Chapter 3

The statewide white supremacy campaign

Charles B. Aycock, governor of North Carolina from 1901 to 1905, has become the central symbol of the state's progressive traditions, first and most illustrious of our "education governors." Politicians in North Carolina making high-minded appeals for education and civility routinely invoke "the spirit of Aycock." The contradictory truth is that Aycock earned his prominence by fomenting a bloody white supremacy revolution in North Carolina. This campaign -- with Wilmington as its flash point -- essentially overthrew the state government by force and by fraud, ending meaningful democracy in the state for generations. How this happened is a lesson in the politics of racial violence and the ironies of public memory.

As the 1898 political season loomed, the Populists and Republicans hoped to make more gains through Fusion. The Democrats, desperate to overcome their unpopularity, decided to place all their chips on racial antagonism. Party chairman Furnifold Simmons mapped out the campaign strategy with leaders whose names would be immortalized in statues, on buildings and street signs: Aycock, Henry G. Connor, Robert B. Glenn, Claude Kitchin, Locke Craig, Cameron Morrison, George Rountree, Francis D. Winston and Josephus Daniels.

These men knew that the Democrats' only hope was to develop campaign issues that cut across party lines. Southern history and practical politics had taught them that white discomfort with black political participation remained a smoldering ember that they could fan to full flame. So they made the "redemption" of North Carolina from "Negro domination" the theme of the 1898 campaign. Though promising to restore something traditional, they would, in fact, create a new social order rooted in white supremacy and commercial domination.

A propaganda campaign slandering African-Americans would not come cheap. Simmons made secret deals with railroads, banks and industrialists. In exchange for donations right away, the Democrats pledged to slash corporate taxes after their victory.

At the center of their strategy lay the gifts and assets of Daniels, editor and publisher of The News and Observer. He spearheaded a propaganda effort that made white partisans angry enough to commit electoral fraud and mass murder.

It would not be merely a campaign of heated rhetoric but also one of violence and intimidation. Daniels called Simmons "a genius in putting everybody to work -- men who could write, men who could speak, and men who could ride -- the last by no means the least important." By "ride," Daniels employed a euphemism for vigilante terror. Black North Carolinians had to be kept away from the polls by any means necessary.

Though it would end in bloodshed, the campaign began with an ordinary enough meeting of the Democratic executive committee on Nov. 20, 1897. At its end, Francis D. Winston of Bertie County published a call for whites to rise up and "reestablish Anglo-Saxon rule and honest government in North Carolina." He attacked Republican and Populist leaders for turning over local offices to blacks. "Homes have been invaded, and the sanctity of woman endangered," the Democratic broadside claimed. "Business has been paralyzed and property rendered less valuable."

This claim ignored the enormous commercial expansion in North Carolina in the 1890s. Despite the pain of farmers pelted by the national agricultural depression, textile mills had increased fourfold; invested capital had surged to 12 times its 1890 value; the number of employed workers in North Carolina had skyrocketed during the decade; and the railroad interests had obtained a 99-year lease on public railways. But the truth was not the point. The Democrats clearly planned to portray themselves as the saviors of North Carolina from the Fusionist regime -- and from "Negro domination."

By any rational assessment, African-Americans could hardly be said to "dominate" North Carolina politics. Helen G. Edmonds, the scholar from N.C. Central University, which in her day was called North Carolina College for Negroes, weighed the matter in her classic 1951 work, "The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894-1901." She wrote:

"An examination of 'Negro domination' in North Carolina revealed that one Negro was elected to Congress; ten to the state legislature; four aldermen were elected in Wilmington, two in New Bern, two in Greenville, one or two in Raleigh, one county treasurer and one county coroner in New Hanover; one register of deeds in Craven; one Negro jailer in Wilmington; and one county commissioner in Warren and one in Craven."

Indeed, all three political parties were controlled by whites. Two of them -- the Populists and the Democrats -- could fairly be described as hostile to blacks, though the Populists supported a small degree of black office-holding in an arrangement based on the arithmetic of political power. Given that North Carolina's population was 33 percent African-American, it would be far more accurate to describe the state of affairs as "white domination."

But to white supremacists, the fact that black votes -- usually for white candidates -- could sway elections was tantamount to domination. They wanted blacks removed from the political equation.