Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. After the attack on the US Capital on
Speaker 1: January six, we started getting requests for an episode on
Speaker 1: the eighteen ninety eight Wilmington's Que. So we are requests
Speaker 1: for us to cover this topic from folks who had
Speaker 1: not heard this episode yet, and we got requests from
Speaker 1: other folks for us to reissue this as a Saturday
Speaker 1: classic our folks who had heard it before. Either way,
Speaker 1: that means that we are going to now re release
Speaker 1: our two part on the Wilmington's Que. This is a
Speaker 1: two part episode that originally came out on January fifteen,
Speaker 1: so almost exactly three years ago, and we are going
Speaker 1: to be sharing the second part next Saturday. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we are talking about
Speaker 1: something we're actually going to talk about it for the
Speaker 1: next two episodes, and it is sometimes called the Wilmington's
Speaker 1: Race Riot of eight. But we've mentioned on the show
Speaker 1: before that the term race riot tends to be pretty misleading.
Speaker 1: Race riot really suggests an incident in which people of
Speaker 1: two or more races are equal aggressors and some kind
Speaker 1: of mass violence, but that is not usually what happened.
Speaker 1: In the United States. The incidents that are described as
Speaker 1: race riots usually involved violence against a racial or ethnic
Speaker 1: minority carried out by a white mob. The incident we're
Speaker 1: talking about today and this two parter follows that pattern.
Speaker 1: It is an appalling example of violence against Wilmington, North
Speaker 1: Carolina's black community, and it was carried out by a
Speaker 1: mob of armed white men. In addition to that, it
Speaker 1: was a coup. It was the only known successful coupdeta
Speaker 1: in the in the United States history. This white mob
Speaker 1: over through the duly elected government of Wilmington's or replaced
Speaker 1: it with one of their own. Choosing This whole incident
Speaker 1: is directly tied to the end of reconstruction and how
Speaker 1: that affected North Carolina electoral politics. So we're gonna start
Speaker 1: with a little bit of scene setting related to all
Speaker 1: of that. Then we are going to talk about an
Speaker 1: immediate and pretty dramatic precursor to the whole coup and riot.
Speaker 1: Next time we will talk about the q itself and
Speaker 1: its aftermath and as it heads up. The last section
Speaker 1: of today's episode includes a discussion of a rape, so
Speaker 1: for background. After the U. S. Civil War, the federal government,
Speaker 1: community leaders, religious organizations, and activists all took steps to
Speaker 1: try to rebuild the nation and correct the social, economic,
Speaker 1: and political problems that had grown out of the institution
Speaker 1: of slavery. These efforts came to be known as reconstruction,
Speaker 1: and they included things like amendments to the Constitution, civil
Speaker 1: rights legislation, and the establishment of the U. S. Bureau
Speaker 1: of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, also known as the
Speaker 1: Freedman's Bureau. As part of reconstruction, the nation had to
Speaker 1: figure out how the states that had seceded from the
Speaker 1: Union could be readmitted into it, and until that could happen,
Speaker 1: the former Confederate states were placed under martial law. The
Speaker 1: idea was that troops would occupy each state until it
Speaker 1: established a quote loyal Republican government. The occupying troops were
Speaker 1: meant to protect the progress of reconstruction, as well as
Speaker 1: protecting the freed people and their allies. The federal government
Speaker 1: went through a lengthy back and force, interrupted by the
Speaker 1: assassination of Abraham Lincoln, about exactly what the requirements for
Speaker 1: readmission into the Union would be and how to carry
Speaker 1: those out. In the end, the states in question had
Speaker 1: to ratify the fourteenth Amendment to the U. S Constitution,
Speaker 1: as well as hold a new constitutional convention at the
Speaker 1: state level. The new state constitutions had to include voting
Speaker 1: rights for black men. As states where readmit it into
Speaker 1: the Union, they were generally at least temporarily under the
Speaker 1: control of the Republican Party, and for a time the
Speaker 1: Republican Party was also highly focused on civil rights and
Speaker 1: equality for both the freed people and poor white citizens.
Speaker 1: Black voters overwhelmingly voted for Republicans, and Republicans proposed sweeping
Speaker 1: changes that they believed would reshape the nation into one
Speaker 1: in which all men really were created equal. We've said
Speaker 1: men on purpose here, because although there were activists for
Speaker 1: women's suffrage, the focus was really on men. But this
Speaker 1: had started to shift by the eighteen seventies. Southern Democrats
Speaker 1: vehemently objected to what the Republicans were doing. Many Democratic
Speaker 1: Party leaders were former Confederates and slave owners, and they
Speaker 1: pushed back against both new economic policies and the idea
Speaker 1: that black people should be equal citizens. The ku Klux
Speaker 1: Klan was established in eighteen sixty six and worked both
Speaker 1: within and outside the Democratic Party to undermine reconstruction Arab
Speaker 1: policy these and terrorized the black community. As a Reconstruction
Speaker 1: went on, Democrats started alleging that the Republican governments were corrupt,
Speaker 1: and while there certainly were incidents of corruption, that almost
Speaker 1: goes without saying. Some of this criticism really boiled down
Speaker 1: to the Republican government's spending money on things that the
Speaker 1: Democrats didn't agree with, along with a sort of chicken
Speaker 1: and egg assumption, which was also racist, that any government
Speaker 1: that allowed the full participation of black people was automatically corrupt.
Speaker 1: Many in the Republican Party also started to pull back
Speaker 1: for making really sweeping civil rights changes and instead started
Speaker 1: proposing more moderate, incremental steps. By the mid eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: radical Republican power was waning and state governments in the
Speaker 1: South were returning to the Democratic Party's control. By eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, the only Southern states still governed by the
Speaker 1: Republican Party were South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. This brings
Speaker 1: us to the press Sidential Election of eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: This was a highly disputed and deeply divisive election between
Speaker 1: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrats Samuel J. Tilden. On
Speaker 1: election date, Tilden had a lead of two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty thousand in the popular vote, but he was one
Speaker 1: vote shy of an electoral college victory. So, for our
Speaker 1: listeners living outside the US who may not be as
Speaker 1: familiar with this, every state has a number of electors
Speaker 1: that's based on its population, and technically people are voting
Speaker 1: for those electors, who then vote for president. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: electoral votes for South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were all
Speaker 1: in dispute due to allegations of fraud and voter intimidation
Speaker 1: and vote counts that did not match up. One Oregon
Speaker 1: elector was also in dispute. Hayes had clearly won the
Speaker 1: state of Oregon, but the Democratic governor had tried to
Speaker 1: replace one Republican elector with a Democrat on the ground,
Speaker 1: so the Republican was postmaster and therefore not eligible to serve.
Speaker 1: After weeks of bitter infighting and increasing fears that the
Speaker 1: country was headed for a second Civil war, Congress created
Speaker 1: an Electoral Commission to try to sort this whole thing out.
Speaker 1: After still more secret negotiations, than political maneuvering. On March second,
Speaker 1: the Commission voted seven to eight to award the disputed
Speaker 1: electoral votes to Hayes. The Commission's final vote was strictly
Speaker 1: along party lines. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people, especially Democrats,
Speaker 1: didn't see Hayes as a legitimate president after all of this.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, all that political maneuvering, which
Speaker 1: came to be known as the Compromise of eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: had included several appeasements for Democrats in the South. One
Speaker 1: of these was that if Democrats accepted Hayes's president, the
Speaker 1: federal government would stop using federal troops to bolster reconstruction
Speaker 1: efforts in the South. So this is really the thinnest
Speaker 1: of overviews. Reconstruction was a really turbulent time. There was
Speaker 1: a lot going on, and a lot of it was
Speaker 1: happening simultaneously. We're really just trying to give a general
Speaker 1: sense of what the nation had gone through by the
Speaker 1: late eighteen seventies. It was even more chaotic and violent
Speaker 1: than we can really do justice too in one episode,
Speaker 1: even if that one episode was only about reconstruction and
Speaker 1: nothing else. Up Slate has been doing an Academy on Reconstruction,
Speaker 1: and they literally have a an Episode zero that is
Speaker 1: essentially a basic timeline of stuff that happened that was
Speaker 1: important during reconstruction, which gives you a sense of those
Speaker 1: important things, but not so much of like how that
Speaker 1: the flavor of the time. As reconstruction ended, former Confederate
Speaker 1: leaders once again rose to power in many Southern states
Speaker 1: in a return to white supremacy that white supremacists framed
Speaker 1: as quote redemption. Discriminatory legislation known as Jim Crow laws
Speaker 1: followed in some places. This shift, which had really been
Speaker 1: going on before the end of reconstruction, seemed both immediate
Speaker 1: and an inn up did. But what happened in North
Speaker 1: Carolina shows how it wasn't really a continual linear progression
Speaker 1: from reconstruction to Jim Crow, which is how it's often
Speaker 1: imagined or framed. So historians marked a number of different
Speaker 1: spots as the end of reconstruction, and the Compromise of
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven is one of them, and we will
Speaker 1: talk about how that wound up playing out in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: After a quick sponsor break once reconstruction ended the United States,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party regained control of North Carolina, and at
Speaker 1: that time the party was primarily run by wealthy landowners
Speaker 1: and businessmen. It took a really lace affair approach to
Speaker 1: the economic needs of less affluent people, so their party
Speaker 1: really started to suffer during an economic downturn in the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties. North Carolina was a very rural state. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's still big stretches of North Carolina that are really rural.
Speaker 1: But this was even more true. Small farmers felt like
Speaker 1: the Democrats weren't doing enough to help them in this
Speaker 1: rocky economy, and instead railroads, banks, and big businesses were
Speaker 1: getting lots of perks while small farmers got nothing. At first,
Speaker 1: the Democrats tried to adjust their platform to address these concerns,
Speaker 1: but nothing really got done, so people started abandoning the
Speaker 1: Democrats for a third party, the Populists. At first, the
Speaker 1: Populists tried to work with Democrats to advance their own
Speaker 1: economic agenda. When this failed, they turned to another ally,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. The Populists, also known as the People's Party,
Speaker 1: formed a coalition with Republicans and what came to be
Speaker 1: known as fusion politics. On their own, the Populists and
Speaker 1: the Republicans didn't have enough power to unseat the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Not only did the Democrats have solid control of the
Speaker 1: state legislature, they're also using a number of tactics to
Speaker 1: stay in power throughout the state. These tactics included gerrymandering
Speaker 1: and laws that allowed the state government and Raleigh to
Speaker 1: appoint people at the local level regardless of what the
Speaker 1: local vot voters actually wanted, so it didn't matter, for example,
Speaker 1: if a local population was overwhelmingly Republican, legislators and Raleigh
Speaker 1: would still appoint Democrats to those positions. But together Republicans
Speaker 1: and populists did have enough support to challenge the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Although race had long been used as a political wedge
Speaker 1: in the South, white populists set aside their racial differences
Speaker 1: with the Republican party to try to advance the issues
Speaker 1: that both parties agreed on. These issues included education, jobs,
Speaker 1: and voting rights. Republicans and populists still maintained their own
Speaker 1: platforms on issues that they disagreed on, such as the
Speaker 1: gold standard. So I should point out that um the
Speaker 1: race has been used it as a political wedge everywhere,
Speaker 1: It was just most explicitly used as a wedge in
Speaker 1: the South, which is one of the things we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about later. So the idea of plitical parties
Speaker 1: working together to achieve a common goal was not unique
Speaker 1: to North Carolina. Wasn't unique to these particular parties, but
Speaker 1: the way the Fusion movement played out in North Carolina
Speaker 1: was unique had a dramatic effect on the political landscape
Speaker 1: of the state. In eighteen ninety four, roughly seventeen years
Speaker 1: after the end of Reconstruction, the People's Party and the
Speaker 1: Republican Party in North Carolina agreed on a slate of
Speaker 1: candidates that included members of both parties. They endorsed these
Speaker 1: common candidates rather than running against one another. This strategy
Speaker 1: was extremely successful. The Fusion alliance of populists and Republicans
Speaker 1: won races all over the state. They took control of
Speaker 1: the state legislature and several statewide offices, and several Fusion
Speaker 1: politicians were elected to Congress. This new Fusion government started
Speaker 1: making changes as soon as they were sworn in. They
Speaker 1: repealed the County Government Act of eighteen seventy seven, which
Speaker 1: was one of the laws that had allowed state lawmakers
Speaker 1: to appoint people to local offices. Is Rather than leaving
Speaker 1: those offices in control of the local voters. The Fusion
Speaker 1: Coalition increased funding for schools, prisons, and charitable institutions by
Speaker 1: raising taxes, and they required that political parties used standard
Speaker 1: colors and symbols so that people who were not literate
Speaker 1: could still exercise the right to vote in future elections.
Speaker 1: Some of the Fusion government's efforts also targeted the economic
Speaker 1: issues that had led white voters to leave the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party in the first place. They cut back on the
Speaker 1: privileges offered to railroads, which had been seen as favoring
Speaker 1: big business over working people. They set a cap on
Speaker 1: interest rates, which anchered banks and their investors. Thanks in
Speaker 1: part to this increased access to voting, the Fusion Alliance
Speaker 1: had an even greater success two years later. In eight
Speaker 1: Fusion candidates won every statewide election, and they completely supplanted
Speaker 1: the Democrats. After this election, the State House included thirty
Speaker 1: nine populists, fifty four Republicans twenty four Democrats. The state
Speaker 1: Senate included twenty five populists for eighteen Republicans and seven Democrats.
Speaker 1: So this gave Democrats, who previously had had total control
Speaker 1: of the entire state government about of the State House
Speaker 1: and less than fifteen percent of the state Senate. Republican
Speaker 1: Daniel L. Russell became North Carolina as governor. Following this election,
Speaker 1: North Carolina's black population also had more representation in the government.
Speaker 1: More than one thousand black citizens held elected and appointed
Speaker 1: offices across the state. This still wasn't even close to
Speaker 1: proportional to how many black citizens lived in the state,
Speaker 1: but it was a lot more than it had been
Speaker 1: the Fusion Coalition. And these two elections also had a
Speaker 1: huge impact on the city of Wilmington's Specifically, Wilmington is
Speaker 1: on the coast of North Carolina along the Cape Beer
Speaker 1: River and separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the by
Speaker 1: a chain of barrier islands. It was also an important
Speaker 1: port during the Civil War, and after the Union took
Speaker 1: Wilmington in eight sixty five, it had become home to
Speaker 1: an increasing number of black refugees. By eighteen seventy, the
Speaker 1: city was majority black. That meant that after the end
Speaker 1: of reconstruction, the state government had to pull a lot
Speaker 1: of tricks to keep white Democrats in power in Wilmington's
Speaker 1: in defiance of the city's majority black Republican voters. In
Speaker 1: addition to the gerrymandering and the County Government Act that
Speaker 1: we talked about before. There was also a lot of
Speaker 1: voter intimidation and a habit of just not holding elections
Speaker 1: once a Democrat was in office. In addition to the
Speaker 1: other reforms that we already discussed, the Fusion government revised
Speaker 1: the Wilmington's City Charter to require municipal elections every two years,
Speaker 1: so that people could actually vote candidates out of office
Speaker 1: if they wanted. The new city charter also allowed the
Speaker 1: governor to appoint five people to the Wilmington's Board of Alderman,
Speaker 1: with Wilmington's voters electing one Alderman per ward to fill
Speaker 1: the rest of the positions. In this case, the Fusion
Speaker 1: government was doing something similar to what Democrats had been
Speaker 1: doing before. They were trying to limit black voters power
Speaker 1: in the Wilmington's government. The Fusion coalition's justification for this
Speaker 1: was a fear that if Wilmington's elected a majority Blackboard
Speaker 1: of Alderman, the Democrats would then use that as fuel
Speaker 1: for their campaigns. And while I mean this this might
Speaker 1: have been a justified fear, was definitely justified based on
Speaker 1: what happened next. Uh, that rationale was still discriminatory and
Speaker 1: it did nothing to prevent violence like that their their
Speaker 1: rationale for doing this did not prevent the violence that
Speaker 1: they said they were trying to prevent. Governor Russell's five
Speaker 1: appointments to the Wilmington's Board of Alderman were all Republicans,
Speaker 1: for white men and one black man. Then, on March seven,
Speaker 1: the City of Wilmington's held its first municipal election in
Speaker 1: four years. The result was a majority Republican Board of
Speaker 1: Aldermen that included three black men. The new Board of
Speaker 1: Alderman then elected Silas P. Wright, a white Republican, as mayor.
Speaker 1: The incumbent Democrats didn't take this well at all. They
Speaker 1: refused to vacate their seats on the Board of Aldermen.
Speaker 1: The three Democrats who were newly elected to the Board
Speaker 1: of Aldermen also teamed up with the Democrats who had
Speaker 1: been defeated, and together they claimed that the new election
Speaker 1: rules were unconstitutional and that they would have been elected
Speaker 1: under the old rules, meaning that they were therefore they
Speaker 1: were the real board of Aldermen. So for a time
Speaker 1: Wilmington's had three competing boards of Aldermen, each claiming to
Speaker 1: be the legitimate one. This sounds a little bit like uh,
Speaker 1: you know European royalty disputes over who actually is running
Speaker 1: any given country at any time. Uh. This dispute went
Speaker 1: all the way to the state Supreme Court. Months later,
Speaker 1: the court ruled in favor of the Fusion Board of
Speaker 1: Aldermen that had been appointed and elected under the revised
Speaker 1: Wilmington's city charter. The Democratic Party was outraged at the
Speaker 1: success of the Fusion coalition, both in North Carolina in
Speaker 1: general and in Wilmington's specifically. Not only had Democrats essentially
Speaker 1: lost all political power in North Carolina, as we talked
Speaker 1: about before, a lot of people in the party were
Speaker 1: white supremacists. They objected to the very idea of black
Speaker 1: people holding office at all. Infuriated by their losses in
Speaker 1: North Carolina and Wilmington's, Democrats embarked on a campaign to
Speaker 1: take back political power of the state. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how they did that. After we first
Speaker 1: paused for a little sponsor break. After the widespread success
Speaker 1: of the Republican and populist Fusion cooperation in North Carolina's
Speaker 1: statewide election in eighteen, Democrats in North Carolina started preparing
Speaker 1: for a bitter election in eight, Democratic Party leader Daniel
Speaker 1: Schneck said quote, it will be the meanest, vileist, dirtiest
Speaker 1: campaign since eighteen seventy six. That was in reference to
Speaker 1: the presidential election that we talked about in part one
Speaker 1: of this episode. As part of this campaign, Democrats started
Speaker 1: accusing the fusion government of corruption and mismanagement. But as
Speaker 1: had been the case during Reconstruction, many of these charges
Speaker 1: of corruption boiled down to the fact that the Fusionist
Speaker 1: government was spending tax money on things the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: didn't want it to be spent on, like the school
Speaker 1: and prison funding that we mentioned before the break. As
Speaker 1: was the case with some of the criticism of Republican
Speaker 1: governments during Reconstruction, Democrats also made the racist assertion that
Speaker 1: black people were inherently untrustworthy, so a government that had
Speaker 1: the participation and support of black people must be inherently corrupt.
Speaker 1: But these claims of corruption and overspending were really a
Speaker 1: small part of the Democrat strategy to undermine the Fusionist
Speaker 1: government and to take back political power. A much bigger
Speaker 1: piece of this strategy was an explicit statewide white supremacy campaign.
Speaker 1: Democrats actively stoked racism and racial resentment, hyping up terrors
Speaker 1: of the so called quote negro rule, and framing black
Speaker 1: citizens and leaders as an active threat to white virtue
Speaker 1: and the white way of life. They spread horror stories
Speaker 1: of brutality at the hands of black police officers and
Speaker 1: painted black civic leaders as threatening white womanhood, and they
Speaker 1: condemned white men who allied with black Republicans as race
Speaker 1: traders and unscrupulous devils. Again and again, white democrats brought
Speaker 1: up the idea of home protection against the widespread quote
Speaker 1: threat of black people and the need to return to
Speaker 1: the safety and security that had supposedly existed under white
Speaker 1: democratic rule. Although a lot of our focus and these
Speaker 1: two episodes as on black men, black women were targets
Speaker 1: of this as well. They were portrayed in the white
Speaker 1: media and in propaganda as shrieking, disrespectful herodance who rellewd
Speaker 1: and promiscuous. For example, there was a group of black
Speaker 1: women who started a campaign to get the same courteous
Speaker 1: treatment that white women received on public transportation, like the
Speaker 1: street car driver offering them a hand as they got
Speaker 1: on and off the car. Democrats propaganda portrayed this effort
Speaker 1: as a belligerent tantrum and quote trying to rise above
Speaker 1: their station. North Carolina Democrats got some fuel for their
Speaker 1: white supremacy campaign from outside the state, thanks in part
Speaker 1: to a speech given by Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia.
Speaker 1: Felton had played a big part in the political career
Speaker 1: of her husband, William Harrold Felton. She was such an
Speaker 1: influence on his work that an editorial about them ran
Speaker 1: under the headline quote which Felton is the congressman and
Speaker 1: which the wife. She also had a political life of
Speaker 1: her own as a suffragist, prohibitionist, and reformer, and she
Speaker 1: would eventually become the first female U. S Senator. She
Speaker 1: was appointed following the death of Senator Thomas E. Watson.
Speaker 1: If you've ever walked through that tunnel in Hartsfield Jackson
Speaker 1: International Airport with this section on Atlanta history, there is
Speaker 1: a picture of Rebecca Latimer Felton. In August of she
Speaker 1: gave a speech called Woman on the Farm before the
Speaker 1: Georgia Agricultural Society, which was later reprinted in the Wilmington's
Speaker 1: Morning Star. This was a speech she had given in
Speaker 1: various forms before, outlining the issues that were facing farm wives.
Speaker 1: She argued that the biggest threat to a white farmer's
Speaker 1: wife was the risk of being raped by a black
Speaker 1: man while her husband was away in the fields. She
Speaker 1: criticized white men for failing to protect their women, and
Speaker 1: she explicitly advocated lynching black men in order to prevent rape.
Speaker 1: In this speech, she said, quote, if it needs lynching
Speaker 1: to protect woman's dearest possession from the ravening human beasts,
Speaker 1: then I say lynch a thousand times a week if
Speaker 1: necessary for some context on this statement. Lynching was one
Speaker 1: of the primary ways that white supremacists tried to incite
Speaker 1: terror and submission among the black community following the end
Speaker 1: of slavery. Victims of lynching were frequently accused of having raped, groped,
Speaker 1: or otherwise assaulted a white woman. These kinds of allegations
Speaker 1: could also lead to mass violence, which is what happened
Speaker 1: in Tulsa, Oklahoma in nine and in Rosewood, Florida in nine.
Speaker 1: Those are two massacres that we have talked about on
Speaker 1: previous episodes. Exact numbers are really hard to pinpoint, but
Speaker 1: today it is estimated that only two to ten percent
Speaker 1: of rape allegations in the United States are false. But
Speaker 1: during the period that we are talking about here, the
Speaker 1: rape allegations that were used to justify lynchings and massacres
Speaker 1: were overwhelmingly false. The idea of a threat to white women,
Speaker 1: particularly a white woman's virtue, was basically being used as
Speaker 1: an excuse to torture and murder black men. The murders
Speaker 1: themselves also tended to be horrifying, gruesome, and carried out
Speaker 1: in public, with the victims bodies desecrated after their deaths.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the idea that black men were
Speaker 1: rapists who were inactive and ongoing threat to white women
Speaker 1: was widespread. It was actively used by white supremacists as
Speaker 1: part of their efforts to retake control of the government.
Speaker 1: So a week after Felton's address, Wilmington's black newspaper, The
Speaker 1: Wilmington's Daily Record, which may actually have been the only
Speaker 1: daily black run newspaper in the United States at the time,
Speaker 1: published a response. That response was most likely written by
Speaker 1: its editor and co owner Alex Manley. This editorial framed
Speaker 1: these rape allegations as starting with consensual relationships between black
Speaker 1: men and white women, and it compared these relationships to
Speaker 1: those between white men and black women. The editorial went
Speaker 1: on to say, meetings of this kind go on for
Speaker 1: some time until the woman's infatuation or the man's boldness
Speaker 1: bring attention to them, and the man is lynched for rape.
Speaker 1: Every Negro lynched is called a big, burly black brute,
Speaker 1: when in fact, many of those who have thus been
Speaker 1: dealt with had white men for their fathers. And we're
Speaker 1: not only not black and burly, but we're sufficiently attractive
Speaker 1: for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in
Speaker 1: love with them. As is very well known to all,
Speaker 1: this Peace recommended that the white community quote, teach your
Speaker 1: men purity, and it concluded, you set yourselves down as
Speaker 1: a lot of carping hypocrites. In fact, you cry allowed
Speaker 1: for the virtue of your women while you seek to
Speaker 1: destroy the morality of ours. Don't ever think that your
Speaker 1: women will remain pure while you are debauching ours. You
Speaker 1: sow the seed, the harvest will come in due time.
Speaker 1: There is a lot to unpack with this editorial. In
Speaker 1: white society, relationships between white men and black women were
Speaker 1: sort of an open secret. Alex Manly himself was descended
Speaker 1: from former North Carolina Governor Charles Manly and a woman
Speaker 1: who was enslaved in the governor's household. But it's not
Speaker 1: accurate to suggests that relationships between white men and black
Speaker 1: women were all consensual, especially those that had taken place
Speaker 1: during slavery, And we're between between a free white man
Speaker 1: and an enslaved black woman. Even after the end of slavery,
Speaker 1: there were still substantial innate power differences to consider, especially
Speaker 1: between white men and black women's. Regardless of all that,
Speaker 1: this editorial spread well beyond the Daily Records readership. It's
Speaker 1: suggestion that a white woman would have a consensual relationship
Speaker 1: with a black man sparked outrage among the white community.
Speaker 1: The newspaper was evicted from its downtown Wilmington's offices and
Speaker 1: had to relocate to the black owned Love and Charity Hall.
Speaker 1: Democratic newspapers across the state, including their Raleigh News and
Speaker 1: Observer and the Wilmington's Messenger, reported on the Daily Records
Speaker 1: editorial under headlines that focused on the pieces purported slander
Speaker 1: and defamation of white women. The coverage also suggested that
Speaker 1: Manly himself must have been involved with some poor white
Speaker 1: man's wife and was writing from his own experience. This
Speaker 1: Daily Record editorial then became a huge part of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party line on quote home protection. According to propaganda,
Speaker 1: here in print was evidence of just how depraved and
Speaker 1: dangerous black men were and how great a threat to
Speaker 1: white womanhood. As they focused their campaign efforts on the
Speaker 1: urgent need to return North Carolina to a state of
Speaker 1: white supremacy, Democrats started using the Daily Record editorial as
Speaker 1: a talking point in their political pamphlets and speeches. They
Speaker 1: made explicit efforts to encourage racist violence. In the words
Speaker 1: of Alfred Moore Waddell, who would be a major part
Speaker 1: of the coup we're talking about next time, quote, we
Speaker 1: will not live under these intolerable conditions. We will never
Speaker 1: surrender to a ragged raffle of negroes, even if we
Speaker 1: have to choke the current of the Cape fear with carcasses.
Speaker 1: And with that threat, we are going to pause the
Speaker 1: story and leave the rest of it for next time.
Speaker 1: Hey so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
Speaker 1: this episode is out of the archive, if you heard
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