Under Waddell’s direction, the committee issued an order instructing Mayor Wright, Police Chief Melton, and the board of aldermen to report to city hall. Waddell dispatched two emissaries to deliver the news to Wright and Melton. He then led the committee to the nearby Merchant’s Association building, just down Front Street, to await responses from the mayor and police chief. It was now just past 3:00 p.m.
When Mayor Wright was tracked down and told to resign, he initially objected, saying he preferred not to step down during a crisis. He was told he had two options: resign or be forcibly removed from office. Nothing in the city charter permitted such an ultimatum, but Wright had just watched white mobs surge through the streets, firing their weapons. Wright’s name was among the most prominent listed on the REMEMBER THE 6 placards; the notices were still posted around the city. Reluctantly, he agreed to quit.
Under further duress, the mayor agreed to call a meeting of the board of aldermen for 4:00 p.m. at city hall. He did not need to be told the purpose of the meeting—for Wright and his police chief and aldermen to formally submit their resignations.
When Waddell’s two emissaries found Police Chief Melton at the police station at city hall, he was preoccupied by a fresh report from a deputy about “a riot” at the Fourth Street Bridge near the railroad tracks. The deputy told Melton he had just seen “a lot of men killed.” Waddell’s emissaries interrupted and told Melton not to worry about the dead black men, because he was no longer in charge. He was instructed to resign at once. Melton resisted. He said he would resign only if he were paid the remainder of his salary. There was no reply. The two men simply told Melton to report at once to the Committee of Twenty-Five to submit his resignation.
While Waddell and his committeemen awaited a response from Wright and Melton, they began selecting their own mayor, police chief, and aldermen. An impromptu “election” was held. Eight white supremacists were selected as aldermen—seven of them from the Committee of Twenty-Five itself, including two men who had directed the rioters, Hugh MacRae and J. Allan Taylor of the Secret Nine. All that remained was for them to confront the current Fusion aldermen and force them to surrender their positions.
When the moment arrived to select a new mayor, there was little debate. Waddell had limited the committee’s options by ensuring that ambitious men such as Rountree and former mayor Fishblate were left off the committee—reducing the chance that either man would be considered for mayor. At the same time, Waddell had won over some resentful white leaders with his Opera House speech and his leadership of the mob that had torched the Record office. The committeemen concluded, with little discussion, that Chairman Waddell was the obvious choice. Waddell, feigning modesty, if not surprise, accepted their appointment as Wilmington’s new mayor. There was no objection.
Later, Waddell would insist that his election was entirely legal because Wright had “resigned” on his own volition: “It was certainly the strangest performance in American history, though we literally followed the law, as the Fusionists made it themselves,” he wrote. “There has not been a single illegal act committed in the change of government. Simply, the old board went out, and the new board came in—strictly according to law.”
Waddell was in a triumphant mood. He decided to lead a procession of committeemen, militiamen, Red Shirts, and armed citizens on a short march to city hall to force the resignations and complete the coup. The committee members made a show of readying their weapons before they left. As Waddell and the rest of the men walked out of the Merchant’s Association building, they were greeted with shouts and cheers from rioters. There was a loud call-and-response chant: “Victory!” which was followed by “White men!” and then “Victory!” again. Waddell led the marchers to the city hall chambers inside Thalian Hall, the gunmen still chanting and clutching their Winchesters.
Inside the chambers, five members of the Fusionist board of aldermen were at their posts. They had just received word that rioters were headed to city hall to overthrow the government. They looked helpless. They didn’t bother to flee. They chose instead to stay on the job and await their fate. Four aldermen had been there for most of the day. The fifth, John Norwood, a seventy-three-year-old black carpenter appointed to the board by Governor Russell, had just arrived after being ordered by the city clerk to report there.
Three aldermen were absent—two black men and Benjamin Keith, a prominent white Populist who had already left Wilmington. A boycott mounted by Democrats, along with false rumors that Keith advocated sex between blacks and whites, had destroyed his wholesale grocery business. Mayor Wright had just returned to the chambers, as ordered by Waddell’s emissaries. Chief Melton was still at the police headquarters inside city hall.
The aldermen could hear rioters thundering through the corridors, shouting insults and hooting and whistling as they approached the chambers. They packed the room and leaned over the rails, heckling the Fusionists. At the head of the pack were J. Allan Taylor and Colonel Waddell. Taylor informed the aldermen that their replacements had been “elected.” Waddell ordered Mayor Wright to call a special meeting of the board to submit its resignation. It was just after 4:00 p.m.
The board convened, with Wright presiding. One by one, the five aldermen who were present resigned. They obeyed instructions to formally approve their replacements—the men selected an hour earlier by Waddell and his Committee of Twenty-Five. The approvals gave the proceedings a veneer of propriety, suggesting that the outgoing aldermen had resigned on their own. “They resigned in response to public sentiment,” a front-page New York Times article explained the next morning.
Witnessing the resignations was William Struthers, a white city clerk and treasurer who had kept the minutes of the outgoing board’s last meeting three hours earlier when it had voted to extend the election liquor ban. Struthers, a Democrat, retained his position. He dutifully kept the minutes of the coup, as if it were just another routine board of aldermen meeting. He even read aloud the minutes of the previous meeting.
As each Fusionist alderman “resigned,” Struthers wrote that the resignation “was accepted.” Then he wrote the name of each replacement, noting that each man had been “nominated and elected.” Finally, Struthers swore in the new aldermen, who vowed to “support the Constitution and Laws of the United States and the Constitution and Laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith.”
J. Allan Taylor and Hugh MacRae asked that their appointments as aldermen be delayed for two days because they were needed to command the gunmen still roaming the streets. They did not consider that proper work for aldermen. Their new positions were held open for them. The three absent Fusionist aldermen were then summarily fired and replaced. In a matter of minutes, the eight Fusionists on the board—including three black men—had been replaced by eight white supremacist Democrats.
By midafternoon on November 10, Wilmington’s black community was in a state of terror and panic. The limited defensive counterattack that morning had evaporated by the time the sun began to dip behind the twisted live oaks that shaded Wilmington’s streets. By late afternoon, the only gunshots that echoed through the street were fired by whites.
“Rumors fly here and there that the negroes are armed,” Waddell wrote. “There is no truth to that. They are utterly cowed and crushed, and are not going to interfere with anybody.”
Pierre Manning, a member of the Secret Nine, was surprised by how thoroughly the killings had cracked Wilmington’s black resistance. He had expected a well-armed black insurgency, not abject surrender. “No people have been so completely terrorized and … so completely broken or crushed than has been that of these miserable wretches,” Manning wrote.
Outside the council chambers, George Rountree cornered Chief Melton in the Board of Finance meeting room. Melton was still demanding to be paid the remainder of his annual salary. Rountree told Melton that he, Rountree, could not control the white mobs. If Melton did not resign immediately, Rountree warned, he would not be responsible fo
r anything that might befall the chief. Melton understood the meaning of the threat. He told Rountree he would resign without further pay, then left city hall and walked home, unmolested.
Told of Melton’s resignation, the new board of aldermen appointed Edgar G. Parmele as the city’s police chief. Parmele was a stoutly built man with wavy, short-cropped hair and a black goatee. He was one of Wilmington’s most influential Democrats, having served beside Rountree and Colonel Taylor as a director of the Democratic committee. Parmele was sworn in and handed $1,000 in cash—his annual salary, in advance. It was generous pay, about $28,000 in twenty-first-century dollars at a time when Wilmington’s black street cleaners earned 10 cents an hour and black maids $2 to $3 a week. Parmele would soon be tasked with restraining the white mobs that had been unleashed by his party.
The time had now come for Mayor Wright to step down. Wright calmly announced that he had decided to resign because Wilmington’s leading citizens had expressed “dissatisfaction” with the way he had run the city. The resignation was unanimously approved by the new board of aldermen.
One of the aldermen nominated Waddell as the new mayor. It was a formality; the Committee of Twenty-Five had already “elected” the Colonel. There was a sudden burst of cheering and applause from the aldermen and from Red Shirts leaning over the rails. Each of the new aldermen voted, to more applause, to approve the nomination. Waddell accepted.
Struthers, the city clerk, took up his pen again. He wrote that Alfred Moore Waddell had been elected to fill the unexpired term of the office of mayor of Wilmington. But in the blank space for noting the expiration date of the new mayor’s term, Struthers wrote nothing. Then the new mayor was sworn in.
After signing his name below the phrase “So help me God,” Waddell felt compelled to speak. Addressing the new aldermen, he claimed he had not sought the office but had been compelled to serve due to the current “grave crisis.” He said he hoped to be replaced soon. But for the moment, Waddell said, he intended to put an end to the violence and restore law and order.
“The law will be rigidly enforced and impartially administered to black and white alike,” he said. There was no irony in his voice. The aldermen again cheered their new mayor.
One alderman proposed that the new council offer a formal vote of thanks to the outgoing council. The motion was tabled.
Just after the coup was consummated inside city hall, Rountree received a telegram from Governor Russell in Raleigh. The governor had fallen hopelessly behind the swift pace of events in Wilmington. The telegram informed Rountree that if Wilmington’s white business leaders selected a new mayor and board of aldermen, Russell would use his influence to persuade the current mayor and board to resign.
Rountree sent the governor a dismissive reply: “Mayor and Aldermen have resigned. Nominees of citizens chosen … Law will be maintained and peace restored.”
Waddell’s first act as mayor was to swear in 250 “special policemen” to restore order. He chose them from among the armed men who had spent the day chasing and killing black men—men who were described by the New York Times the next day as “reputable white citizens.” Waddell was also authorized to appoint twenty-five armed men to patrol the city on bicycles that night. Another twenty-five gunmen would be selected to patrol on horseback. Several Red Shirts offered their services.
“The new Government will devote its attention to restraining recklessness among the whites, as well as keeping down lawlessness among the negroes,” the Times reported. “Further trouble of a genuine or serious nature is not expected.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Marching from Death
A S DARKNESS DESCENDED on November 10, a cold rain began to soak the streets. The wind picked up, slamming shutters and blowing trash through the backyards of Brooklyn. Sheets of rain driven by gusts from the ocean lashed a ragged procession of black men, women, and children trudging along the main avenues leading out of Wilmington. Some families had bolted from their homes without pausing to gather warm clothing, for it had been mild and sunny earlier in the day. Others had collected a few blankets and quilts, which they draped over their heads to ward off the rain. A few people had piled into carriages or horse-drawn wagons, but the rest were on foot, some without shoes.
Children sobbed in their wet clothing. Their mothers scooped them up and carried them. The women’s feet sloshed where the hard clay of the roadway had turned slippery in the rain. The procession headed east, away from the river and white neighborhoods, seeking safety in the sandy pocosin swamps and the dense oak and pine forests. Some families broke away and bedded down among the worn tombstones of Wilmington’s colored cemetery, known as Pine Forest. They thought white men would not venture there.
Reverend J. Allen Kirk had fought a strong urge to flee along with the families. He had instead decided to keep his wife and young niece in the city for the moment. The Kirks lived in the parsonage of the downtown Central Baptist Church, where Kirk preached. He feared his wife and niece would be swept up by the white mobs, so he sent them to stay with friends on the outskirts of Wilmington. Now, as Kirk watched the exodus of other black families pass him by, he felt forlorn.
It was a great sight to see them marching from death, and the colored women, colored men, colored children, colored enterprises and colored people all exposed to death. Firing began, and it seemed like a mighty battle in war time. The shrieks and screams of children, of mothers, of wives were heard … Thousands of women, children and men rushed to the swamps and there lay upon the earth in the cold to freeze and starve.
A Northern reporter, Charles Francis Bourke of Collier’s Weekly, followed the procession into the forests:
In the woods and swamps innocent hundreds of terrified men, women and children are wandering about, fearing the vengeance of the whites, fearful of death … Fearing to light fires, listening for chance footsteps crushing fallen twigs … I heard a child crying and a hoarse voice crooning softly a mournful song …
“When de battle’s ov-er we kin war a crown
In de new Je-ru-sa-lum.”
Next day I heard soldiers singing thoughtlessly, in the gayety of their hearts, a savagely suggestive refrain:
“Oh, you niggahs, yo’ had better lie low!”
Most of the black families fleeing Wilmington hailed from the working class—stevedores and laborers, maids and washerwomen. Many had witnessed the killings firsthand. The city’s black professionals and businessmen had also seen the shootings, but they had made a different calculation. They decided to remain, hoping to outlast the violence. They prayed that their capitulation to white demands the day before had inoculated them against further retribution. They were convinced the killings would cease once the white mobs realized they had broken Wilmington’s black resistance. “They were frightened to death at the threats made against them, and too glad to huddle in their homes and keep quiet,” Jane Cronly wrote in her diary.
White Fusionist politicians who had been hounded from office also remained in Wilmington. They assumed that their forced resignations had satisfied the leaders of the coup. But J. Allan Taylor, Hugh MacRae, and others were determined to permanently cleanse the city of any threat, white or black, to the new white supremacist order. They drew up a new list of nearly fifty men to be forever banished from Wilmington. It included the Big Six white Fusionists plus several other Fusionists, white and black, who were considered troublesome.
Late in the afternoon on November 10, Taylor and MacRae took charge of the banishment campaign. Because they had not yet formally taken their positions as aldermen, they were free to act as private citizens. As such, they did not share their plans with Waddell and his new aldermen. They feared that the new mayor and board, now responsible for maintaining law and order, would try to rein in the mobs. Taylor and MacRae quietly sent a police captain, John Furlong, in a horse-drawn wagon to round up the men on the banishment list. They assigned a detachment of Light Infantry militiamen on horseback to accompany Fur
long.
The first target was Carter Peamon, the outspoken black barber whose shop was on North Fourth Street, near the center of the day’s violence. Peamon had made a great public show of urging blacks to vote. But earlier in the day on November 10, he concluded that further resistance would only get him killed. He had gone from house to house in Brooklyn, accompanied by three white men, pleading with black residents not oppose the white gunmen. At one point, a group of enraged black men seized the three white men and held them hostage. It was the sort of bold and desperate act that might be expected of Peamon himself. But he surprised everyone by pleading with the black men to release the captives.
After a series of negotiations, the three whites were set free. Peamon escorted them to a nearby gathering of white gunmen, expecting a round of thanks. Instead, several white men in the crowd attempted to lynch him. They were intercepted by two of the freed hostages, who plunged into the mob and pulled Peamon free.
Peamon’s daring intercession on behalf of the white hostages did not spare him from the banishment campaign. Just before dark, the infantry detachment sent out by Taylor and MacRae “arrested” Peamon and escorted him to the city jail. A short time later, the Secret Nine issued a formal banishment order for Peamon. The infantry soldiers took him from jail and marched him at gunpoint to the train depot, where he was placed aboard a departing train.
Peamon was terrified. Just before the train departed, two ominous developments made his situation even more dire. First, he was warned by the soldiers that he would be killed on sight if he ever returned to Wilmington. Second, a gang of Red Shirts boarded the train just before it rolled out of the depot. The infantry detachment departed, leaving Peamon alone with the Red Shirts.
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