People in this chapter · Silas P. Wright

By late afternoon, the attack on Wilmington had reached the offices of municipal government. Republican and Populist officials were made to resign, some at gunpoint, and white Democrats were put in their places. The outgoing mayor, Silas P. Wright, was replaced by Alfred Moore Waddell. The new administration had obtained offices through forced vacancies and appointments rather than an election for those offices. The appearance of orderly succession on paper, with people resigning and others taking their seats, leaves out the armed men outside and the violence in the streets. PBS identifies the change of leadership at City Hall.

c. 18982023

Thalian Hall and City Hall, then and now. Drag the handle to compare. Left: Thalian Hall, c. 1898, unknown photographer, via Wikimedia Commons. U.S. public domain. Right: Thalian Hall and Wilmington City Hall, March 2023. DiscoA340 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The removal extended beyond the mayor and board. People the new regime wanted out of town were taken to trains or fled under threat. Armond Scott, who had handled the Black committee’s written response, and former deputy sheriff George Z. French left that evening. Black businessman Thomas C. Miller and butcher Ari Bryant were among those forced out the following day. Former police chief John R. Melton and other white officials were also driven out. The targets included people with political connections and people whose economic independence gave them influence outside City Hall. The PBS chronology records named departures, and NCpedia describes the pattern of banishment.

Other families left because remaining had become dangerous. Some found temporary refuge outside town. Some moved elsewhere in North Carolina, and others left the state. The demographic evidence measures that loss imperfectly. The city and county were different jurisdictions with different population counts. The National Register documentation records that Wilmington’s former Black majority disappeared within two years. PBS reports that New Hanover County as a whole still had a slight Black majority in the 1900 census. A reader can hold both facts together by keeping the geographic boundaries in view. Neither count supplies an exact number of people forced out on November 10. Wilmington Historic District documentation and the PBS demographic timeline report the separate measures.

The changes continued after the men with guns had done their work. Black police officers lost their positions. On November 17, the fire department began replacing Black employees with white men. In March 1899, Waddell and the aldermen were formally elected without Republican opposition. No one was prosecuted for the violence of November 10. The names of men who took power, the public character of the march, and the surviving photographs show how much could be visible without producing a criminal trial. NCpedia recounts the municipal and statewide aftermath. PBS records the absence of prosecutions.