A Massacre and American Uprising: Wilmington, NC 1898 (Part 2)
“The Chamber of Commerce Declares Against Negro Domination.” The Semi-Weekly Messenger, Friday, October 11, 1898.
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A Massacre and American Uprising: Wilmington, NC 1898 (Part 2)
Once the supporters of white supremacy in New Hanover County (Wilmington, NC) gained the desired victories on election day, November 8, 1898, they were not finished. There were other offices in the city they wanted such as mayor of the city, chief of police and aldermen—even though those positions were not on the ballot or up for change.
They would use a speech and an editorial to their advantage, to rile up their base during the campaign and after the election to achieve their victories by any means necessary.
Rebecca Felton’s Speech
Sometime before the election a speech was made by Mrs. Rebecca Felton. Rebecca Felton was a white supremacist and the wife of a well-known politician, William H. Felton, from Georgia. In 1897 she made a speech, in Tybee, Georgia, in front of the Georgia Agricultural Society. In her speech she contended that white women were left, unprotected, on farms and that African-American men were attackers that should be lynched, in mass amounts, if needed to address this wrong.
The News and Observer, reported Mrs. Felton’s words in this way:
“The crying need of women on farms is security in their lives and homes. It is a disgrace in a free country when rape and violence are public reproach and the best part of God’s creation are trembling and afraid to be left alone in their homes.
With due respect to your politic, I say that when you take the Negro into your embrace on election day to control his vote and use liquor to befuddle his understanding and make him believe he is your brother, when you honey-snuggle him at the polls and make him familiar with dirty tricks in polities, so long will lynching prevail, because the cause will grow and increase with every election. And when there is not enough religion in the in the pulpit to organize a crusade against this sin nor justice in the court house to promptly punish the crime, nor manhood enough in the Nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue, if it requires lynching to protect women’s dearest possession from ravening, drunken human beasts, then I say lynch a thousand a week if it is necessary.”
Rebecca Felton would eventually become the first woman to take the oath of office as a United States Senator in the U.S. Senate, in Washington, D.C. (although her term was mostly symbolic and very short).
She, openly, tied the voting of African-American men to the rape of white young women on farms and advocated that lynching be the solution—even if you had to “lynch a thousand a week.”
Alex Manly’s Editorial
Her speech was given fully a year before the election of 1898, but Alexander Manly, an African-American newspaper owner in Wilmington, NC, chose to respond to Rebecca, in an editorial in his newspaper, The Daily Record, on August 18, 1898.
There are very few, surviving copies of The Daily Record, but the white-owned newspapers picked up on Manly’s editorial and reported it in the following way. The Semi-Weekly Messenger, September 27, 1898:
A Mrs. Felton, from Georgia, makes a speech before the Agricultural Society at Tybee, GA, in which she advocated lynching as an extreme measure. This woman makes a strong plea for womanhood, and if the alleged crimes or rape were half so frequent as is ofttimes reported, her plea would be worthy of consideration.
Mrs. Felton, like many other so-called Christians, loses sight of the basic principle of the religion of Christ in her plea for one class of people as against another. If a missionary spirit is essential for the uplifting of the poor white girls, why is it? The morals of the poor white people are on a par with their colored neighbors of like conditions. And if anyone doubts the statement let him visit among them. The lump needs to be leavened by those who profess so much religion and showing them that the preservation of virtue is an essential for the life of any people.
Mrs. Felton begins well, for she admits that education will better protect the girls on the farm from the assaulter. This we admit and it should not be confined to the white any more than to the colored girls. The papers are filled often with reports of rapes of white women, and the subsequent lynching of the alleged rapists. The editors pour forth volleys of aspersions against all Negroes because of the few who may be guilty. If the papers and speakers of the other race would condemn the commission of crime because it is crime and not try to make it appear that the Negroes were the only criminals, they would find their strongest allies in the intelligent Negroes themselves, and together the whites and blacks would root the evil out of both races.
We suggest that the whites guard their women more closely, as Mrs. Felton says, thus giving no opportunity for the human fiend, be he white or black. You leave your goods out of doors and then complain because they are taken away.
Poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women, especially on farms. They are careless of their conduct toward them, and our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men, than are the white men with colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman’s infatuation or the man’s boldness, bring attention to them, and the man is lynched for rape. Every Negro lynched is called a ‘big, burley, black brute,’ when, in fact, many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for their fathers, and were not only not ‘black’ and ‘burley,’ but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them, as is very well known to all.
Mrs. Felton must begin at the fountain head if she wishes to purify the stream.
Teach your men purity. Let virtue be something more than an excuse for them to intimidate and torture a helpless people. Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman, than for a white man to be intimate with a colored woman.
You set yourselves down as a lot of hypocrites: in fact, you cry aloud for the virtue of your women while you seek to destroy the morality of ours. Don’t think ever that your women will remain pure while you are debauching ours. You sow the seed—the harvest will come in due time.”
It is hard to believe Manly wrote these words and was not immediately killed in 1898 in the South. These, however, were the exact words attributed to him in the white press of the day.
Things Did Not Conclude with the Election
The editorial, as noted above, was reprinted in the white press in the days leading up to the election, on November 8, 1898, and the day after the election a mass meeting was held in Wilmington to address it.
© 2020, Red and Black Ink, LLC and Danita Smith
NOTE: Part three of this series is forthcoming. This was an important event in history and the tactics used to deprive Black people of their voting rights, economic empowerment and political authority are worth examining in more detail.
References:
1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission (LeRae Umfleet, Principal Researcher). 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Report. Research Branch, Office of Archives and History North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. May 31, 2006.
“Awful Calamity.” The Semi-Weekly Messenger. Friday, November 11, 1898. Pg. 5.
“Look at This Trio: One with Dark Skin, the Others with Hearts Just as Black.” The Semi-Weekly Messenger. Tuesday, September 27, 1898. Pg. 7.
“Perils of Women: Speech to Which Manly’s Editorial Was a Reply, Mrs. Felton’s Words.” The News and Observer. November 16, 1898. Page 2.
“Who is Manly?” The Semi-Weekly Messenger. Tuesday, August 29, 1898. Pg. 8.
“Remarkable Meeting” The Semi-Weekly Messenger. Friday, November 11, 1898. Pg. 5.