On This Day, Nov. 10, 1898: The Wilmington Coup

What Happened

On November 10, 1898, armed white men in Wilmington, North Carolina, burned the office of the city's Black-owned newspaper, the Daily Record, killed Black residents in the streets and forced the elected biracial "Fusion" government to resign at gunpoint. Before the violence, about 8,000 Black men voted in a city of 20,000. Three of ten aldermen were Black, as were the county coroner, jailer, treasurer and register of deeds, and Black families banked at three Black-owned banks.

Why It Matters

Wilmington is the only successful violent overthrow of an elected government on American soil. Its leaders were never punished; several rose to state office. Within two years North Carolina adopted a literacy test and poll tax that wiped Black voters off the rolls for six decades. Wilmington shows that Jim Crow was not drift. It was a plan, carried out with rifles.

Read More

See Slavery by Another Name for how Wilmington fits the long rebuild of white rule after emancipation.