1898: THE WILMINGTON INSURRECTION

While Michael Jordan’s jersey wafts majestically from the ceiling of the Dean Dome, the University of North Carolina hides a copy of Alfred Waddell’s diploma in a damp, smelly basement of the registrar’s building, tucked away in a rusted-out file cabinet labeled “Ignoble Graduates.” It is there for good reason.

Waddell led the only coup d’état in American history—a coup worth forgetting. Graduating from UNC in 1853, Waddell fought for the Confederacy and became a staunch white supremacist, whom a Democratic NC elected to three terms in the US Congress. Working as a lawyer in Wilmington, Waddell faced off against his Republican rival, Daniel Russell. Both served among a large number of black craftsmen, policemen, bankers, merchants and clergymen. In 1896, Russell became the first Republican governor to be elected after the Reconstruction period, and he quickly moved to give NC blacks more voting power.

In the following 1898 Wilmington elections, Waddell offered a strategy to deter the black vote and ensure a Democratic victory: “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.”¹⁰ Undeterred, a large turnout of black voters elected a Republican-backed biracial government, featuring a white mayor and a council consisting of one-third blacks. Waddell and his Red Shirt thugs were not pleased. Delivering an ultimatum for officials to vacate their positions, Waddell organized a small army of men and proceeded to destroy the buildings of the Daily Record, Wilmington’s black newspaper. With violence escalating, government officials fled, and the small army quickly degenerated into a vengeful mob of over two thousand. Black businesses and neighborhoods were attacked, over twenty-five blacks were murdered (numbers were most likely higher) and hundreds left Wilmington, fearing for their lives. Governor Russell called for assistance from his own Wilmington Infantry, but it deployed and moved to the aid of the white attackers instead.

After the “Wilmington Insurrection” subsided, Waddell appointed a new council and had himself elected mayor of Wilmington. Incredulously, no one stopped him, no one indicted the mob for murder and no one prevented the violent takeover of NC’s largest city. Waddell served as mayor of Wilmington for seven years and would effectively prevent blacks from serving in politics for the next sixty years.