The coup was the result of a group of the State's white Southern Democrats conspiring and leading a mob of 2,000 white men to overthrow the legitimately elected local Fusionist biracial government in Wilmington. They expelled opposition black and white political leaders from the city, destroyed the property and businesses of black citizens built up since the American Civil War, including the only black-owned newspaper in the city, and killed an estimated 60 to more than 300 people.
The Wilmington Insurrection is considered a turning point in Southern politics. It was part of an era of more severe racial segregation and effective disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the region, which had been underway since the passage of a new State Constitution in Mississippi in 1890, which raised barriers to the registration of black voters. Other States soon passed similar laws.
Historian Laura Edwards writes, "What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole," as it affirmed that invoking "whiteness" eclipsed the legal citizenship, individual rights, and equal protection under the law that black Americans were guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
In other words, a State could nullify not just a federal law, but a human being’s federally-guaranteed rights. It has been just 33 years since there had literally been a war over it, and their side lost the war in 1865. But they “won the peace,” and it would take until 1965 for the right thing to be done.
*
November 10, 1898 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Professional basketball and hockey did not exist. So there were no scores on this historic day.
No comments:
Post a Comment