The editorial below appeared on the front page of The Daily Record in Wilmington, North Carolina, on October 20, 1898.

At that time, The Daily Record was one of the country’s leading African American newspapers.

When I am giving lectures in schools, colleges, and public gatherings these days, I am often asked to compare what is happening in America today with the white supremacy movement that rose to power in Wilmington and the rest of North Carolina between 1898 and 1900.

I find it an interesting question. I see important differences, but I also see some rather haunting similarities.

This editorial speaks to one of the less obvious similarities between that time in history and the present: the difficulty, and sometimes the incapacity, of imagining the evil before us.

The editorial was not signed, but was almost surely written by Alexander Manly, the 32-year-old African American journalist who was the editor and publisher of the Daily Record.

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What Is There to Fear?

From the Wilmington Daily Record, October 20, 1898. 

The Democratic papers are urging the “Red Shirts” to put themselves in evidence from now on to election day.

They have talked freely of forcing their way to election, and to those who are not familiar with the people of this city they get the impression that there is danger of bloodshed and riot.

We say now as we have said: that there is no danger of this sort of thing.

We have heard it reported that several rifles have been brought into this city to be used as a last resort for carrying the election.

We doubt that any such thought has entered the thought of any honorable man from first to last.

In the first place, we ask in all seriousness who is there among the whole number that would make himself a murderer for the sake of carrying an election, which if it goes either way, must give white men office?

And if there were those willing to shoot or kill, surely they would stop long enough to think who it is they would thus murder!

If Wilmington was the half civilized town some try to make it appear, there might indeed be danger, but such is not the case.

We have here a class of people who delight in law and order, who will not lend aide to any act of violence and they are the ones who very largely control the masses.

The wealthy and intelligent men of this community are not the ones whom we expect to engage in this business of disorder and bloodshed; well then who will engage in it?

Surely not the poorer class of white people who live either next door to colored families or at least in the immediate neighborhood?

These can’t be expected to engage in this hellish pastime at the instance of men who would incite them to riot in order that they, the office seekers, may be benefitted?

No, oh, no! Men are not led to the commission of gross crime simply for the gratification of someone else’s ambitions.

They are even now counting up the cost of such a step, and it will be seen that, despite the howl that is being made, and the threats the fill the papers, somber, common sense will prevail and men who have lived in peace and happiness together as citizens, though differing very materially socially and racially, will continue their friendly associations to the end of the chapter.

If the suggestions given out in the hostile papers were followed up, who can imagine the depths to which this fair community would be plunged?

Make this matter a personal question! Ask yourself: “What have I against my neighbor that I would seek to destroy his life or happiness?”

Sober, honorable white people in this city are not responsible for these threats, and happily they constitute the large majority of our white citizens.

The danger is as great to them as it is to ourselves, for they know that if lawlessness ever begins, it will never stop at the point at which it was aimed, but like an avalanche will sweep ALL before it; and like “Caesar’s Column,” after they have destroyed the enemy they will then destroy themselves in their wild intoxication.

Rest assured that the conservative men will preserve order.

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Three weeks later, whites burned The Daily Record’s offices to the ground, went on a killing spree in the city’s streets, ransacked polling places, and overthrew Wilmington’s city government.