The educators got to hear from speakers like LeRae Umfleet, the main researcher and author of the comprehensive state report on what happened during the massacre, and Jan Davidson, the local historian for the Cape Fear Museum.
Both Umfleet and Davidson touched on the role the media played during 1898. In Umfleet’s presentation about the coup, she outlined that it was orchestrated by ‘men who could speak,’ ‘men who could ride,’ and ‘men who could write,’ which was mainly Furnifold Simmons’ strategy, the state Democratic Party’s leader.
For the ‘men who could ride’, Umfleet is currently researching that topic for another publication. The ‘Red Shirts’ were these vigilantes who ‘could ride’ – they came to Wilmington to sow discord and violence in the months leading up to the November 1898 Election.
But in terms of the media, Umfleet focused on Alfred Moore Waddell, who was one of the main perpetrators of the coup and massacre. He demonized the Black community and said they were violent criminals – a tactic Umfleet tied to modern political rhetoric.
“Waddell played a role in not only Wilmington, but the rest of the state, by saying, ‘Look how bad it is in Wilmington; our crime is higher, our rates are off the charts, our jails are full, and it's all Black men,’” she said. “Well, I studied that. Fake news. No, we could not find any higher incidences of crime in Wilmington before 1898 compared to other years in previous. I looked at court records and arrest records that existed.”
In her presentation to the educators, Davidson also touched on how the media played a role, particularly Democratic-owned newspapers.
“For Wilmington and the White Democratic newspapers – it's the first draft of history. It gives you that sense that these folks really shape the story. These stories are not neutral. These guys are not simply reporting, they are creating the White supremacy agenda and normalizing what is happening, and they are doing it deliberately,” Davidson said.
She added there are some of these “gross misrepresentations of history” in the museum’s collection.
“This Collier's Weekly article, that front cover is such a misrepresentation of what happened in the massacre and coup of 1898. In this national newspaper, Alfred Moore Waddell claims nothing illegal happened. There was no intimidation, and the African Americans were happy about the episode. If you read this article and this article alone, you would not know that anybody died,” she said.
There's another publication from the AP from Buffalo, New York, ‘reporting’ what happened during 1898.
“The government was handed over to a new [one], but law and order was followed and established. The aldermen resigned in response to public sentiment,” Davidson said. “Well, half the public in this community was African American. I don't think it was necessarily their sentiment, but more than that, they resigned at gunpoint.”
But Davidson presented a more accurate account from the Philadelphia Press, which predicted bloodshed was coming.
“[The writer] says on November 8 we wouldn't be surprised if there was violence on Election Day in Wilmington because the Democrats are setting it up so that would happen,” she said.
The educators also saw Alexander Manly's family scrapbook, which the family donated to the museum. Alexander Manly was the owner of the Black-owned newspaper, the Daily Record, that White supremacists burned down during the coup. Manly had to flee for his life.
In the Manly scrapbook are three hard copies of the Daily Record, out of just seven or eight in existence. To view them, the public does have to have an appointment; it’s not part of a display at the museum.
Gentrification erasing history
Umfleet noted the impact of growth and development on historical artifacts; when she visited in July, she saw a loss.
“Wilmington is growing, and that's great for their economy, bad for the preservation of their history. The whole part of the Black community, they're being taxed out of their property, or the value of that land is very attractive for them to sell grandma's house, so we're losing the cultural landscape in Wilmington to progress,” she said.
Since 2010, Wilmington's Black population has declined by 8%; Some data scientists say that could also be a sign of more people identifying with two or more races. But others say it could be an indication that the Black population is being pushed out by gentrification.
In a 2022 WHQR Newsroom episode, reporter Kelly Kenoyer further investigated gentrification in the Northside neighborhood.
Cape Fear Collective’s analysis at the time showed that two census tracts on the Northside had seen their Black populations fall below 50%, down from levels above 90%.
Umfleet mentioned a more concrete example of the importance of preservation: a possible tree on Sixth and Bladen Streets. This tree, she said, held bullets that the White supremacists fired when they were shooting into homes in the Brooklyn neighborhood. She said that she hopes the tree is still there.
“Just look at the old houses; they're witnesses to history. There's an old tree – God, I hope it's not been cut. But there's an old tree near the corner of Sixth and Bladen. It's all 25 people that get shot at that intersection, and I want to do a CSI, take a tree sample and see how much lead is in that tree, because we have photos of that tree in a picture with the fence that was near it mowed down by gunshots,” she said.
There are some older trees that stand near that spot today; however, according to a city spokesperson, "Our certified arborists cannot confirm. They said it would be nearly impossible to know this for sure; however, they’re fairly confident the tree on the street is not 125+ years old."
Joshua Shields, who's a certified arborist and has 26-years of experience, said, "It doesn't look like there are any 150, 200-year-old trees [between Sixth and Bladen]. I would say the trees that we've looked at are all sand laurel oaks. They are somewhat short-lived due to their susceptibility to decay."
He added, "I would say these trees are probably 40 to 50 years old. Even though they're really big, they grow fast and deteriorate at somewhat of a young age compared to the southern live oak, which is very resilient to decay and can live hundreds of years because of that."
Another note that Umfleet mentioned about the Brooklyn neighborhood: it wasn’t necessarily just a Black neighborhood at that time. It was a multiracial neighborhood, and she thinks that's why a lot of the violence circulated there because the White neighbors were potentially telling the Red Shirts or other vigilantes where to go.
“They walked past each other on the way to work every day into church. They knew each other. So the people who were doing the shooting knew the people that got shot, and they could have actually had a grudge against them or jealous of something. Some sort of slight could have made it even worse, but it doesn't change the fact that they knew who they were shooting,” she said.
