The Wilmington Coup: A Dark Turning Point in Voting History

In the late 1800s, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a city where African Americans thrived economically and held elected office. This did not sit well with White supremacists, who during the election of 1898 used violence to intimidate voters and overthrow the elected government. It’s considered the only successful coup d’etat in US history. 

The leader of the coup, a former Confederate colonel named Alfred Moore Waddell, gave a speech in which he told White people: “If you see the Negro out voting tomorrow, tell him to stop. If he doesn't, shoot him down. Shoot him down in his tracks.”

This week on Reveal, we look back at that coup and its consequences. After the overthrow, North Carolina legislators passed laws segregating White and Black people in housing, trains, schools, libraries, and other public spaces. Those laws were copied in states across the South, sowing the seeds of the Jim Crow era and much of the structural racism that continues today.

We then go further back in history, to just after the Civil War, when the US government made its famous “40 acres and a mule” promise to formerly enslaved people. Most Americans assume the promise of land was never kept, but over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed records that prove freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts of land that once were part of plantations.  

This is an update of episodes that originally aired in October 2020 and June 2024.

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• This is an update of episodes that originally aired in October 2020 and June 2024.