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9. Mapping Freedom’s Terrain: The Political and Productive Landscapes of Wilmington, North Carolina
- University Press of Florida
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9 Mapping Freedom’s Terrain The Political and Productive Landscapes of Wilmington, North Carolina Susan Eva O’Donovan On a chilly November morning in 1898, an army of rifle-toting businessmen, community leaders, recently returned veterans of the Spanish-American war, Red Shirts, and others interested in pinning their futures to an increasingly virulent racism, spilled into the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina, with mayhem and possibly murder on their minds. Having only days before seized back control at the polls from a four-year-old coalition of Populists and Republicans , the mob marched forward determined to secure their newly won grip on government by destroying or driving away what remained of their political opponents. From a white supremacist’s perspective, their mission was nothing less than the last critical phase of a drawn-out and long-awaited counterrevolution.1 Theirvictimsrememberedsomethingquitedifferent.Intheirrecollections, what unfolded on 10 November 1898, was one of the most concentrated moments of racial terror to take place on American soil. Before night fell, somewhere between nine and one hundred black citizens lost their lives, murdered by roving bands of thugs, victims of what one witness later recalled as “internecine street fighting.” One of the nation’s few black-owned and operated daily newspapers lay in ashes; its editor, Alex Manly, on the run. In following days, Wilmington’s Democrats and their various allies would escort leading Republicans and Populists to the edge of town, forcibly evicting them with instructions that they never come back. Some were advised to leave the state. Thousands of the radical rank and file did not wait for their own invitations. Frightened by the violence that had swept the city and by the mobs that continued to patrol its streets, African Americans especially hurried to pack up theirbelongingsandabandonWilmingtonfornewandhopefullysaferhomes. The Political and Productive Landscapes of Wilmington, North Carolina 177 It was an event and an exodus that dramatically remade the city’s public and political face. Victorious white supremacists demanded and received the resignations of the mayor, his aldermen, the chief of police, the deputy sheriff , crack companies of black firemen, and the entire city police force—then swiftly replaced the latter with 250 “special policemen, chosen from the ranks of reputable white citizens.” Approximately 80 percent of the city’s barbershops and 90 percent of its eating establishments—businesses that had been owned and operated by black entrepreneurs—closed their doors virtually overnight, and working-class white men vied for what had previously been black men’s jobs, soon discovering that most of their new bosses planned to pay them no more than a black man’s wage. With their lives abruptly attenuated , those African Americans who chose or had no choice but to stay in the city sought safety in numbers. Closing ranks in the most literal way, they transformed the once booming and biracial midcity neighborhood of Brooklyn into a predominately black urban space. Jim Crow had come to roost in Wilmington, North Carolina.2 By nearly any measure, the Democrats’ campaign to wrench control from their biracial and radical opponents was an unqualified success. Black voting turn-outplummeted,andwith itblackrepresentationatalllevelsof localgovernment . Public offices that had been occupied by a diverse mix of Populists, Republicans, and African Americans became the province of conservative white men. So too did a number of Wilmington’s jobs, as employers hurried to replace black working men with white. But despite the velocity at which the final engagement unfolded, the Democrats’ war had been a very long and drawn-out campaign. Indeed, North Carolina and New Hanover County’s conservative loyalists had worked for more than thirty years—a generation —to reclaim political, economic, and civic authority. Attempts to dislodge Wilmington’s robust black and white coalitions had been launched in the mid-1860s when Democrats and former Confederate officials—scarcely recoveredfromtheir wartime losses—mobilizedonce again,thistime to turn back a rising Republican tide. Though beat back in 1868 by armed and angry ex-slaves who refused to relinquish any of freedom’s gains, conservatives refused to give up. In following years, they would launch new and creative initiatives: artfully carving the heart of the city into three carefully designed electoral precincts, and later, hacking New Hanover County in half, hoping in each instance to dilute radical influence by reconfiguring the political landscape.3 But when a powerful Fusionist movement of Populists, Republicans, and laborersofbothraceswoncontrolof Wilmington and the state in 1894, North [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-30 08:49 GMT) 178...