For decades, much of Wilmington was in denial about what happened in the city on Nov. 10, 1898. Perhaps worse, it wasn't that long ago that many residents had not even heard of the Port City's coup d'etat.

We hope that the denial and lack of awareness of the coup are themselves becoming history. Earlier this month, the state of North Carolina unveiled a highway historical marker in front of the old Wilmington Light Infantry armory building at Fourth and Market streets, the site where an armed band of white supremacists gathered and then marched to destroy a black-owned newspaper.

A marker already stands to Alex Manly, the crusading African-American editor whose offices were torched. The new marker, however, nudges matters a few steps further. It refers to those shameful events not as a "riot" or "race riot," as earlier sources had, but as what it really was a coup that is generally considered the only successful overthrow of a government in U.S. history.

This is not just semantics or political correctness. This underlines bald, brutal fact.

A "race riot" implies that Wilmington's black residents were, if not the instigators, at least up to something. No. The event was in fact a coup d'etat.

Usually it means that some tinpot generals have overthrown the government and seized power in some distant country where democracy hasn't taken firm root.

Here, it covers a conspiracy led by some of the city's key power brokers. That conspiracy forced the legally elected mayor and aldermen of Wilmington, a biracial body, to resign, one by one, essentially by gunpoint. They were then replaced by an all-white slate.

An unknown number of African Americans were killed in the process. As far as is known, no white people lost their lives.

The leaders of this coup later joined other white supremacists in North Carolina in enacting Jim Crow laws that instituted racial segregation and deprived most black citizens of the right to vote for more than half a century.

The legacy of this coup put a chill on Wilmington life that lasted for close to a century and still exists today.

More than 120 years later, some North Carolinians have seen their voting rights targeted by election laws and their political clout diminished by gerrymandering.

Fortunately, North Carolina now seems to be heading in a different direction. The courts have called foul on the excesses of gerrymandering. A new law with bipartisan support, signed by Gov. Cooper, cracks down on the practice of "harvesting" absentee ballots and further guarantees early voting is available on the Saturday before Election Day.

The long-overdue 1898 marker is up, but the fight isn't over. As the coup d'etat of 1898 taught us, foreign foes are not our only menace.

Star News of Wilmington, a Gannett publication

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Editorial: Remembering the 1898 coup in Wilmington, NC - News - Burlington Times News