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in all states and situations. A

0:39

content warning. This

0:41

episode contains descriptions of violence and the

0:44

use of a racial epithet. Hey,

0:46

another note here at the top. And

0:49

bear with us. This is going to take a couple minutes.

0:52

You may have noticed in the credits

0:54

for previous episodes of this season that

0:56

Echoes of a Coup is a collaboration

0:58

with a project called America's Hallowed Ground.

1:01

Both Seen on Radio and America's Hallowed

1:04

Ground are supported by the Kenan Institute

1:06

for Ethics at Duke University. In

1:09

this episode, we'll hear about a man

1:11

named William Rand Kenan Sr. who played

1:13

a disturbing role in the events of

1:15

Wilmington 1898. The

1:17

Kenan Institute was not named for William Kenan

1:19

Sr. who died in 1903. And

1:23

much of the wealth that allowed his

1:25

relatives to endow institutions like the Kenan

1:27

Institute came to later generations. In

1:30

the 18th and 19th centuries, the Kenans

1:32

owned a large plantation in Duplin County,

1:35

North Carolina where they enslaved 20

1:37

to 50 black people. Their

1:39

slave-based cotton and timber business made them

1:42

well off. They

1:44

would lose that fortune with the end of the

1:46

Civil War and emancipation. But

1:48

by the 1890s, William Kenan Sr.

1:50

was a successful merchant in Wilmington.

1:53

The bigger family fortune came to

1:55

Kenan Sr.'s daughter, Mary Lily

1:57

Kenan, through her marriage in 1901 to the

1:59

White House. oil and real estate

2:01

tycoon Henry Flagler. When

2:03

Flagler died in 1913, his fortune went to his widow

2:07

and when she died four years later,

2:09

she had no children, so the estate

2:11

was split mostly among her siblings, including

2:14

her brother William Rand Keenan Jr.

2:18

William Jr. grew up in Wilmington. In

2:21

1898, he was 26 years old, working

2:23

as an engineer in Michigan. He

2:26

was not present for the massacre in Coo.

2:28

As you'll hear in the episode, William Jr.

2:31

would later give a description of his father's

2:33

role in the massacre that was inaccurate, but

2:35

nonetheless damning toward his father. William

2:37

Jr. died in 1965 and

2:40

much of his inherited wealth passed into

2:42

the William R. Keenan Jr. Charitable Trust.

2:44

It's out of that trust that the

2:46

Keenan Institute for Ethics was created in

2:48

1995 with the

2:50

founding of the William R. Keenan Jr. Fund

2:52

for Ethics. All

2:54

of this goes to the heart of questions

2:56

we've been exploring on this podcast for years.

2:59

How do we, especially we white

3:01

Americans, enact our

3:03

citizenship responsibly, given

3:05

everything, the good and the ill

3:08

we've inherited? We

3:10

can say it wasn't us. The terrible

3:12

white supremacy fueled acts carried out by

3:14

the ones who came before us, but

3:18

our society, our systems, and our

3:20

institutions have not in fact escaped

3:22

the evils of their founding, chief

3:25

among them the exploitation of

3:27

people and nature. Whatever

3:30

the name of the institutions we inhabit,

3:32

the question remains for all of us.

3:35

What are we going to do about all of it now? We're

3:40

here on the corner at 4th and Harnett in

3:42

Wilmington near the edge of downtown.

3:46

Back in 1898, this was a mixed

3:48

race neighborhood. On this corner

3:50

would have been a grocery store, and on

3:52

another corner was a pharmacy. The

3:56

day of the violence? That is L'Ere

3:58

Aum Fleet, the historian. Michael,

4:01

you and I spent a day with her

4:03

in Wilmington last August. That's right. Here

4:06

she's talking about what happened on that corner

4:08

on November 10th 1898, two

4:10

days after the statewide elections that fall.

4:13

And I have to say it was

4:15

painful as a black and

4:17

indigenous North Carolinian to stand on that

4:19

street while she painted the picture and

4:21

to imagine the scene. Here she's telling

4:24

us about a group of armed white

4:26

men. That morning they'd already burned down

4:28

the building that housed the city's black-owned

4:30

newspaper and then they

4:32

headed over to this neighborhood where some

4:34

of them lived alongside black families. Ostensibly

4:37

they were going home. What

4:40

happened next? White newspapers

4:42

and later North Carolina historians would

4:44

describe what happened next as a

4:46

firefight. They'd claimed that

4:48

black men started the shooting. Keep

4:51

that claim in mind as you listen to what

4:53

the race says about those white men. Once

4:55

they stepped off the trolley they

4:57

began to yell

5:00

at an accumulated group

5:02

of workers who were from the

5:04

black community who had come near

5:07

their home to try

5:09

to figure out what was going on because they had

5:11

heard gunshots or the shots were being fired in the

5:13

air and they wanted to know what was going on

5:15

there so they wanted to make sure their families were

5:17

safe. So a

5:19

policeman came into the

5:22

intersection and told the

5:24

crowd to disperse and

5:26

he later testified that

5:28

the only persons with

5:30

guns at this intersection

5:32

were the whiteness and at

5:35

around 11 o'clock one

5:38

witness said that hell broke loose because

5:41

gunshots started flying across the

5:43

intersection. All

5:45

of the available evidence suggests that

5:47

bullets flew in only one direction.

5:56

From the Kenan Institute for Ethics at

5:58

Duke University this is Cino. on

6:00

radio, season six, Echoes

6:02

of a Coup, episode three.

6:05

I'm John B. Wayne. And I'm Michael Betts. In

6:08

this episode, November 10th, 1898, the

6:11

massacre and coup. 25

6:14

years ago, we could not have told this story

6:16

the way we can now. In

6:19

episode four, we'll explain why that is

6:21

and describe the century-long coverup.

6:24

But over the last couple of decades, North

6:27

Carolina has reckoned with 1898, at

6:30

least to the point where the essential facts

6:32

are now available. So

6:34

here's what happened over those cataclysmic

6:37

days. Remember where we

6:39

left off in the last episode? After

6:42

a months-long white supremacist propaganda

6:44

campaign, complete with fear-mongering about

6:46

Negro rule, and with

6:49

a paramilitary group, the red shirts,

6:51

threatening violence against anyone not voting

6:53

for the openly white supremacist Democrats,

6:56

election day is almost here. In

6:59

Wilmington, the white supremacist's most

7:01

popular and incendiary speaker, Alfred

7:03

Moore Waddell, gives one

7:05

last speech on November 7th, the

7:08

day before the election. He

7:10

tells his audience, you are Anglo-Saxons and

7:12

you will do your duty. Go to

7:14

the polls tomorrow. And if you find

7:16

the Negro out-voting, tell him to leave

7:18

the polls. And if he refuses, kill

7:20

him. Shoot him down in his

7:22

tracks. We shall win tomorrow

7:24

if we have to do it with guns.

7:26

There was little if any gunfire on November

7:28

8th. The pre-election campaign

7:31

of threats and propaganda worked, along

7:33

with apparently some actual election fraud,

7:35

just to make sure, says Lorraine

7:37

Fleet. Because we do have

7:40

evidence of ballot

7:42

stuffing. In one precinct, in

7:44

Wilmington's first ward, for example, there

7:46

were far more votes cast for

7:48

the Democratic candidate than there were

7:50

registered voters in the precinct. A

7:54

few decades later, a white Wilmington newspaper reporter

7:56

who had spoken with many of the men

7:58

involved in 1890, would

8:01

write this. Of course there were

8:03

some irregularities in this statewide election

8:05

in this city and elsewhere in

8:07

the state, but the white citizens

8:09

realized that victory had to be

8:11

won by hook or by crook.

8:14

Otherwise they would have to continue

8:16

to live under the intolerable conditions

8:18

of the time. The Democratic

8:20

Party swept to victory across North

8:23

Carolina, taking back majorities in the

8:25

state legislature and the state's congressional

8:27

delegation. But the white

8:29

supremacists weren't done. See

8:32

the 1898 elections were for state

8:35

and federal offices only. The

8:37

city leadership in Wilmington with its

8:39

fusionist mayor and city council was

8:41

not on the November ballot. They

8:44

wouldn't face the voters until the following spring.

8:47

The local Democrats and their allies apparently

8:49

decided they weren't going to wait that

8:51

long. On the morning

8:54

after the election, November 9th, a

8:56

white-owned newspaper, the Wilmington messenger, ran

8:59

an ad that read, attention white men.

9:02

There will be a meeting of the white men

9:04

of Wilmington this morning at 11 o'clock at

9:06

the courthouse. A full attendance is desired as

9:09

business in the furtherance of white supremacy

9:11

will be transacted. 600 white

9:14

men showed up. At the

9:16

meeting they were asked to sign a statement

9:18

read by that inflammatory speech maker, Alfred

9:20

Moore Waddell. It would come to

9:22

be called the White Declaration

9:25

of Independence. We, the

9:27

undersigned citizens of the city of

9:29

Wilmington and the county of New

9:31

Hanover, do hereby declare that we

9:33

will no longer be ruled and

9:35

will never again be ruled by

9:37

men of African origin. The

9:40

statement singled out the black-owned newspaper,

9:42

The Daily Record. Its

9:44

owner, Alexander Manley, had published

9:46

that editorial about consensual relationships

9:49

between black men and white

9:51

women in response to

9:53

Rebecca Felton's speech calling for

9:55

more lynchings of black men.

9:57

The Declaration demanded that Manley

9:59

leave town immediately. Four

10:02

hundred and fifty-seven men signed the Declaration.

10:05

It was delivered to a group of black

10:07

leaders, the Committee of Colored Citizens, with a

10:09

demand that they respond by seven-thirty the next

10:11

morning. Alfred Moore Waddell would

10:13

later claim he never got an answer, and

10:16

in his words, that

10:18

caused all the trouble. Notice

10:20

he's somehow blaming black people in yet

10:22

another way for what went down. It's

10:26

hard to say what kind of answer from black

10:28

leaders would have made any difference. White

10:30

supremacist leaders called hundreds of white citizens

10:32

to meet at the armory of a

10:35

local militia on the morning

10:37

of November 10th, two days after the

10:39

election. The crowd that met Alfred

10:41

Moore Waddell here on the steps grew rapidly

10:43

to hundreds of men who were

10:45

angry and eager to see something happen,

10:47

because if you can imagine, they've had

10:50

months and months and months of propaganda

10:52

and white supremacy rhetoric being

10:54

sent to them. And

10:57

the Democratic Party had won the election,

10:59

but there had not been a breaking

11:02

point for the average

11:04

citizen who was the target of

11:06

the white supremacy campaign. The

11:08

shouts were made to fumigate the city

11:11

with the ashes of Manley's printing press.

11:14

And who knows if that was a planted thing

11:16

or if it was an organic thing. Nonetheless,

11:19

Waddell took control of the

11:21

crowd, arranged them in skirmish

11:23

lines, and marched them as

11:25

a good Confederate general would

11:28

up Market Street to then

11:30

turn and go to the Manley printing

11:32

press building, where the building

11:34

would eventually be caught on

11:36

fire and burned, ending the career of

11:39

the record in Wilmington

11:41

at the time. Alexander Manley

11:43

had slipped out of town the night

11:45

before the mob came for him. My

11:47

father and another

11:50

friend who was a part of the newspaper

11:52

set up got in the

11:55

father's buggy, which of course the

11:57

Cadillac of the day, horse and buggy. and

12:00

they headed out of town. That's

12:02

Mee-Lo Manley, Alexander Manley's

12:04

son, from a 1984 interview

12:07

with the University of Kentucky. He's

12:10

telling the story of how his

12:12

father escaped Wilmington, physically unharmed. The

12:15

mob that had been set up had put a circle

12:18

around the town. Nobody, because

12:20

they were coming in to lynch this nigger Manley. Well,

12:25

a German grocer who

12:27

knew my father, got in touch with

12:29

my father and said, look, you've got to get out of town. But

12:33

they've lined it up that nobody can leave the

12:36

vicinity of this cordon unless

12:38

they have a certain password. Said,

12:41

now, if it ever got known that I gave you the

12:43

password, they'd kill me. But

12:45

I know you, I trust you, I want you

12:47

to get out of here. He

12:50

gave my father the password. Alexander

12:52

Manley was very light skinned, and most ordinary white people

12:54

in the area didn't know what he looked like. My

12:56

father went on up to come up the line, they

12:59

stopped him. Where are you going? He said, name the

13:01

town up there. Where you going by for? Going

13:03

to buy some horses. He says,

13:05

there's an auction up there, something like that. Oh,

13:08

all right. He gave the password.

13:11

Okay. Said, well, you see

13:13

that nigger Manley up there, shoot him, and they gave him two

13:15

rifles. That's

13:17

right. Hopefully he went. With

13:23

Manley's newspaper building destroyed, Alfred

13:25

Moore Waddell told the white men to go

13:28

home. But Cedric Harrison, who

13:30

leads those tours about black Wilmington history,

13:33

says the armed white supremacists

13:35

took their frustration at Manley's

13:37

escape into nearby neighborhoods. Some

13:40

shot into black people's homes and targeted any

13:42

black people who were out in the streets.

13:44

In the deep south, a lot of neighborhoods

13:47

weren't exclusively black or white because blacks had

13:49

to live close to where they worked. And

13:51

so when some of the whites

13:54

went back to their homes, they ended up seeing

13:56

some blacks just going about their day to day,

13:58

minding their own business, and ended up. Shouldn't

14:00

they want a stood? And that started

14:02

a massacre that happened throughout the night

14:04

among the white man who shot down

14:06

black people in November Tenth, A group

14:08

that may have taken part was a

14:10

squad that operated a Coke machine gun

14:12

mounted on the back of a horse

14:14

and wagon. It. Was one

14:17

of two rapid fire guns called

14:19

into action on November tenth. The

14:21

other or hotchkiss weapon belong to

14:23

a local naval malicious. The Colts

14:25

was similar to a gatling gun

14:27

that could fire more than four

14:29

hundred rounds minute local businessmen had

14:31

bought it shortly before the election

14:33

to keep the peace as some

14:36

said, or to intimidate black people.

14:38

A week before the election, members of

14:40

the gun squad had invited black community

14:43

leaders to a demonstration by the river,

14:45

firing a weapon to show them what

14:47

it to do. In. The

14:49

days after the Massacre of Philadelphia

14:51

newspaper wrote that the guns purpose

14:54

was to over or negroes. On.

14:56

November tenth after shots were fired

14:58

in Wilmington, Brooklyn neighborhoods. Gov.

15:01

Daniel Russell's send a telegram. For.

15:03

During the head of a North

15:05

Carolina militia scored to take command

15:08

of the local militia the woman

15:10

to light infantry to. Preserve.

15:12

The Peace. That's. When

15:15

series militias and the Coke machine

15:17

gun headed into the city's neighborhoods.

15:20

Were driving along lane right

15:23

now up Forty six and

15:25

the Machine gun squad or

15:27

and was tasked with. Pulling

15:30

her missing than on the line

15:32

and throughout the black neighborhoods to

15:34

make sure. That everyone was being

15:36

on well behaved city's Most of

15:38

them In on the machine gun

15:41

squad were members of the Wilmington

15:43

Light Infantry. Their. Captain

15:45

was William Rinsing and senior.

15:48

He was fifty three, a former

15:50

Confederate officer know a prominent merchant.

15:53

The day before the massacre. Team. And

15:55

wrote his signature on the White Declaration

15:58

of Independence here in the corner. Dixon

16:00

Bladen was a

16:02

community center for the black

16:05

community. And the

16:07

machine gun squadron was pulling the

16:09

machine gun through the area. When

16:12

there came to them reports that there was

16:14

someone in Manhattan Park, which was what this

16:16

was called, shooting at

16:19

the white patrols, and

16:21

to bring the machine gun

16:23

post-taste to evacuate the building.

16:26

By the time the machine gun squadron got here,

16:29

there was also a patrol

16:32

from the Wilmington Light Infantry, and

16:34

it was complimented by a redshirt patrol.

16:37

Unfleet says white men at 6th and Bladen

16:39

claimed that black men had shot at them.

16:42

Reports also said the gun squad itself

16:44

had drawn fire as it moved through

16:47

town. Someone speculated

16:49

that a black man named Joshua

16:51

Halsey, who lived on this block,

16:53

had fired shots. Members

16:55

of the Wilmington Light Infantry soon found

16:58

him. And Halsey

17:00

was pretty much shot by a firing

17:02

squad here in the street. And

17:05

when I was doing my research, trying

17:07

to identify victims of

17:10

the violence of that day,

17:13

I came across multiple references

17:15

to men who were shot

17:17

here at this intersection, and

17:21

one or two references to the machine

17:23

gun being here. And perhaps

17:26

as many as 25 men were

17:28

killed at this intersection, potentially

17:31

by the machine gun, in a short

17:33

amount of time. Unfleet

17:35

says potentially because redshirts and other

17:37

members of the Wilmington Light Infantry

17:39

also fired rifles at black men

17:41

at this intersection. It

17:44

is not clear precisely what the men

17:46

operating the machine gun itself did or

17:48

didn't do. Many

17:50

years later, a white newspaper man, based

17:52

on interviews with those involved, Would

17:55

write that the machine gunners killed 25 black people

17:57

here. The

18:00

list harry Hayden would later change.

18:02

that accounts for some reason to

18:04

say the squad itself shot only

18:06

one man. What?

18:08

Can we say about William Rand

18:10

Keen and Senior and his role

18:13

in all of this? So there's

18:15

a picture of him standing on

18:17

the wagon. With. The gun

18:19

historian Williams Turkey, He's

18:21

talking about one of the most chilling

18:23

photographs related to the massacre and cool

18:26

Wilmington. It's oppose photo, ten

18:28

men in suits and hats holding

18:30

rifles and looking into the camera.

18:33

The. Position on the open for strong wagon

18:35

with the Coke machine gun on a

18:37

tripod putting off the back. As

18:39

captain of the squad we've seen in the

18:42

standing at one end by and others. White.

18:44

Haired with a sick mustache, his

18:47

head towering above the rest, the

18:49

photo was taken after the coup

18:51

and a massacre at a time

18:53

when Wilmington's white supremacists were openly

18:55

triumphant. And. Wanted to document

18:58

those who contributed to their

19:00

victory. The Wilmington

19:02

Morning reported in February eighty

19:04

Ninety Nine that the photographer

19:06

Henry Cronenberg had made photos

19:08

of quote Captain Keen and

19:10

Rapid Fire Gun Squad which

19:12

performed such excellent service during

19:14

the race trouble here on

19:16

November tenth, Plenty. Of newspaper

19:19

articles from the time, not just

19:21

the North Carolina, but across the

19:23

Eastern Seaboard. Talk about. Keen.

19:25

It's role. In. This massacre

19:27

So now all of them say well

19:29

you know he pulled the trigger x

19:31

amount of times until next most people

19:34

by the picture of him on the

19:36

most dangerous wagon of from those events

19:38

and that also of course you know.

19:41

Contemporaneous: news to visit saying

19:43

well we bring helped lead this

19:45

unit that did acts the philadelphia

19:47

newspaper that printed the item a

19:49

few days after the massacre about

19:51

the rapid fire gun used to

19:53

over i negroes those words were

19:55

part of a caption under an

19:57

image of william are keenan calling

20:00

him the man who was in

20:02

command. The city editor

20:04

for the white Wilmington newspaper, the messenger,

20:07

said he witnessed some of the shootings that

20:09

day. He wrote that he

20:12

was impressed by the spectacular action of

20:14

the machine gun outfit and

20:16

singled out Captain William R. Keenan

20:18

as one of the heroic figures

20:20

who led the squad. Keenan's

20:23

son, William R. Keenan Jr., wrote an

20:25

autobiography in 1946 that included this passage.

20:29

As a small boy, I was

20:31

much impressed with the following. There

20:34

was a riot of colored men in Wilmington, and

20:36

my father organized a volunteer company

20:39

of men with all kinds of

20:41

rifles together with a riot gun

20:43

on a wagon, and they cleaned

20:45

up the riot very quickly, although

20:47

they were compelled to kill several

20:50

persons. He rode the

20:52

wagon and directed the

20:54

operation. This account has

20:56

some problems. Keenan Jr. was

20:58

not a small boy in 1898. He

21:01

was 26 years old, living and working in Michigan,

21:03

as we said at the top. The

21:06

other big falsehood, the violence started

21:08

with a riot of colored men. There's

21:11

no evidence of any such riot, and

21:13

though three white men were reported shot and

21:15

wounded, if in fact that

21:17

happened, those men may have been the

21:20

victims of friendly fire. The

21:22

New York Times reported after the massacre

21:24

that two white men were wounded slightly,

21:26

after other white men opened fire. And

21:30

the state report said that the third white

21:32

man, the one wounded most seriously, was

21:34

hit by a stray bullet. Only

21:37

black men were killed. Had

21:39

William Keenan Jr. been misinformed about

21:42

what happened that day, or

21:44

did he know better? And

21:46

who were his sources? His father?

21:49

Other people from his hometown? Or

21:52

was he relying on what had become

21:54

the predominant narrative among white people in

21:57

the decades after 1898? In

22:00

any case, Keenan Jr. didn't hesitate to

22:02

put his father on that machine gun

22:04

wagon, running the show and

22:07

cleaning up the problem. Even

22:24

as the massacre raged on November 10th,

22:27

the white supremacist Democrats had more violence

22:29

to carry out against

22:31

democracy in Wilmington. While bullets

22:33

are still flying in the streets, the

22:36

existing mayor and board of alderman

22:38

were summoned to the

22:41

town hall where they

22:44

were summarily required

22:46

to resign their position as

22:49

a representative of their ward

22:51

in the city. And

22:54

a hand-selected group of white

22:56

supremacy supporters were put

22:58

in their place. The insurrectionists

23:01

chose Alfred Moore Waddell, the

23:03

fiery racist speechmaker, as mayor.

23:06

As each alderman resigned, the board

23:09

elected his replacement. The

23:11

city charter allowed the board to replace a

23:13

resigning member in this way. So

23:15

they followed the rule of law in the way

23:17

that this happened. However the piece that you may

23:19

not understand is that there were about 200 armed

23:22

men in the

23:24

building at the time. So this was all

23:26

done under duress and this

23:28

is the exact definition of a

23:31

coup d'etat, armed overthrow of

23:33

a legally elected government. On

23:40

the day we spent together, Loree Umfleet took us

23:42

to the corner of Forth and Harnett. This

23:45

is where the killing started on November 10th. I

23:47

get asked a lot how many people died

23:50

on the day of the violence. Officially

23:52

the count was less

23:55

than 20, but in

23:58

my research and in my digging. I

24:01

put the card file of every

24:03

time I saw a reference to someone getting

24:06

shot and murdered or anything like that.

24:10

And once I started compiling all that information,

24:14

I feel safe

24:16

to say that between 40 and 60 men

24:19

lost their lives that day. But

24:23

it could be considerably more. Many

24:28

men who were shot, and it was all men

24:30

as far as I can tell, their

24:33

bodies were left to lay in the

24:35

street until nightfall and their families came

24:37

and buried their bodies in secret. And

24:39

we don't necessarily know where all of

24:41

those burial locations were. The

24:44

people that were massacred aren't the ones that got to

24:46

preserve and tell their stories. Historian

24:49

William Sturkey. Black people

24:51

who experienced this weren't thinking like,

24:54

okay, my aunt was killed in the street. Let

24:56

me take pictures of her dead body. It was

24:58

like, how do we deal with this in a

25:00

way that we can safely process the death of

25:02

our loved ones, bury them,

25:05

and then in some cases get out. Any

25:08

documentation of the dead was in the

25:11

hands of government agencies now controlled by

25:13

white supremacists. A century later,

25:15

the official state report verified the deaths

25:17

of at least 22 people, but

25:21

noted that eyewitness estimates ranged into

25:23

the hundreds. Witnesses

25:25

also said that large numbers of black people were

25:27

shot and thrown into the Cape Fear River. Bertha

25:30

Boykin Todd is 94. She's

25:32

lived in Wilmington for more than 70 years. She

25:35

was instrumental in pressing for an acknowledgement of

25:38

the massacre and coup starting in the 1990s.

25:42

We'll be hearing more from her in this series. As

25:44

a small child in Sampson County, an

25:46

hour's drive from Wilmington, Mrs.

25:48

Todd heard whispers about terrible events

25:51

in Wilmington and specifically about

25:53

bodies being thrown into the river. She

25:56

couldn't understand why anyone would do such a

25:58

thing. It was what my stepfather

26:00

said and

26:03

I said there were no dolphin cats

26:05

in the river that's all I knew I

26:08

didn't I didn't dare think they were humans

26:11

it was only after she'd led the

26:13

centennial commemoration in 1998 that

26:16

she learned it wasn't just black people

26:18

circulating those whispers I was so shocked

26:20

to get that telephone call the

26:23

morning after the 100th anniversary event

26:26

mrs. Todd was at home feeling very good

26:28

about how it all went she says when

26:31

her phone rang white female said

26:34

good morning my name is Wilma you don't

26:36

know me but I know you if my

26:40

life depended on my identifying

26:42

Wilma and her life's name I'd have

26:44

to die cuz I

26:46

had no idea and she said

26:48

I want to

26:50

tell you a true story what

26:53

Judge Judas says he is a

26:55

it was hearsay because Wilma said

26:57

she'd heard the story from an

26:59

acquaintance an elderly white man

27:01

born and raised in Wilmington that

27:04

man told Wilma that he'd heard it from his

27:06

father who'd been a young man in Wilmington in

27:10

1898 and his father would have been involved

27:14

and he said he

27:16

wasn't the killing kind but

27:18

he grew up in

27:21

Wilmington with a black male playmate

27:23

they were about the same age

27:26

on November 10th the man told Wilma

27:29

he was standing alongside the Cape through

27:31

River watching as the chaos unfolded around

27:33

him red shirts group of red shirts

27:35

came up say

27:38

what are you doing here you don't

27:40

have a rifle they didn't see one

27:42

he said no because he wasn't a

27:44

killing guy I guess he was wondering

27:46

what a devastating mess this is and

27:50

they said we this is what they told

27:52

him we want you

27:54

to take this rifle and

27:57

we want you to shoot every nigga

27:59

male trying to

28:01

swim to Brunswick County across the

28:03

Cape Fear River. Shoot

28:06

them, let them fall in, there'd

28:08

be no record of them. If

28:11

you shoot them on land, still drag them and

28:13

drop them in. And

28:17

they gave him that, he took it and

28:20

still kept looking. Then

28:22

all of a sudden, he

28:26

heard a rustle in the bushes and

28:29

that was his playmate trying

28:32

to get to the river to swim

28:34

across the Brunswick County. And

28:38

he pretended he didn't see him. He

28:41

didn't shoot him, but

28:44

he never saw him again. And this

28:47

is what that lady told me. Later,

28:52

Mrs. Todd decided to run this

28:54

account past a close friend and

28:56

ally, Betty Cameron, who was prominent

28:59

in the white community. And I

29:01

told Betty, because we'd gone beyond

29:03

friendship, we were just talking like

29:05

two individuals whose friendship would never

29:07

end. I

29:10

told her how

29:12

the red shirts kill

29:15

lots of blacks when it wasn't

29:17

necessary and threw them

29:19

in the Cape Fear River. And

29:22

Betty said to me, well Bertha, that's

29:25

all I've heard. I was

29:29

so shocked. I

29:31

couldn't discuss it anymore. So

29:35

Betty Cameron confirmed that white

29:38

Wilmingtonians had passed down similar

29:40

grisly accounts. On

30:00

top of the killing and the

30:02

coup d'etat, November 10, 1898 was

30:04

also a day of banishment. The

30:13

Secret Nine had drawn up a list of

30:15

about 20 men, black and white, who they

30:17

wanted gone from Wilmington, in

30:20

addition to the newspaper editor Alexander

30:22

Manley. The black men on the

30:24

list included the pastor of a large black church, two

30:26

attorneys, and the owners of successful

30:29

businesses, a butcher shop, a

30:31

fish and oyster enterprise, and a real

30:33

estate and pond-broking business. The white men

30:35

to be driven away included the mayor,

30:37

the police chief, and a deputy sheriff,

30:40

all supporters of fusionist politics

30:42

and full black citizenship, and

30:45

a federal court official who was married to

30:47

a black woman. The mob

30:49

led all of these men to the train station

30:51

at gunpoint and ordered them to

30:53

leave and never come back. A

30:56

lot of ordinary black residents also fled

30:58

the city, after first looking

31:00

for safety in the nearest place they could find.

31:05

We are here

31:07

in Wilmington on the north side

31:10

of town at the famous

31:13

Pine Forest Cemetery, which is

31:15

the black or colored

31:17

cemetery for Wilmington, North

31:19

Carolina, black residents. Cedric

31:22

Harrison describes how black people, maybe

31:24

hundreds of men, women, and children, ran

31:27

to the cemetery to hide after the shooting

31:29

started. Others hid in woods

31:32

and swamps outside of town. Pine

31:34

Forest Cemetery is a sprawling landscape with mounds

31:36

and dips and many large trees. There was

31:39

a lot more trees during that time, and

31:41

so it was a lot easier to come

31:43

and hide amongst this

31:45

wooded area and spaces, and some

31:48

people did that for days,

31:50

going into weeks. Some people found

31:52

their way out to the other side and was

31:55

able to go to the surrounding counties and

31:57

others were able to get all the way out

31:59

of... this Wilmington

32:01

area and to never come back. It's

32:04

not clear how many black people left for

32:07

good, but the US Census

32:09

shows that the city's black population, after

32:11

almost tripling between 1860 and 1890, dropped

32:15

in 1900 by 8%. That

32:19

year, for the first time in 40 years, black

32:22

Wilmingtonians were outnumbered by white

32:24

people. People have described

32:26

Wilmington as a chocolate city in the 1890s, but

32:30

after 1898, the white population would grow

32:32

steadily and a number of black folks

32:34

would stagnate. Today, it's a

32:36

largely white city. Only

32:38

about one in six Wilmingtonians is

32:41

black. Michael,

32:48

the story we've just told relies heavily

32:50

on the work of Lorraine Unfleet and

32:52

her research for the state commission in

32:54

the 2000s that resulted

32:56

in her book, A Day of Blood. It's

33:00

worth talking about how Lorraine was

33:02

able to document certain things, in

33:04

particular, the machinations of

33:06

the Secret Nine, that committee of

33:08

white elites in Wilmington. Yes,

33:12

we know about the Secret Nine because they told

33:14

people what they did in the years and decades

33:16

after 1898, without shame. Importantly,

33:19

they told a guy named Harry Hayden.

33:22

Right, and I mentioned him earlier. Harry

33:24

Hayden was white, born in Wilmington. He was

33:27

only eight years old in 1898, but

33:30

he grew up to be a reporter

33:32

with the Wilmington Morningstar newspaper. And for

33:35

years, he had wide-ranging conversations with

33:37

the very people who had orchestrated the coup

33:39

and carried out the massacre. Here's

33:42

Lorraine Unfleet. As a newspaper

33:44

man and investigative journalist, he was

33:47

doing what you might call his due diligence

33:49

by speaking with the witnesses of the event.

33:52

Hayden ultimately published a pamphlet in 1936, the

33:56

Wilmington Rebellion, in which he

33:58

reveals the names and the actions of the Secret

34:00

Nine, including the plans to

34:02

banish a list of prominent black and white

34:04

men from the city after the election. Hayden

34:06

didn't have to dig all that hard to

34:08

get those stories, LeRae says. I

34:11

believe Harry Hayden's work was created

34:13

over a period of time where

34:16

he was working to refine the

34:18

content. And he

34:20

was speaking with veterans

34:23

of 1898. That's how they viewed

34:26

themselves. And at

34:29

every anniversary of November

34:31

10th, those veterans would

34:34

come together at the Lumina

34:37

on the beach and have

34:40

an oyster roast and reminisce

34:42

about their glorious victory in 1898.

34:45

Humphrey told me she looked

34:47

at Hayden's reporting with skepticism. And

34:49

there were inconsistencies in his story. But

34:52

she cross-checked his account with other sources,

34:54

and she's convinced that his most important

34:56

claims, the ones she included in her

34:59

book, are true. And just to

35:01

be clear, Hayden's pamphlet was not an

35:03

expose of the white supremacist conspiracy

35:05

of 1898. He

35:08

set out to write a respectful history. Here's

35:11

the description on the cover of Hayden's

35:13

pamphlet. First authentic account of the

35:15

Wilmington Revolution in 1898, which resulted in the elimination

35:20

of the Negro as a political

35:22

factor in Wilmington and North Carolina,

35:24

and which led to the disenfranchisement

35:27

of the race throughout the South

35:29

through the instrumentality of the Grandfather

35:32

Clause. The Grandfather Clause was

35:34

part of a mechanism to prevent black people

35:36

from voting, put in place by

35:38

North Carolina state government in 1900. More

35:41

on that in our next episode. But

35:44

Harry Hayden makes clear that he's

35:46

fully on board with the disenfranchisement

35:48

and the elimination of the Negro

35:50

as a political factor in

35:52

North Carolina. Notice the words

35:54

Hayden uses for what the white

35:56

supremacists did, rebellion and

35:59

revolution. He's spinning

36:01

a tale about a popular

36:03

revolt against a failing, illegitimate

36:05

government. The victimized

36:07

little people rising up righteously

36:10

and justifiably, not

36:12

a mob that represented a powerful

36:14

minority committing a racist

36:16

massacre and deposing a duly elected

36:18

government. And Hayden published

36:21

this booklet in 1936, almost 40 years after the events of

36:23

1898, which

36:27

says a lot about the prevailing view of 1898

36:29

at that time in North

36:31

Carolina. But he could

36:34

write a triumphalist white supremacist tract

36:36

in 1936, because

36:38

he and many others felt sure that

36:41

white supremacy was in complete control and

36:43

always would be. And there's

36:45

a reason they felt that way. Next

36:48

time in episode four, the

36:50

second propaganda campaign, the one

36:52

after the massacre in Coo,

36:55

it would serve its purpose for a century.

36:58

You got a right to be a good

37:00

man, you got a right to be a

37:02

good man, man, man, man, man, you better

37:04

run. You got

37:07

a little going, you better run. Echoes

37:18

of a Coo is an initiative

37:20

of America's Hallowed Ground, a project

37:22

of the Kenan Institute for Ethics

37:24

at Duke University. It's

37:26

written and produced by Michael A. Betts II and

37:28

me. Our

37:30

script editor for this series is Loretta

37:32

Williams, voice actor, Mr. Mike

37:35

Wiley. This song, Run

37:37

to the River, written and performed

37:39

by Laurel and Dossett, recorded and mixed

37:41

by Michael A. Betts II. Other

37:44

music by Kieran Hale, Bludot Sessions,

37:47

Lee Rosevear, Okaya, Kevin

37:49

McLeod, Jamison Nathan Jones, and

37:51

Lucas Biewen. For

37:54

more on the America's Hallowed

37:56

Ground project, see americashallowedground.org. Logistics

38:00

by Kids Sweater Design Group Limited.

38:03

Our website is seenonradio.org. The

38:06

show is distributed by our friends at

38:09

PRX. Seen on Radio

38:11

comes to you from the Kenan Institute for

38:13

Ethics at Duke University. Music

38:30

by Kids Sweater Design Group. From

39:03

PRX.