6. Ushering into being an era of harsher racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the American South, the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 saw white supremacists overthrow democratically elected governments in North Carolina and impose white supremacy
Preceding the Civil War, the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, was home to more than 10,000 African-Americans, a number which grew even further during Reconstruction to a peak of approximately 25,000. Fueling white resentment in the years following the loss of the Civil War, militant white supremacist organizations gradually clawed back the power they had once wielded in an effort to suppress black rights and prosperity. Angered by the prominence of non-whites in public life, in 1897 a new campaign for white supremacy was launched, proclaiming that “North Carolina is a WHITE MAN’S STATE and WHITE MEN will rule it”.
Attempting to defeat the Republican-Fusionist alliance in the 1898 elections, white militias blockaded polling stations and enacted violent voter suppression tactics. Despite this, Wilmington’s government nevertheless remained biracial in composition and opposed to white supremacy. Issuing the “White Declaration of Independence” on November 9, the following day the coalition launched a coup against the elected government. Claiming, falsely, that a black uprising was taking place, the white supremacists forced Republican officials to resign at gunpoint before exiling or lynching said elected officials. Murdering a total of 300 people, black businesses were firebombed whilst in the aftermath legislation was quickly passed disenfranchising non-whites.