How Did The Wilmington Race Riot Influence Segregation

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Wilmington Race riot:
How did it influence segregation?
Nearly two centuries to about 5 decades ago, segregation was alive and well throughout North Carolina and the United states. Segregation had given whites a higher ranking than the lesser African American population. During the late 1870’s the town of Wilmington, NC was starting to integrate their population. This populus port town was the hub of the integrated workforce for decades. The African American population rose tremendously and the town stood for equality and the fusion of the races. This created great tension which led to the Race riot of 1898. This event tremendously changed segregation and voting rights for African Americans in North Carolina and US.
The town of Newton now …show more content…

One of these groups were called the Red shirts which were a group of democratic party members. They held racists rallies, disrupted African - American church services and Republican meetings. They first appeared in NC in the fall of 1898. These groups formed to scare the black citizens and they made up stories about how the "black beast" would harm white women and the white society if they were not stopped("The Wilmington" 13-14).
The day of the election African American voters braved the hatred from supremacist and turned out in large numbers for the election. However there were way more democrats than Republicans and Populists. The democrats also stuffed the ballot boxes leading them to a landslide win. The day after the election, the whites met the Wilmington courthouse and set laws on the african american community and rid of all the pro-african american laws ("The Wilmington" …show more content…

The new board was now made of leading democrats and they elected Waddell as the Mayor. When Waddell first took office he fired all black officers and employees("The Wilmington" 25). Waddell also forced laws such as the Grandfather Clause, Fifteenth Amendment, and started disfranchisement. After Waddell and the rest of NC inforced the Grandfather Clause so did many other countries. Like Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Virginia. This act inverted the reconstruction and began enacting literacy tests, poll taxes, and other tactics which they claimed would exclude the poor and uneducated, but was really designed to disenfranchise southern blacks

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