page_title: Wilmington insurrection of 1898
section_title: Intimidation
hierarchical_section_title: Wilmington insurrection of 1898 / 1898 "White Supremacy" campaign / Intimidation
caption_attribution_description: Oliver H. Dockery. Library of Congress description: "Hon. [Oliver Hart] Dockery of N.C."
context_page_description: The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington coup of 1898, occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Thursday, November 10, 1898. It is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. The event initiated an era of more severe racial segregation and effective disenfranchisement of African Americans throughout the South, a shift already underway since passage by Mississippi of a new constitution in 1890, raising barriers to voter registration. Laura Edwards wrote in Democracy Betrayed: "What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole", as it affirmed that invoking "whiteness" eclipsed the legal citizenship, individual rights, and equal protection under the law that blacks were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.
  The white press in Wilmington originally described the event as a race riot caused by blacks. However, over time, with more facts publicized, the event has come to be seen as a coup d'état, the
  violent overthrow of a duly elected government, by a group of white supremacists.
context_section_description: Waddell's speech so inspired the crowd that the Red Shirts left the convention and started terrorizing black citizens and their white allies, in the eastern part of the state, right away.  They destroyed property, ambushed citizens with weapon fire, and kidnapped people from their homes and whipped them at night, with the goal of terrorizing them to the point where Republican sympathizers would be too afraid to vote, or even register to do so.
  The Populists accused the Democrats of crying "nigger" to distract from the issues, and of attacking the character of good men in order to get elected to office. Several Populists began trying to fight back in the court of public opinion, like Oliver Dockery, who was attacked by John Bellamy at the white supremacy convention:
  You may abuse me, if you like, but I want to tell you that you will never make a duck ... I cannot close without referring to my opponent, as he has seen fit to attack me.
  On the night before the canvassing board met ... Sol Weill chartered a boat and, at the hour of midnight, went to South port where convened the canvassing board, all of whom were Democrats, and made the arrangements to throw out the entire Populist vote of this county on the ground that the ballots wore not on white enough paper. And the votes were thrown out. Now Bellamy asks Populists to save him ... The man who would steal a man's vote is a pig ... Democrats will not let the negro vote ... This should prompt you colored people to stand together with the Populists and your other white friends, until we fasten this honest election law on the State forever ...
  Can there be a more diabolical scheme than this latest plan of monopoly? What think ye, laborers? Are you ready to march into the trap? Are you ready to surrender your liberties? Can the Hypocrite leaders be anything else except tools or fools? Are you ready to follow them! Progressive-Farmer, when you go to town be tempted. [They] set you up to dinner at the hotel, give you a drink, call you a "good fellow" (too good to be in the "fusion" crowds and in a hundred other ways they will tempt you to tall down and worship the Simmons-Ransom gold bug machine).  The Democrats in Tar Heeldom are straining their lungs and using all the big type in the printing of farce to prove that negro domination is what is the matter in North Carolina. But it won't work not altogether.
  
  Wherein is negro domination responsible for the Democratic judges who have sat on the bench in recent years in a state of beastly intoxication and sentenced innocent men to the penitentiary and allowed rogues and murders to go free? Wherein was negro domination responsible for the lease to the Southern Railway of the North Carolina property which has been denounced as a midnight crime? Wherein is negro domination responsible for the existence of one of [the] greatest trusts of the century which has impoverished the entire state? ... Who [has] been responsible for the shameless record of theft and plunder at the state's capital when the legislature was solidly Democratic? It was because of the infamous proceedings of Democratic misrule and pillage that the Populist party was born. From the ranks of Democracy came every mother's son of the many thousands of Populists who are righteous in wrath [against] conspirators masquerading as untrammeled Democracy. That is the truth of the whole sorry business. And whenever the Democratic party will purge itself; when it will shake off the bloodsuckers and leeches which have disfigured and disgraced it, there are thousands who will return to its folds ... until that glad day comes ... [the Democrats must] do something else besides cry "negro domination.
  — Oliver Dockery, September 9, 1898
  However, the Democrats continued to put more pressure on Republican and Populist, leading to candidates being too afraid to speak in Wilmington.
  Democrats sought to further capitalize on this fear by making efforts to suppress the Republican ticket in New Hanover County, arguing that a win by any political party opposing the Democrats would guarantee a
caption: Oliver H. Dockery.
exif: {}