The media frequently reported, erroneously, that “white womanhood” was threatened by Black men. A white Wilmington newspaper printed a speech by a Georgia feminist that read, “If it requires lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from ravening, drunken human beasts, then I say lynch a thousand negroes a week … if it is necessary.”

By the election of 1898, Black men were prevented from voting to push out the Black elected officials. However, white supremacists could not stop the economic power that Blacks had already created. Therefore, they destroyed Black Wilmington with terrorism.

The day after the 1898 election, whites announced the “white declaration of independence.” They overthrew the Wilmington government, destroyed the printing press, forced out the mayor, and a mob of white men attacked Black residents.

There were reportedly 60 to 300 Black people killed by this act of domestic terrorism. For over 100 years, the powers that be in Wilmington tried to erase the massacre from its history. Until 2000, when “the General Assembly established the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to develop a historical record of the event and to assess the economic impact of the riot on African Americans locally and across the region and state,” according to the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The massacre is now in the state’s historical record.