How white supremacists staged the only successful coup in U.S. history

In downtown Wilmington, North Carolina, stands an easy-to-pass monument; Six bronze oars reaching towards the sky. The license plate is difficult to read in some places, not because the words have faded, but because it is so hard to believe what it says.

There aren’t many tours that tell the story, but Cedric Harrison says he’s determined to get the word out. “The first thing we need to do to solve this problem is education,” he said. “One of my elders always told me, if you know better, you can do better.”

Not far away, Wilmington’s First Presbyterian Church is also where parts of this story happened.

Lauren Collins, now a journalist for The New Yorker magazine, grew up in this church and was baptized here. He pointed us to a stained glass window in the back dedicated to Colonel Walker Taylor. As a kid, he didn’t know the stories behind men like him, but he says those aren’t the only mysteries about his hometown. “I always had the feeling that something was a little off, a little off,” he said.

In the late 1890s, Colonel Taylor was revealed to be a famous white supremacist; So was the church’s pastor, the Rev. Peyton Harrison Hoge. “When I found out, it was shocking and personal,” Collins said. “Loving a place doesn’t mean lying or lying about it.”

The church is struggling to come to terms with the past; But the city of Wilmington as a whole was a little slower.

In his new book, “They Stole a City” (Available Tuesday) Collins reveals Wilmington’s darkest chapter: the only successful coup in our nation’s history. Never heard of it? Most people didn’t do this.

“There are people I want to talk to who want nothing to do with me. But there are also a lot of people who are ready,” Collins said.

“This will not end well”

In 1898 Wilmington was a prosperous integrated city. Blacks and whites shared political power and leadership positions. It was a model for the New South. Yet not everyone, especially the former slave-owning class (mostly Southern Democrats), accepted Wilmington’s path. “They clearly focused their campaign around the issue of white supremacy,” Collins said.

Tom Keith said local politicians literally had a handbook on how to create a white supremacy campaign. “It wasn’t a secret like it is today,” he said.

Keith’s grandfather was B.F. Keith, one of the few white elites in Wilmington who stood back. “When he saw the white supremacy campaign unfolding, he wrote to everyone — the governor, the senators — ‘Someone is going to get killed. This is not going to end well.'”

There was even a “white Declaration of Independence” written in part by a wealthy businessman named Hugh MacRae. When asked if his great-grandfather was a white supremacist, Hugh MacRae III said, “By definition, yes. The scary thing that strikes you is that I’m convinced that these people believed they were doing the right thing.”

And the right thing, in their opinion, was to purge Wilmington of all Black influence, and that’s exactly what they did on the morning of November 10, 1898, starting with the city’s only Black newspaper. A crowd descended on The Daily Record. They set the building on fire and then posed for this photo.

Every time he sees the photo, Collins says, “it gives me chills… They have a flushed look of satisfaction. It’s a reward.”

But this was just the beginning. The crowd then moved toward the intersection of Fourth and Harnett Streets. A gunshot was heard at the intersection. Almost immediately, three Black men died.

In the following hours, a car armed with a rapid-firing machine gun rolled through the town with impunity, like a primitive tank, firing at its own volition at largely unarmed Black residents. No one really knows how many people the mob killed that afternoon, but historians generally agree the number was in the dozens to hundreds.

One of the victims was Joshua Halsey, a black laborer and father of four daughters who was chosen to be killed based on notes taken during the conspirators’ meeting.

“Within minutes: ‘When you see that nigga Josh, take that nigga Josh,'” said granddaughter Elaine Brown.

Halsey filed a lawsuit against the city after his wife, Sallie, tripped on a bridge that was not maintained at the time and injured herself. His just legal case put a target on his back. “They were building a life, they had a home, they were upstanding citizens,” Brown said. “The only crime was being Black.”

He says Halsey was shot 14 times in the head while his wife, Sallie, watched. Like many other Black women and children, she was eventually driven out of town.

The final piece of that day’s bloody puzzle was seizing political power. White Democrats stormed Wilmington city hall, where the multiracial government is located. “When they walked into the room, there were seven white men and three Black men on the Board of Aldermen. When they walked out, all of these officials had resigned, literally at gunpoint,” Collins said.

Not a single person was prosecuted, in part because newspaper headlines characterized the violence as whites defending themselves against Black “race riots.” With the only Black newspaper in town gone, there was no one to debunk this false narrative.

“Following the coup, people in Wilmington who were suffering appealed to President McKinley, but he did nothing,” Collins said.

“Healing does not come with lies”

There was less and less talk of the coup in the following years, but there was still a kind of undercurrent that was driving Blacks away from Wilmington. At the time of the coup, 56 percent of the city was black. Today, that rate has dropped to just 15 percent.

The waves are still rolling in this place. Those who opposed the coup, like Tom Keith’s grandfather, are still seen as traitors, just like their distant relatives. Tom Keith said: “One of my cousins ​​was rejecting 421 when I was about four. An old farmer picked him up and started talking. Finally he said, ‘Well, what’s your name, son?’ he said. ‘Julian Keith,’ he says. The man hit the brakes and shouted, ‘You’re a fucking Republican, get out of my car!’ he says. Fifty years later!”

The repercussions are equally strong for Hugh MacRae III. To his surprise, some view his great-grandfather’s participation in the coup as heroic. One man said his great-grandfather “saved” Wilmington: “I’m shocked. We think so, but a lot of this is still with us.”

When asked if she believed there was still room for forgiveness, Elaine Brown said, “There is always room for forgiveness. We have to start telling this story as it is, because we need justice and healing. And healing doesn’t come with lies. It comes with the ugly truth of everything. We have to bring that out.”

As for Lauren Collins, those awkward questions about her hometown of Wilmington have been answered. I was not satisfied, I was not understood, but I was answered truthfully. “I feel like I’m a part of this story, too,” she said, “and I also feel like it’s a duty for white people like me to know this history, to wrestle with it, and to shoulder the full truth, even if it’s uncomfortable.”

READ AN EXCERPT: “They Stole a City” by Lauren Collins

For more information:

“They Stole a City: Wilmington’s White Supremacist Coup and the Families Living with Its Legacy” Lauren Collins (Penguin Press), Available in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats July 14 at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble And bookshop.orgLauren Collins, New YorkerLauren Collins on InstagramLauren Collins’ Lettre Recommandee (Substack)WilmingtonNColor Heritage Shuttle ToursLatimer House Museum and GardensWilmington, North CarolinaBellamy Mansion MuseumWilmington, North CarolinaFirst Presbyterian ChurchWilmington, North Carolina

Thanks to:

New Hanover County Public LibraryCape Fear Museum of History and ScienceWilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“American Coup: Wilmington 1898” (PBS)371 Production

The story is produced by Jon Carras. Editor: Carol Ross.