20061105 The 1898 Wilmington North Carolina Race Riots

Destruction of Manly’s Press

The 1898 Wilmington North Carolina Race Riots

Elections, Race Riots, A Coup d’Etat, Murder and Mayhem in the old south of 1898

The November 5^th, 2006 edition of Editor and Publisher is carrying an Associated Press story about The News & Observer of Raleigh and The Charlotte Observer doing a special report on the 1898 Wilmington North Carolina race riot. Both papers are owned by The McClatchy Company

Thirty-five years ago, while attending Elon College and playing a very minor role in civil rights activism, the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot – “which unfolded in the days after Election Day on Nov. 8, 1898” - was primarily the stuff of oral folklore.

I will be very interested in reading more about this very dark episode in America’s past. It is a story that has everything to fascinate and horrify a political scientist; race relations in the old south, the role of newspapers during an era in which many were openly very biased and agenda-driven, government – or rather, the overthrow of a government, Republicans and Democrats, murder and mayhem.

According to a PowerPoint Presentation by LeRae S. Umfleet: “The Wilmington Race Riot was the result of the 1898 white supremacy campaign instituted by the Democratic Party. Democrats fueled racial hatred and promised violence to win the election. Although Election Day was peaceful as Democrats regained control of the General Assembly and New Hanover County government, violence broke out two days later in the state’s most progressive city.”

The Associated Press story begins:

2 North Carolina Papers Team on Special Report on 1898 Race Riot

Published: November 05, 2006 5:00 PM ET

RALEIGH North Carolina's two largest daily newspapers have produced a 16-page special section on the 1898 race riot and state-labled "coup d'etat" that drove hundreds of Wilmington's black residents from the coastal city, and are offering the section to newspapers statewide.

Tim Tyson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of a book on the Wilmington riot, is the lead writer for the section produced by The News & Observer of Raleigh with help from The Charlotte Observer.

The section, to be published in the two papers as a tabloid on Nov. 17, will include photos, graphics and an examination of newspapers' role in fanning white discontent in advance of the 1898 elections.

The full section and a one-page summary designed for smaller papers are being offered to all members of the North Carolina Press Association for same-day publication. The material may be downloaded beginning Thursday; users must pay only their own printing costs.

"Our goal is to get as many people as possible to know this story," said News & Observer executive editor Melanie Sill.

The Wilmington Star-News and several smaller papers have said they will run the section, she said. Its release is timed to coincide roughly with the 108th anniversary of the riots, which unfolded in the days after Election Day on Nov. 8, 1898.

Sill and News & Observer publisher Orage Quarles III began discussing the idea this summer as a state-appointed commission prepared a report on the violence that claimed as many as 60 lives, drove out the city's Republican government and sparked an exodus of 2,100 black residents.

Read the rest here.

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