• Listen to this segment

The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898

Back in the day on November 10th, 1898, the Wilmington Race Riot occurred in North Carolina. At least twenty-two blacks were killed by white racist members of the Democratic Party as a municipal coup d’etat was staged. Emboldened by a post-reconstruction general election that brought the party back in power in the state legislature, former Confederate Alfred Moore Wadell led a mob to oust the white Republican mayor of Wilmington as well as black and white members of city government. Neither President McKinley nor the Governor of North Carolina did anything to stop the profoundly violent, racist, and anti-democratic usurpation of power. It wasn’t until 2007 that the North Carolina Democratic Party issued an apology for the Wilmington Race Riot.

The late historian John Hope Franklin once said about the episode that “The Wilmington Race Riot is very relevant today because we haven’t changed as much as we need to change.”

For Uprising, this is your truth professa’ saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history