AMERICA AT 250 - The Promise Series: Wilmington 1898: When White Supremacy Overthrew Democracy

In the closing years of the 19th century, Wilmington, North Carolina, offered a glimpse of what American democracy might become.

By Walter Sundiata | Back On The Block | September 14, 2026

In the closing years of the 19th century, Wilmington, North Carolina, offered a glimpse of what American democracy might become.

The port city had a thriving Black community that included business owners, educators, skilled workers, professionals and political leaders. Wilmington was also governed by a Fusion coalition composed of Black and white Republicans and white Populists. Black and white men served together on the city’s Board of Aldermen and in other municipal offices. Ten of Wilmington’s 26 police officers were Black.

It was an imperfect coalition, but it demonstrated that multiracial political cooperation was possible in the South only a generation after slavery.

For white supremacists determined to restore their exclusive control over government, that possibility was intolerable.

A Campaign Built on Fear

During the 1898 election campaign, North Carolina Democratic leaders made white supremacy their central political message. Newspapers published inflammatory stories and racist cartoons warning white readers about what they called “Negro rule.”

The phrase itself was propaganda. Wilmington’s government was not controlled exclusively by Black officials. It was a multiracial government in which Black citizens held some positions of authority alongside white officeholders.

But the facts were less useful to the campaign than fear.

The state’s most influential newspaper, Raleigh’s News & Observer, helped circulate false and dehumanizing portrayals of Black men. Political organizers and armed groups known as Red Shirts used threats and intimidation to discourage Black citizens and their white allies from voting.

The campaign intensified after Alexander Manly, editor of Wilmington’s Black-owned Daily Record, challenged claims that Black men posed a widespread sexual threat to white women. White newspapers reprinted portions of Manly’s editorial across the state, using his words to inflame racial resentment and make him a target.

As the National Endowment for the Humanities recounts, racist propaganda, intimidation and threats of violence were not side effects of the political campaign. They were among its principal tools.

From a Stolen Election to a Coup

Armed white men patrolled Wilmington during the November 8 election, intimidating Black voters and interfering with Republican ballots. The white-supremacy campaign succeeded in returning Democrats to power in the state legislature.

But Wilmington’s municipal government was not on the ballot that day. The city’s Fusionist mayor, Black aldermen and other Black and white officials remained in office.

White supremacists were unwilling to wait for another city election.

On the morning of November 10, approximately 500 armed white men gathered at the Wilmington Light Infantry armory. As they marched toward the offices of The Daily Record, their ranks grew to perhaps 2,000.

The mob destroyed the newspaper’s printing press and burned the building. Violence then spread into Wilmington’s Black neighborhoods. Black residents were shot in the streets, including men attempting to return home from work or protect their families.

The exact number killed remains unknown. Contemporary reports differed widely, but North Carolina’s official historical account estimates that as many as 60 Black residents may have been killed. Many more fled into surrounding woods and swamps or escaped the city entirely.

Later that day, armed white leaders forced Wilmington’s mayor, members of the city council and other local officials—both Black and white—to resign. Coup leader Alfred Moore Waddell was installed as mayor.

This was not a spontaneous clash between two racial groups. It was the planned overthrow of a lawful multiracial government.

What was long called the “Wilmington Race Riot” is now more accurately recognized as the Wilmington Massacre and Coup of 1898—widely described as the only successful coup d’état in American history.

Destroying More Than a Government

The coup did not end when the gunfire stopped.

Black political leaders and their white allies were forced from Wilmington. Black residents abandoned homes, businesses and property accumulated during the decades following emancipation. A city that had supported a growing Black middle class was transformed by violence, exile and economic dispossession.

The message extended far beyond Wilmington: Black political participation would be met with force, and white citizens who supported multiracial democracy could also become targets.

The coup helped clear the way for North Carolina’s system of Jim Crow segregation and voter suppression. Poll taxes, literacy tests and a grandfather clause were used to remove most Black men from the electorate while protecting many white voters from the same restrictions.

According to the historians featured in PBS’s American Coup: Wilmington 1898, approximately 126,000 Black men were registered to vote in North Carolina in 1896. By 1902, that number had fallen to about 6,100.

The architects of the campaign were not punished. Many were rewarded with greater political influence and prominent positions in state and national government.

The democratic experiment Wilmington represented was replaced by a racial order that would dominate North Carolina politics for generations.

The Promise Broken

The Wilmington coup exposes a difficult truth about the American promise.

The abolition of slavery and the adoption of the 14th and 15th Amendments established citizenship, equal protection and voting rights in the Constitution. Yet Wilmington demonstrated that rights written on paper can be stripped away when government refuses to protect them—and when those who lose political power choose violence over democracy.

The coup was not only an attack on Black citizens. It was an attack on the principle that citizens of different races could govern together and that political authority should come from the people rather than from intimidation or force.

That is why Wilmington belongs in the America at 250 story.

Our national history cannot be measured only by the promises made in founding documents or proclaimed from public platforms. It must also be measured by what happened when Black Americans attempted to claim those promises as their own.

In Wilmington, Black citizens voted, built businesses, published a newspaper and participated in government. They were practicing citizenship. Their success was answered with propaganda, racial terror and the destruction of democracy.

The Promise Still Believed In

Remembering Wilmington is not about remaining imprisoned by the past. It is about understanding how democracy can be dismantled.

It can begin with lies repeated until they are accepted as truth. It can grow through efforts to portray certain voters as illegitimate or dangerous. It can be enforced through intimidation and violence. And it can endure when institutions fail to hold those responsible accountable.

The lesson of Wilmington is that an election alone does not guarantee democracy. Democracy also requires accepting legitimate political participation, protecting equal citizenship and defending the rights of people whose voices some would prefer to silence.

More than a century later, the promise remains unfinished.

At 250, America must decide whether equal citizenship is simply an ideal to be celebrated or a principle it is prepared to protect. Telling the truth about Wilmington is part of that responsibility.

The promise was broken there—but it was never surrendered.

And democracy, as always, remains a participatory sport.