On Nov. 10, 1898, a mob of up to 2,000 white supremacists killed dozens of Black people in Wilmington, North Carolina, burned Black-owned businesses and forced the mayor, the police chief and the aldermen to resign at gunpoint. The men who did it then installed their own mayor and council. No election was held.
Wilmington marks the 128th anniversary today with a wreath-laying at 9 a.m. at 1898 Memorial Park, 1018 N. Third St., organized by the city’s Commission on African American History and New Hanover County. If it rains, the ceremony moves to City Hall council chambers in the Skyline Center.
What was taken that day was political power and a way of life. Wilmington had a Black middle class and a biracial government voters had chosen. After the coup, North Carolina’s white supremacist leaders had a template, and segregation and the disenfranchisement of Black voters spread across the state and the South. Historians treat Wilmington as a turning point in how Reconstruction ended.
For most of a century the city did little to teach it. That is changing at the level of families. On Saturday, the first 1898 Family Reunion and Healing Festival drew descendants, historians and genealogists to the memorial. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx were among those who came. Wilmington in Color and Coming to the Table organized it.
Organizer Cedric Harrison said the history was once largely unknown. “20 years ago or 30 years ago, people didn’t even know about this history at all and so now for us to be telling the tours all year long and now doing a festival that is now trying to call the families back so that they can actually start to connect with the city that they have roots in is very powerful and full circle for the work that we’re doing,” he said.
The festival and the wreath are remembrance, and remembrance is owed. But a memorial park and a reunion do not return the businesses that burned or the offices that were taken at gunpoint. The families being invited back are the ones whose ancestors were pushed out. What the city and the state do for them beyond ceremony is the open question.
The wreath-laying begins at 9 a.m. today.
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