Cross-posted from The Stinging Nettle and BlueNC.
In 1898, in Wilmington, North Carolina, a duly elected local government comprised of whites and blacks was deposed by an angry mob. Black businessmen were burned out of their shops and homes and Gatling guns strafed the streets of black Wilmington.
The mob was motivated by members of the white business elite and the Raleigh News & Observer, which had published a string of incendiary editorials decrying the rise of black political power in Wilmington - which was then the largest city in the state.
The resulting weeks of violence and intimidation overthrew the city government and established White Supremacy as the law of the land in North Carolina until the 1960s.
Yesterday the Democratic-led NC House of Representatives passed a bill acknowledging the "Race Riot" and acknowledging the illegitimacy of the system it installed.
True to form, the Republicans voted against it.
And people ask me why I am a Democrat.
More below the fold.
The report mentioned in the bill below was first discussed on the Stinging Nettle back in 2005
The Bill passed the N.C. House yesterday by a vote of 67 -47, with 2 not voting and 4 absent.
The Bill passed with ONE Republican vote, that of Carolyn H. Justice, the Representative from New Hanover and Pender County.
The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, which was a bloody coup d'etat led by the News & Observer, the white elite, and the Democratic Party (with help from Washington Republicans), is one of the darkest stains on the vestments of the North Carolina Democratic Party. The Commission and this Bill are at least an attempt to acknowledge that and wash some of the blood off the hands of the State and the Party
Ask yourself what your state of mind would have to be to vote against the language above.
Ask yourself how darkly cynical you have to be to oppose something like this.
Ask yourself what interests a party is appealing to when it votes, en masse, against the recognition and commemoration of one of the worst acts of political violence in American history, an event that slammed shut the shackles of segregation and Jim Crow in North Carolina and hampered this State for the next 70 years.
Over the last 40 years, the Democrats have gradually tried to remove those stains, to look in the mirror and acknowledge their own historical roles in segregation, and to try to undo the damage that was done.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are perfectly happy to pick up the bloody robes and wrap themselves in them. This is the latest example.
Remember, THE REPUBLICANS VOTED AGAINST THIS:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF NORTH CAROLINA
SESSION 2007
H 1
HOUSE BILL 751
Short Title: 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Acknowledgment.
(Public)
Sponsors:
Representatives Wright, Jones (Primary Sponsors); and Parmon.
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to acknowledge as recommended by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission that the violence of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot was a conspiracy that used intimidation and force to replace a duly elected local government
Whereas, public knowledge and historical memory of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot was obscure until the North Carolina General Assembly, led by Representative Thomas E. Wright and the late Senator Luther Jordan, established the Wilmington Race Riot Commission ("Commission") in 2000 to develop a historical record of the event and to assess the economic impact of the riot on African Americans in Wilmington and across the Eastern region and the State; and
Whereas, the Commission, chaired by Representative Wright and Senator Julia Boseman, both of Wilmington, oversaw a formal investigation of the events of 1898 and approved a 464‑page report, detailing the history of the riot and the events that precipitated it; and
Whereas, the Commission's report concluded that political leaders and other members of a white elite were directly responsible for and participants in the violence of November 17, 1898; engineering and executing a statewide white supremacy campaign in order to win the 1900 elections that was vicious, polarizing, and defamatory toward African-Americans and that encouraged racial violence; and
Whereas, the effects of that campaign and the Wilmington Riots lasted far beyond 1898, paving the way for legislation that disenfranchised African-American and poor white citizens, for lynching and violence against African-American citizens, and for Jim Crow segregation until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; and
Whereas, the State of North Carolina embraces the Commission's report as a chronicle of an important part of State history, but it is saddened by the full extent of leaders' involvement in the Wilmington Riot of 1898 as these deplorable actions contradict the spirit of a modern State;
Now, therefore, The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1. The General Assembly of North Carolina, on behalf of the people of North Carolina, acknowledges that the violence of 1898 in Wilmington was a conspiracy of a white elite that used intimidation and force to replace a duly elected local government, that people lost livelihoods and were banished from their homes without due process of law, and that government at all levels failed to protect its citizens.
SECTION 2. This act is effective when it becomes law.