Manly's editorial was written in response to a statewide campaign by white supremacist emphasizing the alleged lust that black males felt for white women. Supremacist leader Charles Aycock and others urged whites to "keep wives and sisters safe from black rapists." Such rhetoric led to the harassment of blacks and their white allies across eastern North Carolina. Rebecca Felton of Georgia even called for whites to "lynch a thousand times a week if necessary" in order to protect white women.

Manly wrote an editorial in which he observed that not every liaison between black men and white women was forced. In response supremacists vowed to destroy Manly and his newspaper. Tensions boiled over into the November 8 election that pitted a Democratic Party favoring white supremacy against a Republican Party sympathetic with the plight of blacks.

The climactic outcome was the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. On Election Day there was little violence, but many blacks were afraid to vote and the ballots of those who did may not have been tallied honestly.

The next morning Democrats passed a "Wilmington Declaration of Independence." It declared, "We will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled, by men of African origin." It also singled out "the Negro paper" for "an article so vile and slanderous" that "we therefore owe it to the people ... that the paper known as The Record cease to be published, and that its editor be banished from this community ... If the demand is refused, ... then the editor Alex Manly will be expelled by force."

Manly had already fled, but 2,000 whites paraded through downtown Wilmington on November 10 and demolished Manly's newspaper office. Some blacks armed themselves, and gun battles broke out. Almost a century later, however, some details are still in question.

The event marked the climax of the white supremacy campaign of 1898 and a turning point in the state's history. Restrictions on African American voting followed marking the onset of the Jim Crow era of segregation.

This essay was submitted by Rod Cameron, an English teacher at Abraham Lincoln High in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

References
State Library of North Carolina
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/afro/riot.htm

Manly, Alex. Editorial in Wilmington Record
http://www.mindspring.com/~lmno/riot.html

Poverty and Race Action Research Council
http://www.prrac.org/topics/mar99/loewen.htm

Southern Cultures
http://www.unc.edu/depts/csas/socult/revs/sc63rev6.htm

1. Manly's newspaper, The Wilmington Record, came under scrutiny after he published an editorial in response to white supremacists claiming that black men lusted after white women. As an African American, Manly was courageous to publicly take a stand against this group. Would you be as courageous? Would you take a stand? Outline your response in a short essay.



2. To protect white women from the alleged lust of black men, Rebecca Felton said to "lynch a thousand times a week if necessary." Write a persuasive speech in response to Felton persuading her that the problem isn't as she sees it, and that lynching isn't the answer.



3. After the race riot of 1898, restrictions were put on African-American voting. What were those restrictions and how long were they in place? Write your response in a short essay. Go to http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/afro/riot.htm