America’s Forgotten 1898 Coup: The Wilmington Insurrection
In 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina saw the only successful coup d’état in United States history.
On November 10, 1898, the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, witnessed an unprecedented event in American history. In a shocking episode mostly absent from standard textbooks, a group of white supremacists forcibly overthrew the local scantly integrated government, attacked Black citizens, burned down Black-owned businesses including the newspaper office, and installed their own leadership. Known as the Wilmington Insurrection, or the Wilmington Massacre, this event was the only documented armed overthrow of a lawful government in the United States.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and unusually progressive for its region. African Americans constituted the majority of the city’s population and played critical roles in civic life. Black citizens owned businesses, worked as police officers, and even held elected positions on the city council—a legacy of the brief post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction.
Frustrated by these advances, white Democrats across North Carolina launched a campaign to “redeem” the state from what they claimed to be “Negro domination.” Using the press, particularly the influential News and Observer in Raleigh, they spread racist propaganda and fear-mongering about Black political power. The tipping point was the city’s Black-owned newspaper, the Daily Record, which published an editorial defending Black men against charges of sexual aggression toward white women.
On the morning of November 10, approximately 2,000 armed white men marched into Wilmington. They stormed the offices of the Daily Record and set it ablaze. Violence erupted throughout Black neighborhoods as the mob killed at least 60 people—some historians believe the death toll may have been higher—and forced Black leaders and their white allies to flee for their lives.
By that afternoon, the local government, which had included both Black and white officials elected through a fusion of Republican and Populist votes, was compelled to resign. The mob’s leaders installed their hand-picked replacements and announced the end of Black influence in Wilmington. Over the coming days, thousands of Black residents fled the city permanently, leaving behind homes and businesses.
State and federal authorities did not intervene to protect the victims or restore the overthrown government. The perpetrators of the coup faced no legal consequences; some went on to be celebrated figures in North Carolina for decades. The coup marked the beginning of a wave of Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised African American voters statewide.
The story of the Wilmington Insurrection remained largely excised from mainstream U.S. historical accounts for a century. Survivors and their descendants faced ongoing intimidation and were often discouraged from speaking out. It wasn’t until the early 21st century that official state investigations acknowledged what had taken place and many Americans learned for the first time about this violent and transformative episode.
Today, the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 stands as a stark reminder of the fragility of democracy, the power of misinformation, and the devastating impact of unchecked racism. Its legacy has shaped North Carolina and broader American politics, yet it is still little known even among those who consider themselves well-versed in the nation’s history.
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