feature people and events that document the american story. after this break, we will be back live with the next speaker stephen ingle. he is author of "gathering to save a nation: lincoln and the union war governors." we will visit wilmington, north carolina for the next 20 minutes where we will hear about insurrection triggered by racial tensions following the civil war. >> standing right here front of the memorial which was put up on the 100th anniversary of the events here that occurred in wilmington in november 1898. it was a long time coming. it was sort of controversial because there were many citizens, both black and white, who really wanted to forget the whole thing. in the black community, it was much,t they ran it up too there would be repercussions. the white community, i think they preferred, no pun intended, but to whitewash the past and

pretend that always been a progressive city. i think is one radio host put, you can up at something behind you if you don't put it in front of you first. in 1898, wilmington achieved a very interesting status. this was a huge slaveholding area before the civil war because of the river, which is back there about a block away. all of the plantation in north carolina were along the river. a huge concentration of the 330,000 slaves in north carolina in 1860 or right here. there's always the fear of a slave uprising. the terrible nightmare, if you will, of the land. they had repressive laws against both free blacks and slaves. and when general sherman came and invaded north carolina from the south, he had liberated some 25,000 enslaved blacks with the army. he got to the head of navigation of the river, fayetteville, and

put all of those people on flat boats in the and brought them to wilmington where they were then processed down to the freedmen's bureau. a great many of them stayed here. 1898, wilmington was one of the largest cities in north carolina and of the 70,000 or so citizens, two thirds were black. they had achieved an amazing thing and just a little more than a generation after being enslaved and coming out of bondage with not even owning the clothes on their back. they had achieved a status of middle-class. they had achieved some political leadership and power. they had achieved social standing and economic wealth and large degree here. it got the reputation of a great place to come to work if you are black. african-americans for the skilled artisans at the mill, and the cotton mills. it was a great place. there was a huge thriving black middle class. they are taken political power from the old democrats. in those days, democrats and republicans were sort of

reversed. in 1898, the state democratic party decided it was going to " take back" their state and or cities from what they thought of as negro domination. this was their kind of way of putting it. they wanted to take back all the elected offices that were going to be coming up in 1898, which included a lot of the state -- but it didor not include city council, then call the board of aldermen, or the mayor. they basically stole the h intimidation. literally, people stealing ballot boxes and recounting them as so forth. and leading up to that, they had a war of words. it took an interesting turn. there were all kinds of anti-black speeches all over the state, the famous order of which was an excavator at kernel. there was another piece of writing that figured prominently in a newspaper.

alexander manley published a firstper he billed as the afro american daily newspaper in the country called "the daily record." it was sort of a newspaper for community's within the community's. it was largely ignored by the white community. in an editorial in august 1898, he was responding to a speech given by rebecca felton, the wife of a congressman. danger tohe greatest white farm wives was being raped by black brutes and if it took whingeing 1000 of them, then so be it. she was all in favor of lynching. been at least a little bit of doubt as to whether manley wrote the editorial himself. said mrs.torial, felton from georgia makes a speech before the agricultural society entirely, georgia, in which she advocates lynching as an extreme measure. this woman makes a strong plea for womanhood as if the alleged

crimes of rape were frequent. her plea would be worthy of consideration. he goes on to say, we suggest white garter women more closely. as she says, thus giving opportunity for the human scene, being white or black, you leave your goods out-of-doors and then complain because they are taken away. poor white men are careless in the manner of protecting the women especially on the forms. he goes on to say sometimes white women are attracted to .lack men it is unclear whether this was meant in earnest or maybe a wrote it if even himself. it you can imagine the receptionist got in the white community. although there are too curious things about it, one, the thing he was responding to happened that speech by mrs. feldman i think it happen a year earlier. so white was at that moment he respond, we don't know.

nobody in the white community mer read the paper. then they repeated it. ready much every day until election between august and november. so there began to be calls for manley to be removed from the city, the paper to be shut down, and so forth. couple this with a couple of other events, white government unions were making the rounds and these were basically cadres of people that would come into a community and make the case that you should fire your like workers and give those jobs to whites. and make people take a pledge to that effect. you are starting to see the employment picture shipped a little bit. the third piece of that was a thing called the white man's declaration of independence. this was signed by more than 400 of the leading white citizens of wilmington just a little while before the election. it begins this way -- believing the constitution of the united states contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people, believing

its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of african origin and believing those men of the state of north carolina who join in forming the union did not contemplate with their descendents subjection to its inferior race. it was the place for the night before the election day -- stood on the stage, gave what was later described as a sizzling speech and he said, "if you see the negro out voting, tell them to go home. if you won't go home, shooting them down in his tracks." there was nothing subtle about this. the place in rugged in applause. -- erected in applause. that set the tone. you can see there nothing subtle about this, nothing that was nuanced about it in the sense of the power grab going on. furthermore, they had already made arrangements in washington with the mckinley administration that no federal troops would come to the aid of wilmington,

that they would leave them to settle their own things their own way. so they went into it knowing there would be no intervention. they ran the table on election day. white supremacist candidates elected across the board. and they still did not have the board of aldermen and the mayor. so november 10, they set an ultimatum to a so-called committee of colored citizens over pretty much chosen it random. unity or leaders of the black community met and decided to give them what they wanted. they were going to throw manley out and shut down the paper. but the reply never reached waddell and his cohort because the man who is supposed to deliver it mailed it himself. he was too afraid to go into that part of the white community. on november 10, about 8:00 in the morning or so, a crowd of up to 1000 armed white men gathered at the wilmington infantry armory. they marched up following what

ill a couple of blocks, turn onto 7th street, then sort of rampage on down to the daily record -- which was using a church hall at that point. when they got there, they surrounded it, bashed in the door, shot one man who has remained an identified who apparently ran out the back wounded. then they burned down the newspaper. stopped manley -- he was not at the newspaper that point. yet fled the city with his brother. they not only shut down the newspaper, but they burned the entire archive of the black community. it is very hard even to find a single copy of "the daily record." there's a famous picture of all of these white men and their sons, i suppose they are, standing up front of this burned out hull of an office with guns. it kept the black fire brigade from fighting the fire. it was only when the church next door look like it would burn, do they allow the firemen to fight

the blaze. they disperse and go home. streett over to blatant and there is some black workingmen who came to find out what is going on. and are seeing this gunfire up to it. all of the dead were black. we know the rampage lasted about three days. it had been orchestrated and plan for many months before -- the outbreak was probably spontaneous. but the even had a sort of issuing gun -- machine gun type used in war. all of the sudden, all of these militia groups were coming in from elsewhere. it would take a couple of hours reach of them to get here and they showed a pretty immediately. paramilitary organization recently demobilized with all of their high-powered rifles.

they had the reserves. these people shut down wilmington, declared martial law. they were strip searching men, women, children, black men, women, and children on every corner. there were a number of black letter carriers nearly beaten to death by white mobs. some white women came to the rescue and got the hooligans off them and gave them shelter in their homes. there were a number of other white women who sheltered black servants and their home in order to keep them safe. but this was catastrophic for wilmington in so many ways. a lot of these people that were being chased and harassed and shot at fled the city, swim though river literally. they hid in the swamps. they went to ground, basically. for three days, wilmington shut down. you can pretty much marked the end of wilmington's ascendancy as a city in north carolina to the date of this coup. it has been called a right, but it really was a coup d'etat.

the next thing they did was round of the aldermen and a gun pointed city hall, made them all resign and appointed weiser from assists down the line -- white supremacists down the line. becomes aror multi-term mayor. when he dies, there's a huge funeral and he is eulogized as a fine figure of seven schoharie. if you can believe that. no legal action was taken to bring any of these guys does in fact, george roundtree, later judge, would to the statehouse and he concocted a piece of legislation possibly called the grandfather clause. this single piece of legislation .ook voting rights away it was throughout the south because it was copied by states all below the mason-dixon. huge national repercussions, a huge repercussion right here locally with the economy of the city. of course, it took the african-american community about

1000 people we know -- it included people put on the train at bayonet point, so-called banished from owning 10. these were local leaders, lawyers, preachers. they were funeral directors, local politicians. they were the people who up to this point had been the african-american aldermen, firemen, policemen, african-american sheriff deputies and so on. to beingn went back ruled by this contrary of whites of what -- cadre supremacist. i think about,gs ove so many people on the white side when on to have prosperous lives. all of whom stayed here. they built her wealth for many generations. some became really great philanthropists. we owe a great deal to them at the university and elsewhere. manleya were gone.

he came back searching for property he owned and was told he never owned property here. of land hehe deed owned on chestnut street. where the situation leadership of the black community is basically wiped out for generations. from there we are looking at something now more than 100 years later, and people are asking the questions, what can we do to change that? wilmington, behind every decision about rezoning or redistricting schools or neighborhood schools or whether or not we should have at-large voting for city council or district voting, all of that has a legacy directly tied to 1898 because we are the future of that history. i always think of that event as being like the tunnels that run under wilmington from about seven street to the river with these old drainage tunnels that

used to come up in all of the fine houses and churches all the way down to the river. they were probably also used for other things. they are kind of a secret underneath the traffic on the street of wilmington. i think of that as being that little secret that runs underneath the city. reallyil this memorial, was not acknowledged. it was something whispered about. it was whispered about usually in versions that were far less than accurate. we don't know how many people died. i think they say 10 on the monument because that is the number of corners juries. a black preacher who held in a covert by 4th street put the number over 400. one of the legends that grew up based on eyewitness testimony at the time was that wagon loads of bodies were dumped into the river and so that has become kind of the iconic image of this violence as far as the black community, those bodies being dumped in the river. because thereknow

was no investigation. there was w looking into this, nobody counting or going around interviewing witnesses. it is all speculation. my guess it is probably way more than 10 people. not 400, but somewhere -- it really, really rocked the core of this community black and white. i come from chicago. a very diverse city. i got here and realized everywhere i went, i was either with all white people or all black people. churches, theaters. music. i thought, what is going on? i realized nobody handwritten about it much. i think it had been written about at the turn of the 20th century. the most famous was charles chestnut. i was really interested in the motivations of these guys. you're talking about people who were family men, good fathers and husbands, people who were deacons in our churches. in one case, a pastor of a

church. my wayrying to imagine into their imaginations, their mindset. the practical question was, there were 70 or 80 people who figured into the narrative and i could not hit my hands around that. i ended up picking representatives of each of these things.f the the planners, victims, so forth. and using us to tell the story. i was as group it was as i could be putting the event on paper that were public. in the novel, if you read about someone being shot at a certain intersection or you read about a certain speech being made, that happen. where i took liberties was in creating a couple of composite characters and viewpoint characters that could move back-and-forth ended the secret counsels because these guys did not leave minutes of their meetings. i knew they went in and what happen when they came out. i had to be able to write the scene inside. i was interested in imagining my way into their morality and way of thinking and trying to pull some truth of how the human

character behaved while historicalrue to the basics of the event. that is why i wrote "cape fear rising" as a novel. many people had reaction that, oh, he just made up whole thing up. i can't tell you how many radio interviews i did in which someone would say, that yankee comes down here and makes it up. it never happened. i have had conversations with hundreds of people over the years who said, i grew up in the area and we studied history, learned about the civil war, and we never heard anything about this. prior to the novel, i have met with all of -- asked to meet with all of the university officials who were concerned that something would happen. point, and at that african-american sheriff, and the local police chief got together with our chancellor on campus and talked about what might happen in the black community, white community when

the book came out. what did happen was a lot of anonymous phone calls to me the letters to the editor, speaking --agements that when away went away. i know there was at least a on -- i knowrds there were a couple of boards that met that were related to very splay's is in wilmington and try to figure out whether they could see me for this. if everybody in the book at that point was deceased. there was nothing there. i learned last year because i wrote this as an untenured professor, i just learned last or from our former chancellor that in fact our board of trustees was going to deny my tenure based on this book. there were a number of dissonance on the board of trustees at that point. it turned out it was owing kenyan, one of his descendents. he is barely stood up for the integrity of the university in the system and said, you cannot do that. i was saved and i never knew

that for all these years. all of that is to say this event , while it seems like ancient history being bowled over 100 years now, in the past, isn't. -- almostes although as if it happened yesterday. we recognize this now that it is in the sunlight, not singling this out as a defining thing that that is all the black community is about. they were only victims because of their own success. in doing one of the most transformations of people in history, coming from slavery into a burgeoning, prosperous middle-class with political leadership and so forth. what i would like to do is -- it is been a slow road back. what i would like to see wilmington do and the people who come here is to encourage the process by which we get back to the position of having that robust leadership in all the community's working together toward a common good. >>