Black Heritage Month 2026: Black Towns Lost But Never Forgotten Part 3 of 13
Radical Black Queer voices are being "shadow-banned" by the same logic used to justify the 1898 Wilmington coup. Stay loud.
#Wilmington1898 #BlackQueerVoices #StopTheShadowBan #BHM2026
THIS DAY IN HISTORY - Nov. 10, 1898
The Opening
On Nov 10, 1898, a white-supremacist mob overthrew Wilmington’s multiracial, elected government—the only successful coup d’état in U.S. history. Black leaders were murdered or exiled and democracy was buried in daylight. #Wilmington1898 #AmericanCoup
Receipts: Edmonds, The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894–1901; Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie (Pulitzer). Also: 1898 NC Commission Report; Alex Manly’s Aug 1898 editorial; contemporaneous News & Observer pages.
#Wilmington1898 #ReadTheReceipts
Name it plain. Wilmington 1898 was no “riot”; it was a municipal insurrection engineered into a coup + massacre by the city’s white polity—fronted by the Secret Nine—then sold as “order.” Memory isn’t neutral: name the hands, count the dead, guard the dictionary.
#Wilmington1898 #NameItRight
1898: Washington [William McKinley] looked away—no restoration, no prosecutions. Under-enforcement made usurpation stick. Now: tRUmp waves the Insurrection Act—over-enforcement for dissent. Different doors, same house.
#Wilmington1898 #InsurrectionAct
Daniels’ after-the-fact
Years later Josephus Daniels voiced regret. Note it—then remember: his newsroom standardized the emergency, primed crowds, and helped midwife a coup + massacre. Motive is context, not absolution.
#Wilmington1898 #AfterTheFact
Business ties ran through Wilmington: white press & printers that traded with Manly’s Daily Record also beat the “white supremacy” drum. Collaboration crossed lines; when called, the office still burned.
#Wilmington1898 #Entanglement
Inside rooms: resignations at gunpoint → instant appointments. Hallways of “respectable” men signing papers they forced. Outside: checkpoints, lists, trains watched. Law as theater; power by rifle.
#Wilmington1898 #AdministrativeCoup
They sack the Daily Record and burn it—kerosene, splinters, smoke over Wilmington. From the fire, killings and expulsions spread as patrols fan out. Papers later claimed 11–12 dead; even Waddell admitted “between twenty and thirty.” Rule by fire replaces law.
#Wilmington1898 #Massacre
Nov 10, morning: demands unmet. ~400 armed white men assemble and march to the Daily Record—rifles on shoulders, captains up front. This is the ignition move: a column aimed at the press that told Black truth.
#Wilmington1898 #MarchOnTheRecord
Nov 9, the city hums. Patrol captains briefed; rifle clubs ride after dark. The “White Declaration of Independence” is drafted; lists prepared; trains watched. Everyone knows the cue: tomorrow we flip City Hall.
#Wilmington1898 #EveOfSeizure
Aug 1898: Alexander L. Manly answered in the Daily Record—naming consensual relations and exposing white men’s abuse of Black women. His rebuttal (often headlined “Mrs. Felton’s Suggestion”) became the pretext: proof, they said, that “order” must be restored by force.
#Wilmington1898 #Pretext
1897: Rebecca Latimer Felton sold lynching as virtue under “white womanhood”—“lynch a thousand a week.” Papers reprinted her line; stump speakers turned it liturgy. That gospel primed crowds across the South and set Wilmington’s fuse for ’98.
#Wilmington1898 #WhiteWomanhoodMyth
Set-up: Fusion wins in 1894 & 1896 cracked the old order. Democrats answered with a “white supremacy” crusade—press blitzes, Red Shirt intimidation, election-law tricks, and the drumbeat of “Negro domination.” This wasn’t just backlash; it was a campaign plan. #Wilmington1898 #WhiteBacklash
Not a riot. A regime change.
Nov 10, 1898—Wilmington NC: white bloc—bosses, press, clergy, police & Red Shirts—bankrolled by “Secret Nine”—toppled a multiracial govt, burned Black press, killed Black neighbors. tRUmp waves the Insurrection Act—new lever, old script.
#Wilmington1898 #InsurrectionAct
Tulsa wasn’t the only Black Wall Street. Wilmington. Rosewood. And a long pattern of destroying Black wealth, often with federal complicity. #ReceiptSeries #BlackWallStreet #TulsaMassacre #RosewoodMassacre #Wilmington1898
Yeah! I’m in Maine (family funeral), and I live in Wilmington, NC. We don’t take kindly to coups and attempted insurrections since #wilmington1898 .. thanks HCR for featuring our city in the #NoKings protests today.
WATCH THIS! The 1898 Wilmington Coup was the only successful coup in U.S. history—Black leaders overthrown by white supremacists. PBS covers this truth. Defunding it is defunding public knowledge. This history is a warning. Don’t ignore it. #PBS #Wilmington1898 #Resist
What’s next for #JeffersonGriffin , recreating #Wilmington1898 ? #NorthCarolina
Has any one watched American Coup: Wilmington 1898? 😡 more history untold! #americancoup #wilmington1898
The 19th democrats were the slave owners and the KKK, while the Republicans were for "the negro and the carpet-bagger" (what is the latter??? Please excuse my ignorance if that is a slur of some sorts) #Wilmington1898
five Black and white pictures of African Americans in 1890s Wilmington, NC, before the 1898 massacre and coup. Text reads: before the massacre and coup. Black people were part of Wilmington’s ruling elite. They helped lead many of its institutions and successful businesses.
Inside the Bygone World of Wilmington NC's Black Elite www.pbs.org/wgbh/america... before the white supremacist Massacre and Coup. Check out the new PBS American Experience documentary film American Coup: #Wilmington1898
