Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 31
The northern newspapers “repeated the talking points of
the white supremacists almost word for word” and “even
swallowed the white supremacy narrative” that Blacks
“weren’t intelligent enough to vote and certainly were not
intelligent or capable enough to hold office and had to be
removed.”19
The terror campaign intimidated Black men from voting
while persuading thousands of white men to vote for
Democrats. As a result, Democrats captured the majority
of the state legislative seats during the November 1898
election. And as Zucchino notes, “White supremacists had
stuffed ballot boxes with Democratic votes and destroyed
Republican ballots.”20
Two days after the election, white militias killed more
than 60 Black Wilmington residents (the true figure is
unknown) and forced white and Black leaders out of
the city. More than 2,000 Black residents fled the city.21
Coup leaders forced the mayor, the police chief and eight
aldermen, including three Black members, to resign. One
of the coup’s leaders, Alfred Moore Waddell — a former
Confederate lieutenant colonel, newspaper publisher and
editor, and congressman — was installed as mayor, as were
eight white-supremacist aldermen.22
The militia also burned down the Daily Record’s office but
not before Manly fled the city.23 In the years that followed,
Manly would remain fearful for his life. North Carolina
newspapers kept track of him. And in January 1899, he
made his only known public acknowledgement of the
coup and the events leading up to it. As Zucchino notes,
“Manly refused to speak to anyone — not his wife, his son,
or his friends — about details of his time in Wilmington in
1898.”24
Following the coup, Daniels published a
front-page cartoon that showed Simmons,
the state Democratic chairman, winning
a checkers game “over a diminutive black
figure.” The caption read: “The Game Is
Over. The White Men Win.”25
Following the coup, Simmons went on to serve as a U.S.
senator for 30 years.26
Despite Daniels’ role in spreading disinformation that
led to the murder of Black Wilmington residents, he was
welcomed in the highest levels of our federal government
in subsequent years.
Daniels became the secretary of the Navy under President
Woodrow Wilson in 1913 and unsuccessfully advocated
for the government to take over control of the radio
industry following World War I.27 Daniels was concerned
about foreign control of the U.S. radio industry and
believed the federal government should control radio
or that it should be a monopoly. President Woodrow
Wilson’s administration shared these concerns. This led
to the creation of a radio trust made up of corporations
to control the industry and prevent foreign control of
U.S. airwaves. And it gave the Navy a seat on the board of
directors of the Radio Corporation of America — RCA.28
General Electric's Owen Young served as RCA’s board
chairman. The companies that initially made up the major
stakeholders of RCA included AT&T, General Electric,
United Fruit Company and Westinghouse. And in 1926,
RCA created the National Broadcasting Company — NBC
Blue and Red networks — which helped ensure the
dominance of powerful companies in the broadcasting
industry.29
The passage of the 1934 Communications
Act and the creation of the Federal
Communications Commission led to agency
policies that ensured white corporate
control of the commercial broadcast
industry — an approach that exists to this
day.30
Given that our media system reflects our society’s racialcaste system, it’s not surprising that it took more than a
century for the state of North Carolina to reckon with the
history of the murderous 1898 Wilmington coup and the
role of the News & Observer.
In 2000, the North Carolina legislature passed a bill to
form a commission to investigate the coup. In 2006, the
commission released its report and found that “members
of the Democratic white elite in Wilmington and New
Hanover County, achieved their political goals through
violence and intimidation” and that “involved in the
conspiracy were men prominent in the Democratic
Party, former Confederate officers, former officeholders,
and newspaper editors locally and statewide rallied by
Josephus Daniels of the Raleigh News & Observer.”31
The commission also called for reparations:
“acknowledging that the democratic process failed in
Wilmington [and resulted in] persistent, unfavorable
treatment especially to the African American community,
government leadership at all levels will pursue actions that
repair the wrong.”
The commission made a number of recommendations
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