This is fascinating, thanks for posting.

These are serious white supremacists. Simmons summarized the party's platform when he stated: North Carolina is a WHITE MAN'S STATE and WHITE MEN will rule it, and they will crush the party of Negro domination beneath a majority so overwhelming that no other party will ever dare to attempt to establish negro rule here. They form organizations called the "White Government Union" and such.

There is a trumped-up issue of black men raping white women: Many newspapers published pictures and stories implying that African-American men were sexually attacking white women in the city. A suffragist said in a speech that, of all the threats farm wives face, there was none greater than "the black rapist", due to the failure of white men to protect them. She advocated that white men should resort to vigilante justice ... "if it needs lynching to protect woman's dearest possession from the ravening human beasts – then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary."

Then, In response to Felton's speech and the danger it imposed upon black men, 32-year-old Alexander Manly wrote an editorial, refuting it and asserting that white women have consensual sex with black men. And: Within 48 hours, white supremacists, aided by newspapers across the South, used Manly's words – though reprinting incendiary distortions of them – as a championing catalyst for their cause. Waddell, and other orators, began inciting white citizens with sexualized images of black men, insinuating black men's uncontrollable lust for white women, running newspaper stories and delivering speeches of "black beasts" who threatened to deflower white women.

On deplatforming: Prior to this editorial, The Daily Record had been considered "a very creditable colored paper" throughout the state, that had attracted subscriptions and advertising from blacks and whites alike. However, after the editorial, white advertisers withdrew their support from the paper, crippling its income. His landlord, M. J. Heyer, then evicted him. For his own safety, Manly was forced to relocate his press in the middle of the night. ... He had planned to move to Love and Charity Hall (aka Ruth Hall), on South Seventh Street, but it declined to take him as a tenant because his presence would have greatly increased the building's insurance rate.

Then there's a rally of 300 "Red Shirts", with Waddell giving a speech ending thus: We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses. A few days later, there's an event with 8000 attendees, with several speakers: Waddell followed by accusing blacks of "insolence", "arrogance", which he claimed was overshadowed only by their "criminality" [etc....] Once again, he concluded his speech assuring them that white men would banish blacks, and their traitorous white allies, even if they had to fill the Cape Fear River with enough black dead bodies to block its passage to the sea.

Followed by violence: 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.

On November 1, 1898, Dowling led a parade of 1,000 men, mounted on horses, for ten miles, through the black neighborhoods ... The next day, Dowling led a "White Man's Rally". Every "able-bodied" white man was armed. Escorted by Chief Marshal Roger Moore, a parade of men began downtown, again marched through black neighborhoods – firing into black homes and a black school on Campbell Square – and ended at Hilton Park where a 1,000 people greeted them with a picnic and free barbecue.

Leading up to the election, these gatherings became daily occurrences; the white newspapers announced the time and place of meetings. Free food and liquor were provided for the vigilantes...

Eventually: The day before the election, Waddell excited a large crowd at Thalian Hall when he told them: "You are Anglo-Saxons. You are armed and prepared and you will do your duty ... Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns."

To the election: Most blacks and many Republicans did not vote in the November 8 election ... as Red Shirts had blocked every road leading in and out of the city, and drove potential black voters away with gunfire.

The governor came by to try to calm things down. However, when his train arrived, Red Shirts swarmed his train car and tried to lynch him.

When the day was over, Democrats won 6,000 votes, overall, which was sizable given that the Fusion Party won 5,000 votes just two years prior. Likely due to the intimidation tactics plus fraud (cited article "M. F. Dowling Swears To it" says he, in a deposition, confessed to: stuffing the election board with Democrat party members, improperly erasing hundreds of Republicans from the registration lists, instructing election officers "how to deposit Republican ballots so they could be replaced", and more).

They publish a "White Declaration of Independence", part of which demanded for Manly and his press to leave the city. Manly had already shut his press down and left town when he was alerted, by a white friend, that the Red Shirts were going to lynch him that night. ...

Waddell's "Committee of Twenty-Five" summoned the Committee of Colored Citizens (CCC), a group of 32 prominent black citizens, to the courthouse at 6:00 pm. They told the CCC of their ultimatum, instructing them to direct the rest of the city's black citizens to fall in line. When the black men asked to reason with them, and pleaded that they could not control what Manly did, or what any other black person would do, Waddell responded that the "time had passed for words."

They give a member of the CCC a deadline for a written response to deliver in person. He put it in Waddell's mailbox.

When Waddell and the Committee did not receive a response by 7:30 a.m. on November 10 (it is unclear when Waddell checked his mailbox), about 45 minutes later, he gathered about 500 white businessmen and veterans to the Wilmington's armory. After heavily arming themselves with rifles and the Gatling gun, Waddell then led the group to the two-story publishing office of The Daily Record. They broke into Manly's building, vandalized the premises, doused the wood floors with kerosene, set the building on fire, and gutted the remains. At the same time, black newspapers all over the state were also being destroyed. ...

Following the fire, the mob of white vigilantes swelled to about 2,000 men. A rumor circulated that some blacks had fired on a small group of white men a mile away from the printing office. White men then went into black Wilmington neighborhoods, destroying black businesses and property and assaulting black inhabitants ...

The governor calls in the Wilmington Light Infantry and the federal Naval Reserves, taking them into Brooklyn to quell the "riot". They intimidated both black and white crowds with rapid-fire weapons, shooting and killing several black men. ...

As the violence spread, Waddell led a group to the Republican Mayor, Silas P. Wright. Waddell forced Wright, the board of aldermen, and the police chief to resign at gunpoint. The mob installed a new city council that elected Waddell to take over as mayor by 4 p.m. that day.

Waddell later wrote an article for Collier's Weekly, denying everything bad (to hilarity). We wrecked the [newspaper] house. I believe that the fire which occurred was purely accidental; it certainly was unintentional on our part ..., Since this trouble many negroes have come to me and said they are glad I have taken charge ... , There was no intimidation used in the establishment of the present city government. The old government had become satisfied of their inefficiency and utterly helpless imbecility, and believed if they did not resign they would be run out of town ... , etc.

The success of the coup: Subsequent to Waddell's usurping power, he and his team were re-elected in March 1899 to city offices. Waddell would hold the mayorship until 1905. Four of those involved became Governor of the state, one became a senator, etc.

Also: Although individuals of both races pointed to Democrat-backed violence as the driver behind the incident, the national narrative largely cast black men as aggressors, legitimizing the coup as a direct result of black aggression. For example, The Atlanta Constitution justified the violence as a rational defense of white honor, and a necessary response against the "criminal element of the blacks", furthering stereotypes of black violence. DARVO, always DARVO.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in there. Now, I've only given a brief glance at a couple of secondary sources, and since it seems there is an alternate narrative, it would be responsible to do further research before taking it 100% seriously. Still, assuming it's true... One takeaway: fake news riling up a mob into violence is not new. (With a population of 25,000, it's likely there was at least one real case of a black man attempting to rape a white woman, but it seems some newspapers blew it way out of proportion.) Another takeaway: there were many explicit calls to violence—"lynching", creating "dead bodies"—and many occasions of actual violence, which escalated from one to the next.