The 1898 riot and coup d'etat in Wilmington that killed an unknown number of black residents actually was a planned insurrection that white supremacists spent months organizing.

The violence was part of a statewide effort -- with a pivotal role played by The News & Observer and other newspapers -- to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens, according to a draft report released Thursday by the state-appointed 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission.

The incident is the only known violent overthrow of a government in U.S. history. Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed the laws that would disfranchise a race of people for generations -- until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

"Essentially, it crippled a segment of our population that hasn't recovered in 107 years," said Harper Peterson, former mayor of Wilmington and a member of the commission. "It's a major event that went unnoticed."

Now, with history fully told, members of the riot commission will turn toward action, perhaps asserting that there must be some atonement.

"We want to engage people to come up with creative ways to respond to 106 years of degradation," Peterson said.

To make amends, some commission members have suggested financing historical exhibitions about the riot and its consequences, portraying the Wilmington riot in school history texts, and developing economic interests in affected areas.

In addition, "some apology by the state for its inaction" is also called for, said Irving Joyner, vice chairman of the commission and a law professor at N.C. Central University.

The commission has been ordered to make recommendations to the legislature by May 2006. Whatever calls for action the commission advocates will probably be hotly debated.

"I don't want to let the cat out of the bag in terms of proposals," Peterson said. "But they're going to be very specific."

The General Assembly established the commission in 2000 in response to a push from two Wilmington legislators. The report is now open for public comment, and Joyner said he wants to hear suggestions about how the community should respond.

In its 450-page report, the Wilmington Race Riot Commission describes the riot and accompanying coup d'etat as a watershed moment in North Carolina history.

"Because Wilmington rioters were able to murder blacks in daylight and overthrow Republican government without penalty or federal intervention, everyone in the state, regardless of race, knew that the white supremacy campaign was victorious on all fronts," the report says.

In 1898, African-American men in North Carolina had been able to vote for some three decades as part of Reconstruction after the Civil War, said Jeffrey Crow, deputy secretary of the N.C. Office of Archives and History, which researched the report.

Blacks voted in blocs for the Republican party -- the party of Abraham Lincoln -- and the GOP had formed a coalition state government in Raleigh with the Populist party.

In Wilmington, the state's largest city at the time, blacks outnumbered whites and were a force in the Republican city leadership.

Democratic leaders, including Josephus Daniels, editor of The News & Observer, were outraged. They developed a campaign to install white supremacist leaders in the General Assembly and U.S. Congress during the 1898 elections.

"It's really kind of scary how organized it was," said LeRae Umfleet, a historian with the state Office of Archives and History who authored the report. "Every finger of the Democratic party just reached into every aspect of economic, social and political life at the time."

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