were black. They had achieved an amazing thing in just a generation after being enslaved. They had achieved the status of the middle class, they had achieved Political Leadership and power, they had had achieved social standing and economic wealth to a large degree. It got the reputation of a great place to come if you are black. African americans were skilled artisans down at the milk compresses, they were the skilled artisans in the cotton mills and it was a great place and a cute friday black middle class. They had taken political power from the old democrats. Remember in other states democrats and republicans were reversed. In 1898, the state democratic partys decided to quote unquote take back their state and their cities from what they thought was negro domination. Their way of putting it. They wanted to take back all their elected offices there were coming up in 1898 which included a lot of the state offices, senators, but it didnt include city council what was then called the board of alderman. What they did was basically stole the election from inmidation, shotguns at the polling booth, stealing ballot boxes and leading up to that we had a war of words. A war of words took an interesting turn. There are kinds of antiblack speeches all all over the state the famous orator, was an x federal kernel. There was another piece of writing the featured primacy. Alexander manley published a newspaper that he billed as the first afroamerican called the daily record. It was sort of a newspaper for the Community Within a community. It was ignored by the White Community. In an editorial in august of 1898 he was responding to a speech given by rebecca felter who was the wife of a congressman, she ended up in congress by herself. She said the greatest danger to white farm wife across this was being raped by black men. If it took lynching a thousand of them, then so be it. Theres always been a little bit of doubt as to whether manley wrote the editorial himself but in the editorial mrs. Dalton from georgia makes a speech before the Agricultural Society in tybee georgia in which she advocates lynching as an extreme measure. This woman makes a strong plea for womanhood and her cries of rape are so frequent that the plea would be worthy of consideration. She goat he goes on to say that we suggest white guard their women more closely. As mrs. Felton says giving them no opportunity for the human being, leave your goods out of doors and then complain because theyre taken away. For white men are careless in the manner of protecting their women especially on the farms. He goes on to say that sometimes white women are attracted to black men and the like. Its unclear whether this was meant in earnest or was this a satire or if he even wrote it himself. You can imagine the reception that this got in the White Community. Although there are too curious things about it. One, the thing he was responding to the speech by mrs. Felton of georgia and happen as much as a year earlier. Why at that moment was he responding. Also, nobody in the White Community read that paper until someone did and then they repented that editorial on the front page of the white wilmington newspaper. He wants every day between august and november of the elections. There began to be calls from manley to be removed from the city and the paper to be shut down. Couple this with a couple of other events, white government unions were making their rounds and this is basically groups of people that would come into a community, and make the case that you should fire your black workers and give those jobs to whites. You should make people take a pledge to that effect. Youre starting to see the employment picture shift a little bit. The third piece of that is a thing called the white mans declaration of independence. This was signed by more than 400 of the leader white citizens of wilmington. It begins this way believing that the constitution of the United States contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people, believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population african origin, and believing that those men of the state of North Carolina who join in forming a union did not contemplate for their descendents to bow to it in a pure race. He stood on the stage gave what was later described as a sizzling speech and said, if you see the negro out, tell him to go home. If you wont go home, shoot him down in his tracks. There was nothing subtle about this in the place erupted with furious applause and that was the tone that was that for the election day the following morning. There you can see there was nothing subtle. There was nothing nuanced about the sense of power grab going on. Furthermore, they had artie made arrangements within washington and the mckinley administers and that no federal troops would come to the aid of wilmington. That they would leave them to settle their own way. They wt into it kning thered be no federal intervention. They iran the table on election day, white feminists elects across the board. But they still didnt have the board of alderman and mayor. What happens on november 10. They sent an ultimatum to the socalled committee of colored citizen that was chosen in random. The black community met and they decided pretty much to give them what they wanted. They throw manley out, set on the paper, do the other the other things. But there applied never beached the white Supremacist Court because the man who was supposed to deliver it, didnt mailed it instead. About 8 00 oclock in the morning thousand armed whiteman gathered at the wilmington art armory and they marched up following wardell and turn right onto seventh street and rampaged on down to the daily record which was at that. Leasing a hall. They surrounded it, best in the door, shot one man who had remained unidentified in history but he iran out the back wounded and then they burn down the newspaper. In so doing they stopped manley and he wasnt at the newspaper at that. They not only shut down the newspaper but they burn the entire archive of the black community. Its hard to find even a single copy of the daily record. Theres three or four that i know of. Theres the famous picture of all these whiteman and their sons i suppose, standing in front of this burnedout hold of the daily record of us holding shotguns and winchesters and it actually kept the black fire brigade to ensure that it burned to the ground. Only when it looked like the Church Next Door would also catch on fire did they allow firemen to fight the fire. They dispersed in mobs and they get over to blaze and street and theres some black working men who cameut to find out what was going on. Theres smelling smoke, see see the flames and at that. Gunfire erupted and what we know a couple things. All the dead were black, we we know that the rampage lasted about three days, it had been orchestrated and planned for many months before this outbreak on blaze and street. This was spontaneous but the White Community under wardell and several other leaders had been stockpiling rifles, you even had a gatling gun used in 1890 and all of a sudden these militia groups were coming in from elsewhere. They really it would take a couple of hours to reach and they all showed up pretty immediately. You had the wilmington light infantry recently demobilized with all their highpowered ruffles and you had the wilmington Naval Reserve in a small cannon. These people shutdown out wilmington with their martial law, strip 13 men women and children. There were black letter carriers that were being beat to death and some white women actually came to the rescue and got the hooligans off them and give them shelter in their home. There were number of other white women who sheltered the black servants in their home in order to keep them safe. This was catastrophic for wilmington in so many ways. A lot of these people there were being chased and harassed and shot at flood the city, swim the river, they were missed treated and hid in the swamp. They went to ground basically every three days wilmington shutdown. You can pretty much marked the end of wilmington sentence as the city of North Carolina to the date of this coup. It really wasnt, it was a coup detat because the next thing they did was round up the alderman and it gunpoint, at city hall, made them all resign and appointed white supremacist on the line. The leader of the violence becomes the mayor. He became a multiterm air error when he dies, there were huge funeral for him and he is eulogized as a fine figure of southern silvery, if you can believe it. No legal action was ever taken to. George rountree, next judge rountree concocted a piece of legislation called the grandfather club. The single piece of legislation basically took Voting Rights away from black until 1965. Not just the north line up but through the south because it was copied through the masondixon line. This had a huge repercussion it had a huge repercussion right here locally through the economy of the city and of course it took the Africanamerican Community about a thousand people we know were driven to another county and that included people that were put onto the train at bayonet. And banished from wilmington. They were lawyers, preachers, leaders, funeral directors, local politicians they were the people who up to this. Had been the africanamerican alderman, firemen, the africanamerican chair sheriffs deputies, wilmington went back to being ruled by white supremacist and white families. Thats a big legacy to overcome. One of the things i always think about is that so many of the people involved on whiteside went on to have very prosperous lives, children, grandchildren stayed and they built their wealth over many generations. Some of them like the keenan family became really great philanthropists. We owe a great deal to them at the university and elsewhere but the alex manleys were gone. They came back in 1925 searching for property that the city owned and he was told he never owned property here. Ive seen the deed. You have a situation where the intelligence and the black community is wiped out for a generation. From there were looking at something that a hundred years later people are asking the question what can we do to change that. In wilmington, behind every decision of rezoning or neighborhood schools or ethe or not we should have a large strict voting, all of that has the legacy directly tie to 1898. We are the future of that history. That event is the tunnel that runs under wilmington from about seven street on down to the river are these old drainage channels. They used to come up in all of the houses and churches all the way down to the river and they were originally used for drainage and they were used for other things. Theyre kind of a secret under the traffic. I always think of that is the secret that runs underneath on until this memorial it was not acknowledged. It was something that was whispered about versions that were far less than accurate and we dont know how many people died. They say ten on the monument because thats test test test it really rocked the core of this community, black and white. When i came from wilmington i came from chicago and realized everywhere i went everyone was all black or all white. I thought what is going on here and i began digging and learned nobody had written about it much. I was really interested in the motivation of these guys. You are talking about people who are family men, good fathers and husbands and good deacons in their church and a pastor in one case. I was trying to imagine my way into their mindset. The practical question is there were 7080 people who figured out the narrative. I couldnt get my hand around that so i picked representative of the things. The planners, the victims, and so forth and using those to tell the story. If in the novel you read about someone getting shot i figured it out. What i had to do was i knew they went in and what happened when they came out and i had to be able to see inside. I was interested in ima imagine their thinking and remaining true to the historical event. That is why i wrote cape fear rising as a novel and many people had the reaction that he made it up. I cant say how many called down here saying that guy makes it all up. I grew up in henry, brunswick and we studied history learned about the war. Prior to the meeting, i meet with officials who were concerned something would happen. The sheriff, an africanamerican sheriff, and the local police chief, got together with our chancellor and talked about what might happen in the black community. What hapned a loof anonymous phone calls toe, the letters of the editor, speaking engagements that went away. I know there a was a couple of boards that met that are related to various places in wilmington who tried to figure out if they could sue me but everybody in the book was deceased so there was nothing there. I wrote this book as an untenured professor that the board was going to deny my tenure. It turned out it was owen king, one of the decenteds, who stood up for the diversity of the system and said you cannot do that. All that to say this was over a hundred years and in the past it resonates almost like what happened yesterday for many in the community. We have recognized this is now fully in the sunlight. Not seeing this out as some defining thing and that is all the black community is about. They were only victims because of their own success coming from slavery into a prosperous leadership. What i would like to see and it has been a slow road back but i would like to see wilmington and the people who come here is to encourage