Talk:Wilmington massacre/Archive 1

Stupid [removed] / Half-Witted Marxist College Kids
Should not be permitted to author Wikipedia articles. Some adult out there -- or vaguely educated white person -- should take the time to re-write this butchery of history and place the Wilmington incident in the context of widespread white Southern Resistance to Negro crime and tyranny during Reconstruction.

I was surprised to find that this topic was not covered. I feel that it is important to cover the Wilmington Race Riots with facts and NPOV. I would like to expand the article to include the following sections:
 * Context – describe the political and social environment of post reconstruction Wilmington.
 * Events – Overview of the rebellion
 * Planning – Characterize the planning and development of the rebellion
 * Action Events—Describe the events in the days around Nov 11, 1898.
 * Banishment—Just as important as the riot day itself is the series of banishments that occurred in the days that followed
 * Historical Effect – Describe how the rebellion affects Wilmington and North Carolina.

The external links section has a link to the NC government’s review of the events of the riot. It is a great resource. I am trying to find out if the pictures are copyrighted or not.--Thunder 17:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I think this would be an excellent addition, and I am looking forward to reading your account. [This site] has some first-person accounts and newspaper articles that might be useful. My understanding of image copyrights is that images published before 1923 are in the public domain, and that scans or other copies of those images do not result in a new copyright, so you should be OK. Lindmere 19:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it is just a typo or not, but when you were detailing your editing plans, you said the event was Nov 11 when it actually happened on Nov 10.--Denis Diderot II 07:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I have been doing research on this topic for a few months now for a research paper and have almost every one of the top 75 most important sources on the Insurrection. I would like to be the one to expand this article sometime in the next three months, but since this would be my first time doing a major edit I would welcome any help from you guys. Please contact me if you're interested in working together.--Denis Diderot II 07:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

"Denis Diderot", I don't see your contact info on your user page, but I'd be interested in helping improve the page. I haven't done research on my own yet, though. I'll put the page on my watch list, anyway. selkins 12:45, 2 March 2007 (ET)

Selkins, I added contact info to my user page. I would love to work on this with you. I own all the major books on the subject, so I can easily get the research. Also, I have a heavily-cited thesis I recently completed, so the referencing is already there.Denis Diderot II 23:38, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Not the only American coup
Dozens of similar incidents took place across the South from 1868 (expulsion of Negroes from the Georgia state legislature) through 1898 (Wilmington insurrection). The hysterical version of this article was written by someone who seems to have no knowledge of American history or the context in which this insurrection occurred; Given that, I'm presuming it was written by either an American college student or some half-witted 80 IQ American Negro. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.254.157.232 (talk) 01:28, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

A similer incident took place in Texas in 1873.--Dudeman5685 04:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Can you provide sources, details, context? If so, please indicate that. Awbeal 04:15, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Texas "coup"
From what I read here, I would not characterize the Texas event as a coup d'etat or overthrow. In that case, it was a legal question of whether the incumbent governor's term was over and the election valid. He (Edmund J. Davis) thought his term should continue. Democrats, meanwhile, did not. Davis resigned under pressure, after Richard Coke was inaugurated. But that doesn't quite fit the definition of a coup.

Meanwhile, you haven't given any information about the events in Kentucky in the 1890s for anyone to judge. Please provide more information. Awbeal 20:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree that the Texas incident was a not a coup d'etat at all. I think that anyone who is going to change facts on a page should be pretty sure that they are right before they do, which it seems this editor was not. Additionally, the Kentucky thing that is mentioned should never have been added if the reference to it did not contain a more pertinent link than the page for the state of Kentucky. If there was no page, then a link should have been created requesting one.--Denis Diderot II 07:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Kentucky v. Tennessee "Rebellion"
I don't want to put words in a person's mouth, but I think maybe the Kentucky rebellion being referred to is actually the Battle of Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee. However, even if this is the armed rebellion in question, I don't believe it qualifies as a coup d'etat as the government being overthrown was brought to power through fraud and thus not lawfully elected. However, I will note that while my belief is that the common usage of coup d'etat is the deposing of a lawful government, Merriam-Webster does not make such a distinction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anonnemo (talk • contribs) 16:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe, though, that the two can be distinguished, as the Battle of Athens, at it's simplest was counting ballots at gunpoint, the Wilmington insurrection ousted the government between elections.

Redirect?
Do the alternate titles redirect to this article? How was "the Insurrection" decided as a title? Sounds as if it is more a contemporary notion than reflective of coverage at the time.Parkwells (talk) 21:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

In Fiction
The Wilmington Massacre is portrayed in a chapter of John Sayles's book "A Moment in the Sun", if someone feels like making a reference to that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.103.165.36 (talk) 00:21, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Untitled
Someone's changing dates to 1990's. I'm changing back — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.118.27.50 (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

External Link
I found a misformatted external link misplaced in the "See Also" section: http://www.1898wilmington. Looking at it I'm having trouble finding who runs/maintains the site (The 1898 Wilmington Institute for Education and Research is mentioned on their introduction page). I'll look at it some more, but I'd appreciate it if anyone could help me figure it out so we can restore the link, this time to the correct section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.23.198 (talk) 05:53, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

History is unsourced
Editors have added unsourced accounts of Wilmington history related to events in 1865 and 1868 that appear to be POV as well. These seem picked out of many occurrences of violence and confrontation that took place following the Civil War. Not sure that it is helpful to try to base the 1898 events on these, and the material will not be kept without cites. Parkwells (talk) 13:51, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Fusionist?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

What I mean to say is that this article talks about 19th century American politics and describes them through a reference to a mostly late 20th century political movement. Is there a reason for that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.205.30.226 (talk) 00:48, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Election of 1898
The following statement is, to my understanding, untrue:

"Despite the Democrats' inflammatory rhetoric in support of white supremacy, and the Red Shirt armed display, voters elected a biracial fusionist government to office in Wilmington on November 8; the mayor and 2/3 of the aldermen were white."

The November 8, 1898 elections didn't include city offices. The municipal positions had been elected in March of 1897. Also, the state legislature had amended Wilmington's city charter such that the voters only elected five of the ten aldermen; the other five were appointed by the Governor. The city was divided into five gerrymandered wards. Most blacks lived in the first and fifth wards, and those wards elected black Republicans Andrew Walker and Elijah Green, respectively. The other three wards were majority white, and they elected white Democrats William Springer, Walter Yopp, and Owen Fennell. Governor Daniel Russell appointed the Silverite Benjamin Keith and four Republicans: Silas Wright, D. J. Benson, Andrew Hewlett, and John Norwood. Of those, Norwood was the only black. Those aldermen elected Silas Wright to the post of Mayor, and the resulting vacancy was filled by H. C. Twining.

So while it's true that the voters elected biracial aldermen, they didn't elect a biracial city government. And it was in March 1897, not November 1898.

Ref: http://www.history.ncdcr.gov/1898-wrrc/report/Chapter2.pdf pp. 44-45 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug Pardee (talk • contribs) 20:07, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

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With 90 percent of North Carolinians in debt, the debt-relief platform to restrict interest rates to 6 percent
This sentence makes no sense and didn't when it was added (I've gone through the edit history). Did the Fusionists run on a debt-relief platform?. Stevebritgimp (talk) 03:37, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Only coup in United States history?
I deleted the claim in the lede that this was the only coup in United States history. Reference 1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/black-pathology-crowdsourced/360190/ ) was cited for that claim, but in fact disclaims it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dylan Thurston (talk • contribs) 15:52, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Would these not count as successful coups in the United States? Cheers. DrPepper47 (talk) 20:23, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The Jaybird-Woodpecker War - after a series of murders between Jaybird (white supremacist) and Woodpecker (pro-civil rights) Democrats in Fort Bend County, Texas, then-Governor and former Confederate general Lawrence Sullivan Ross declared martial law in Texas, which resulted in Jaybirds taking over the county government and formerly elected Woodpeckers leaving town.
 * The Battle of Athens, Tennessee - a group of armed local citizens, including several World War II veterans, overthrew the government of McMinn County - which they accused of predatory policing, police brutality, political corruption, and voter intimidation - and replaced it with a democratically elected one.

"certain" probably needs clarifying
"It was originally described by certain white Americans as a race riot caused by blacks. " in the lede might need clarifying as to who was saying this falsehood. I aadded the template but wanted to kickstart discussion here. Anyone have sources for this? ++Lar: t/c 14:51, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Evident race/historical bias?
This article, appears to, at least, sympathise, or in the other extreme, fail to criticise one side in the “coup”. It would appear, in a textual sense, that such phrases in the text like “the blacks having risen out of slavery” seem unnecessary. The strange focus on the jobs and roles held by blacks, a simple statement of the economic downturn faced by the agricultural white population (particularly cotton growers) while not linking appropriately between the IMPRESSION that blacks taking clerical or professional jobs, operating pawnbrokers etc seem to be the cause of certain white people’s economic outlooks being negative seems to present these circumstances as, in reality, being actual causative agents of the disturbance. The repeated usage of “blacks” (or the more problematic “the blacks”) insinuates a bias between one race and another, suggesting a lack of objectivity, required by Wikipedia. (I’m not sure when the term “African-American” became de rigeur and whether the phrase only has a certain appropriateness after a certain date.) But the refusal to use certain “reference alternatives”, rather than continuously employing “black”, causes a certain degree of discomfort (albeit it a certain revision sense) in the reader in the modern era. These are largely apprehensions rather than definitive episodes of bias or favouritism, I should assert. Francis Neary (talk) 01:50, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Editing Talk:Wilmington insurrection of 1898 Luckygentleman (talk) 14:28, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
Greensboro Superior Court Judge Spencer Bell Adams is known for being the first judge in North Carolina to declare that if he were to try a black in his courtroom then blacks must be allowed in a jury. During the 1898 Wilmington insurrection (race riots), when Wilmington was the largest city in NC, Adams supported the plight of the black minority. Two years later in 1900, Judge Adams, the Republican nominee for Governor of North Carolina maintained views ahead of his time and was defeated by Democrat Charles B. Aycock. Adams friend President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the 1901 White House dinner with Booker T. Washington. Because of the secretive nature there was no printed guest list and thus his attendance cannot be verified, but family members have long stated Judge Adams attended. In 1902 President Roosevelt nominated Adams and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be the Chief Justice for the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian Citizenship Court trials for what is now Oklahoma. From 1906-1910 Adams was Chairman of the NC GOP Party. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luckygentleman (talk • contribs) 14:28, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

the secret nine
I think there needs to be a part to this article about the secret nine I can only find mentions of it no exact meanings or goals of the group. Coop213 (talk) 17:46, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Wilmington massacre of 1898 vs Wilmington insurrection of 1898
Feel free to use this post to debate what the article should be called, given that there is controversy about the name of the incident.

--84.212.23.40 (talk) 02:13, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

General Review Comments Regarding the Length and Detail of this Article
This article must represent some sort of failure in the writing/editing process in Wikipedia. I say this from the perspective of someone who was interested in learning about the Wilmington Massacre, and as someone who is not experienced in the inner workings of Wikipedia.

The article is outrageously, absurdly too long and too detailed. I am, in an odd way, reminded of George Mallory's answer to why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because it's there.", except in this case, the question would be, Why are such immense quantities of minutiae and barely relevant details included in this article?; and the answer would be, "Because they're there".

I can understand the goal of trying to place this event into historical context, and to explain the various "back stories" that played a role in what transpired; but seriously, there are way too many "trees" that render the "forest" barely recognizable. After too much time spent wading through a surfeit of details, I came away with a more confused picture of what had happened and why. In other words, I don't think the details were beneficial, or that the benefit justified the "cost".

I realize it's quite cheeky and disrespectful of me to swoop in for what might be perceived as "trolling", but are there not some criteria for how much detail is appropriate in a Wikipedia article? Because otherwise, just about any topic that represents the obsessive interest of somebody, somewhere on the planet, would be susceptible to this kind of excess. TreeDoctor (talk) 04:39, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree. In particular I think there's too much written about the pre-Insurrection economic conditions (what % of particular industries were owned by black people), the dispute of interest rates on loans, and the designation as a "coup d'etat" rather than a race riot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikidude87654321 (talk • contribs) 18:41, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

This article needs a split or two
There's way too much background here on the political dynamics of 1898 NC. Republican-Populist Fusionism in NC (which was unique in the US) warrants its own article, as does the wider statewide election of 1898, but it does not all belong here. -Indy beetle (talk) 22:49, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Significance of William B. McCoy
William Barry McCoy was a lawyer and state chairman of the White Government Union. He was a major player in organizing the White response to the Fusion victory. His historical importance is seriously downplayed in this article Stevenmitchell (talk) 10:03, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there a date or quotation error?
I'm confused. There was a commission established in 1898 that studied for six years. One of the commission members, Peterson, talked about the impact of the event still being felt 107 years later. I doubt that a commission member would still be living 107 after the event, since he would have had to have been an adult during the commission's time. Kdammers (talk) 06:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The commission was established in 2000. It had 1898 in its name as a reference to the insurrection date. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 06:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Right-Wing?
The article references right-wing terrorism (in a link) and right-wing populism (as a category). Are there any references for this? Especially since the left-right spectrum really doesn't seem appropriate for this article. 5minutes (talk) 01:05, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Insurrection
The opening paragraph claims: "It is the only such incident in the history of the United States." What about all across the South during and ending Reconstruction? This is a crazy, outrageous, and absurd claim.

"There were incidents then where elected, biracial governments were overthrown by mobs, by coup d’états, by various forms of violent terrorism." - Eric Foner.

See also:

Colfax massacre Battle of Liberty Place

FloridaArmy (talk) 19:08, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Documentary about this topic called Wilmington on Fire
There is a lot of research in the documentary called Wilmington on Fire. Maybe someone can add some of it to this article. For instance, it says that there were likely thousands of African-Americans killed in the riots. It based this on the city's population before and after the riots. -- Ubh [ talk... contribs... ] 10:52, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
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 * Norman Ethre Jennett.jpg

Lede section on uniqueness
Is this the only such event in American history? Overthrow of Kingdom of Hawaii and the Election Massacre of 1874 come to mine. Volvlogia (talk) 00:39, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The Hawaii case was in another country. Lots of election-campaign violence in US history but this is the only successful coup in which an operating govt was replaced. Before USA established this did happen in all 13 colonies when royal officials were all expelled in 1775. In the Civil War US army overthrew state governments in the South. Rjensen (talk) 01:20, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I second Rjensen's analysis here. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:30, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for mentioning the Election_Massacre_of_1874. I wasn't aware of it until now. The question for me turns on the definition of a coup. To me the difference is that the Wilmington Insurrection overthrew an existing government after an election, while the Election Massacre prevented the election of a government. Doesn't a coup only require the former? But I'd totally support linking to the massacre, or to a page listing the presumably numerous other incidences of whites violently disenfranchising people. -- William Pietri (talk) 17:11, 6 May 2023 (UTC)