State Lawmaker's Troubles Stalls Recognition of Wilmington White Riot - An Unknown Number of Blacks Killed

From the Chartlotte Observer [HERE]
By Kristin Collins

It took more than 100 years to bring the race riot of 1898 into the light. Now, the past seems, once again, to be fading.

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.

He said he has done his best, proposing legislation to enact every one of the commission's recommendations. While he admits that most won't pass this session, he said they could come up again next year. And he said he is gaining support for adding the riot to public school history curriculum, with or without dedicated funding.

But he said commission members have failed to help him lobby, and that many of his fellow legislators are against acknowledging the past's lingering effects.

Fervid opposition

Even Wright's bill acknowledging the riot occurred faced fervent opposition. It passed 67-47.

Leo Daughtry, a Smithfield Republican, was one of those who voted against it. He said the legislature should concern itself with the issues of today: roads, public education, taxes. He said he would oppose any plan to fund remembrances of 1898, whether with a monument or with reparations to descendants of victims.

"I don't see where it would serve any purpose at this point to spend money on an event that occurred a hundred years ago that didn't affect any person living today," Daughtry said.

Commission members said they didn't expect all Wright's bills to pass. But they said they expected many to at least spark discussion, and they hoped that measures as simple as providing $10,000 for a monument to the riot would succeed this session.

Joyner, the law professor, said he is going to start looking for a new champion for the 1898 initiatives.

Rep. Earl Jones, a Greensboro Democrat, is co-sponsoring many of the bills and said this week that he will work for their passage, but so far he has let Wright take the lead. New Hanover County Sen. Julia Boseman, who helped lead the commission, didn't return phone calls seeking comment.

"Unless there is some effort to develop this with other legislators, these proposals will just die," Joyner said. "If they have not died already."