Report Re-Examines 1898 Wilmington Race Riots

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ED GORDON, host:

I'm Ed Gordon, and this is NEWS AND NOTES.

The race riots in Rosewood, Florida, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Atlanta, Georgia are well known. But the events on November 10th, 1898, in Wilmington, North Carolina, pre-dated them all.

Black businesses were destroyed as whites seized control of local government. A new report details the Wilmington race riots' legacy, and the report also asks for atonement.

Leoneda Inge, of North Carolina Public Radio, has the story.

LEONEDA INGE reporting:

It's Saturday morning at St. Luke AME Zion Church in Wilmington, and a group of women are preparing the church for the next day's service.

Unidentified Woman: May we give God the praise.

INGE: St. Luke's has been in Wilmington since 1865, anchoring the black community that surrounded it. Next to the church was a building that once housed The Record, a black-owned newspaper. It was torched in the same riot that drove many blacks out of town and put white supremacists in power.

Lottie Clinton(ph) is putting out white linens at St. Luke's. The 68-year-old Wilmington native is a member of the commission investigating the riot. She says the experience was a history lesson she never got in school or at home.

Ms. LOTTIE CLINTON (Member, St. Luke AME Zion Church): You did not race the children negatively. And I found that's been so true, you know, with a lot of people, that their parents raised them in a positive atmosphere. And a lot of people still don't want to talk about 1898, because it's painful. It's painful to them.

INGE: In 1898, the city of Wilmington was the biggest and most prosperous city in North Carolina, and it was nearly 60 percent black. Blacks owned businesses and they could vote. The riot killed more than 60 people and drove more than 2,000 blacks from town.

Seventy-eight year old Cornelia Campbell(ph) is also at the church working. She says her father's brother, Isom Quick(ph), left and didn't come back for almost 70 years.

Ms. CORNELIA CAMPBELL (Member, St. Luke AME Zion Church): And the only reason he came back then was because his last sister had passed. In fact, they had to fool him down here.

INGE: Campbell says Uncle Isom sat on the board of a local bank before he moved to Brooklyn. Today, he's listed in the report as one of the blacks targeted by white supremacists in 1898.

Ms. CLINTON: During that time, blacks were really into, I would say, control. And I think that's what the whites didn't like. And they put an end to it.

INGE: Civil rights activists and economists say the economy of Wilmington was stunted after the race riot. The commission report asks the state of North Carolina to provide economic and social compensation to the African-Americans affected.

Sandy Darity heads the Institute of African-American Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He helped research the section of the riot report outlining the economic fallout for blacks.

Professor WILLIAM "SANDY" DARITY (Director, Institute of African-American Research): So the families who were displaced, whose property was destroyed, who lost loved ones, who were driven out of the city - that some form of direct restitution should be made to the descendents of those families.

INGE: State Representative Thomas Wright is from Wilmington.

State Representative THOMAS WRIGHT (Democrat, North Carolina): Because I'm an African-American male, do you think I should buy into it? No. Absolutely not.

INGE: Wright chairs the Wilmington Race Riot Commission, which initiated the report. He says the solution can't be a one-shot payout.

State Rep. WRIGHT: You can't keep throwing money at issues or problems and thinking that you've resolved them. We need a long-term sustaining plan for how we're going to address issues of unfairness, inequity, and just racism.

INGE: Darity says there's a good case for making reparations an on-going effort.

Prof. DARITY: The entire structure of opportunity for blacks in Wilmington was dramatically changed for the worse.

INGE: Darity says he's pleased the commission report calls for programs to help minorities own homes and businesses.

(Soundbite of boat engine, whistle)

INGE: Harper Peterson owns an historic building near the Cape Fear River, where people regularly take boat rides and historical tours. Peterson served on the 1898 Commission, and is a former Wilmington Mayor.

Mr. HARPER PETERSON (Former Wilmington Mayor): A hundred years ago, this was the core also of the downtown commercial district. And when you look at the old chamber records, there were black businesses next to white businesses, and you don't see that today. There're black commercial areas five, six blocks from here that are still struggling.

INGE: So Peterson says Wilmington hasn't always been ready to grapple with the legacy of the riot, but he says now is the time.

Mr. PETERSON: I think the city and county and state have to step up with a real response, real money, real resources, and a long-term commitment. Not tokenism. Just putting it in our history books. I'm not saying we apologize or we acknowledge, but it has to be a meaningful commitment.

INGE: Thomas Wright is working on legislation to address the wrongs of 1898. Some say a bill on such a contentious piece of history could take a while to work its way through the general assembly, just hopefully not another 100 years.

For NPR News, I'm Leoneda Inge.

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