A package of laws intended to correct the century-old damage, caused by a white supremacist plot to drive blacks from power in Wilmington, has been all but ignored. And the movement's legislative champion, Rep. Thomas Wright, is embroiled in scandal.

"We agonized over this whole process," said Kenny Davis, a member of a commission that spent six years studying the riot. "We came up with recommendations that would improve the quality of life, not only for African Americans, but for everybody in the community. And now they're not being pursued."

Wright, an eight-term legislator from Wilmington, filed 10 bills on the issue when the legislative session started. All but one have failed even to come up for discussion. The remaining bill -- a simple acknowledgment that the incident occurred -- passed the House but faces uncertainty in the Senate.

Some commission members, who worked to uncover what had been one of the state's least-known and darkest episodes, say they are concerned that Wright is no longer effective and that their work may not result in the change they had hoped for.

"I had left it up to Rep. Wright to guide us," said Irving Joyner, a law professor at N.C. Central University and the commission's vice chairman. "Now the viability of that strategy is in question."

In the past few weeks, Wright has become the subject of a criminal investigation. The State Board of Elections says he failed to report more than $200,000 in political contributions, accepted prohibited corporate donations and spent campaign cash on personal expenses. The governor, along with several other leading Democrats, have asked him to resign.

Wright said this week that his current troubles have nothing to do with the lack of support for repairing the damage that 1898 did to blacks in Wilmington.

"I never expected a quick resolution to this horrific event that happened 108 years ago," Wright said. "These kinds of issues, as emotionally charged as they are, it just takes time."

Study commission

The state legislature created a 13-member commission to study the riot in 2000, after the event's centennial stirred discussion. Until a decade ago, many in Wilmington didn't know about the riot and others had written it off as myth.

At the commission's request, a state researcher pored over historical documents. The report she produced, released last June, said the riot stemmed from a campaign led by white supremacist Democrats, including former News & Observer publisher Josephus Daniels, who wanted to push blacks out of public office.

The riot's organizers incited residents of Wilmington, then the state's largest city, to storm the city's black-owned newspaper. The office was set ablaze, and an angry mob killed an unknown number of blacks.

A white-run government was installed, and the era of Jim Crow gripped the state soon after.

Wright, who headed the commission, said he would push the state to make amends for an event that still hobbles blacks in Wilmington.

Wright's bills would provide funding for the development of school curriculum, museum exhibits, library collections, monuments and a documentary about the riot. Another bill would establish a new commission to search for ways to provide minority business incentives, increase minority home ownership and catalog the effects of racism on blacks. Another asks the state to issue a formal apology. Still another allows those whose relatives were killed or lost property in the riot to file claims for reparations.

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