In the wake of the 2020 uprising for racial justice, many Americans began learning the history of racial violence left out of their textbooks, as widespread protests of the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others demanded a reckoning with the country’s legacy of white supremacy. Black communities were finally able to force a discussion into the mainstream media about white supremacist violence and historical events like the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, in which a white mob attacked the prosperous Black community of Greenwood (known as Black Wall Street), burning homes and businesses, killing hundreds, and displacing thousands.
Yet, even as some long-buried histories came to light, others—such as the 1898 Wilmington Coup, when white supremacists violently overthrew a democratically elected, Reconstruction-era multiracial government in North Carolina—remain largely unknown. For a brief period, because of the unprecedented numbers of people marching in the streets, the nation began to confront its past with honesty. However, when the protests receded, so did the media’s focus on Black history. Many critical chapters in the struggle for racial justice remain buried beneath layers of denial and deliberate erasure.
That willful denial was on display in the narrative that emerged surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, when a mob violently stormed the U.S. Capitol building, waving Confederate flags, wearing clothing with fascist slogans like “Camp Auschwitz,” and carrying nooses and other symbols of racial violence. In the attack’s aftermath, many politicians condemned the violence and sought to reassure the nation. Then-President-elect Joe Biden stated, “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are.” Even Republican Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, condemned the violence, writing, “This is not who we are as a people or as a country. This is wrong and condemnable.”
When we understand Wilmington, we see that January 6 was not an aberration; it was a continuation of a historical pattern where white supremacy reacts violently to challenges against its dominance.
But these statements ignore the long history of white supremacist assaults on democracy in the United States—a history so deeply embedded that during Reconstruction, amid mass Black political organizing and grassroots pressure, Congress was forced to act. In 1871, Congress passed the Klan Enforcement Act to give the federal government the power to protect constitutional rights from groups like the Ku Klux Klan that used “force, intimidation, or threat” to undermine Black political participation and overthrow democratic institutions. In fact, parts of this very law were cited in lawsuits and criminal prosecutions following the January 6 insurrection. If, as many claimed, “this is not who we are,” then why was a law to stop this kind of violence passed over 150 years ago?
Among the most significant examples of white supremacist political violence in the United States is the 1898 Wilmington Coup. It stands as one of the worst racist attacks in U.S. history, yet is absent from the lessons most students learn in school. The fact that the federal government didn’t invoke the Klan Act to prosecute the perpetrators of the Wilmington Coup demonstrates their complicity in using violence to maintain systemic racism. If people knew the history of the Wilmington Coup, they would understand that white supremacist violence has long been a feature—not a glitch—of the American political system.
Wilmington’s Democracy
In the late 19th century, Wilmington was a thriving majority-Black city where Black men held office, ran businesses, and participated in civic life. This progress was not an anomaly—it reflected the important gains that Black people fought for and won during Reconstruction. In the years following the Civil War, Black communities helped build a new vision for democracy in the South. They established public schools; elected Black representatives to local, state, and federal office; advocated for civil rights; and created thriving economic institutions such as mutual aid societies, churches, and newspapers. Wilmington’s multiracial government and Black political power were forged in this Reconstruction-era struggle.
But this progress was intolerable to those in the Democratic Party, which positioned itself as the party of white dominance in the South. In the years leading up to 1898, a political coalition known as “fusion” emerged, threatening the Democratic Party’s grip on power. As historian LeRae Umfleet explains, “Fusion took disaffected Democrats, which were the Populist Party, and Republican voters, who were the voters of Abraham Lincoln’s party—Black men and progressive white men—and it fused the voting power of those two blocks of voters.” This coalition successfully elected a Republican governor in 1896, marking a dramatic shift in political power that white Democrats sought to reverse at all costs.
Central to their plan was the use of propaganda. As Yoruba Richen, filmmaker of a documentary on the Wilmington Coup, points out, “Josephus Daniels, the publisher of Raleigh’s News and Observer, was one of the architects of the coup. He had the very smart idea—since so many white people were also illiterate—to use cartoons to gin up this myth, this racist trope of the Black man raping white women and taking over government.”
At the same time, Alex Manly, editor of Wilmington’s Daily Record, was running one of the country’s only Black-owned daily newspapers. The Daily Record was a vital resource for Wilmington’s Black community, reporting on their achievements and providing a platform for challenging the era’s pervasive racism. Manly became a target of white supremacists after responding to a racist speech by Rebecca Felton, the wife of a Georgia senator, who claimed that Black men were raping white women and called for lynchings to stop this so-called epidemic.
As Richen explains, “Manly wrote a response saying this is basically BS. He pointed out that, as a man of mixed race himself, unions between Black men and white women often occurred freely because white women were attracted to Black men. He also emphasized that Black women had historically been the ones raped, and no one said anything about that.” This editorial enraged white supremacists and was used by Josephus Daniels and others to justify the coup.
On November 10, 1898, when the violence began, the mob first targeted the Daily Record. White men and boys burned the building to the ground, ensuring the destruction of a powerful voice for Wilmington’s Black community. Manly and his brother narrowly escaped, using their light skin to pass as white. Richen describes the chilling aftermath: “One of the few pictures that we have from the coup is of the Record being burned, with white men and boys surrounding it. It’s very reminiscent of the lynching photos we saw at the time and thereafter.”
The attack on the Daily Record was not only an act of physical violence, but also a deliberate effort to silence Black voices and destroy attempts at multiracial democracy.
The Erasure of the Wilmington Coup
The erasure of the Wilmington Coup from U.S. history textbooks was the result of a deliberate campaign to suppress the truth. White supremacist organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) played a central role in shaping the way history was taught in schools. UDC President Mrs. James A. Rounsaville, at their annual convening in 1909, made their goals plain: “It has ever been the cherished purpose of the Daughters of the Confederacy to secure greater educational opportunities for Confederate children, and by thorough training of their powers of mind, heart, and hand, render it possible for these representatives of our Southern race to retain for that race its supremacy in its own land.” As the PBS article “How to Cover up a Coup” explains, “For millions of students passing through North Carolina’s public schools, learning from textbooks that never mentioned the deadly 1898 coup d’etat in their state, it was as though that event never happened.”
Dr. Crystal Sanders, now a history professor at Emory University, reflected on this erasure: “I took several courses on North Carolina history throughout my middle school and high school career, and I never recall hearing about the Wilmington Insurrection.” This erasure continues today. I recently reviewed the History Alive! textbook, which makes no mention of the Wilmington Coup—deadening students’ understanding of Reconstruction and the white supremacist backlash that followed.
This lack of education is not an isolated issue. As the Zinn Education Project’s report Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction shows, “[I]n more than a dozen states, the Dunning School of false and distorted framing still influences standards and curricula.” The report goes on to explain, “Most state standards focus on government bodies and other elites as primary actors of Reconstruction, rather than the achievements and perspectives of ordinary Black people, whose unprecedented grassroots work in governing, education, labor, health, and more lies at the heart of the era. Most standards also fail to note white supremacy’s role in defeating Reconstruction or connections between that historic period and today.”
Why We Must Remember Wilmington
The Wilmington Coup reveals that white supremacist attacks on democracy are deeply embedded in U.S. history. Erasing this history allows the myth of American exceptionalism to persist, leaving us ill-equipped to recognize—and confront—the recurrence of such violence. When we understand Wilmington, we see that January 6 was not an aberration; it was a continuation of a historical pattern where white supremacy reacts violently to challenges against its dominance.
Learning these truths empowers us to create change. We can choose to struggle for a true multiracial democracy, one where history is taught honestly. When we teach students the truth, we equip them to dismantle the systems of injustice that have persisted for generations—and to build a future where democracy is not just an ideal, but a reality.
