WILMINGTON — ”She may have been the last witness of the events of 1898,” Leigh Carter said.
READ MORE: ‘Violently erased’: PBS documentary examines legacy of Wilmington’s 1898 coup
Carter was patting a live oak’s sturdy branches at the corner of Davis and Third streets. How old the tree is remains unknown.
“We will have to get an arborist,” added William Buster, formerly the New Hanover Community Endowment CEO.
The tree — and her history — will stay on the few acres, eventually set to become the home of the Wilmington 1898 Museum for Healing, Education and Democracy. Carter, born in Wilmington, purchased the corner lot a few years ago.
“There was just a sense that something over here really needed to be bookmarked, protected and preserved,” Carter said.
Located across from the city’s 1898 Memorial Park, opened in 2008, is land that Carter and Buster refer to as “sacred ground.”
Earlier this spring, Carter brought on Buster as a consultant to bring forth the museum. The goal is to launch a fundraising capital campaign in the early part of 2025, with hopes of raising at least $60 to $70 million.
“It’s the first step of a miles-long journey,” Buster said.
He and Carter met two years ago upon his arrival to Wilmington; Buster came from Asheville’s Dogwood Health Trust to work for the newly launched New Hanover Community Endowment, funded from the proceeds of sales from Novant Health’s purchase of New Hanover County Regional Medical Center. Carter said she and her father reached out to Buster for a lunch meeting; the goal was to see if any enthusiasm was evident at the endowment regarding the potential 1898 museum.
“I was excited by the prospect,” Buster said.
He confirmed he spoke about the project with the endowment chair briefly, but added no promises were made about grant applications. The endowment’s grants are voted on by the board and a project has to fall in line with one of the endowment’s four pillars for consideration. Education is one, which would align with the 1898 museum’s goals.
“We weren’t reaching out to ask for anything that early in the game, but at the end of that meeting,” Carter said, before pausing and asking Buster: “Can I say what you said?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
“William said he came to Wilmington for that job opportunity at the endowment but thought his spirit really called him here to be a part of healing around this 1898 history,” Carter continued.
One of the first people Buster met when he arrived in Wilmington was John Jeremiah Sullivan of the Third Person Project. Sullivan, along with local writers, historians, scholars and others, have been researching the historical context of 1898.
“John is the first person I ever talked to about 1898,” Buster said. “He literally walked me around, showed me everything, probably the first month I was here, and introduced me to the folks at the Masonic hall.”
Buster was referring to Giblem Lodge, the second-oldest Black Masonic Temple in the state. It was once a club of Black masons but was revoked of its tax-exempt, nonprofit status after 1898. To earn enough to keep going, the Masons sold a parcel behind the building; Hugh MacRae, co-conspirator of 1898, bought it within days. The lodge eventually became Wilmington’s first library for Black residents during segregation and today is working toward restoration.
It’s located a handful of blocks from the proposed 1898 museum site.
Also a few blocks away is The Daily Record, the only Black daily newspaper published nationwide back in 1898 by Alex Manly. Manly’s paper was read by citizens of all races in Wilmington, the largest city in North Carolina at the time. It had more than a 50% African American population, many of whom were successful businessmen; back then roughly 30% of Wilmington’s craftsmen — mechanics, carpenters, painters, plasterers, stevedores, blacksmiths, masons, shoemakers — were Black.
Many Black business owners and residents also were involved in government. The “Fusionist” party was a democratic makeup of both white and Black leaders from Populist and Republican parties. African Americans held three seats on the city’s 10–member board of aldermen and served local positions as magistrates, firefighters, and police officers.
Wilmington’s government proved both races could co-govern post-Reconstruction. At that time, the Fusionist government in the Port City advocated greater public participation in elections, tightened railroad regulations, and adjusted taxes for stockholders and property owners.
However, a group of white supremacists planned to overthrow it in a coup, to gain control and power. They did so after Manly wrote an op-ed challenging a white society woman’s speech in Georgia, advocating for lynching Black men who rape white women. Manly’s article mused at the possibility that an actual relationship between the two races could happen naturally and also pointed a finger at history of white men raping Black women.
The op-ed set off the white supremacists and on Nov. 10, 1898, they started rioting at the then Light Infantry Building on Market Street, between Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. A mob of 2,000 people marched six blocks to burn down Manly’s newspaper building before massacring between 40 to 300 African Americans. They then forced democratically elected municipal officials out of office, including the white mayor at the time.
It led to the exodus of more than 2,000 African American residents from the city, shifting it to a white majority. The aftereffects have been felt since.
One of 1898’s descendants is Inez Campbell-Eason, great-great granddaughter of African American businessman Isham Quick. She learned her grandfather — a freed slave — owned multiple banks in the Wilmington area and also served on the board of directors for the Perpetual Savings and the People’s Perpetual Savings and Loan in 1887. This is covered in the recently released PBS documentary, “American Coup: Wilmington 1898,” which will debut Tuesday night nationwide and remain on the channel for free for three years.
Campbell-Eason has spoken out against the events which cut off generational wealth and opportunity from her family, after Quick’s business and land was stolen from him following the massacre. In 2019, she said she believed reparations should be paid to 1898 ancestors, at least in the form of no-interest loans or tax breaks.
Campbell-Eason is on the advisory board for the 1898 Museum, along with LaToia Brown, founding board member of DREAMS, Fawn Rhodes, New Hanover County Health and Human Services equity coordinator, and John Monteith, owner of Monteith Construction. They have been conducting community conversations about what people would like to see in the museum and its goals and mission.
“This project belongs to Wilmington because, in our point of view, this story belongs to Wilmington,” Carter said.
When Buster and the endowment parted ways, Carter said she called him the same day “in an official capacity” to be a part of her vision. He helped establish the museum as a 501(3)c nonprofit and aided in the formation of the advisory board.
Buster said he looks back at his time at the endowment as a precursor that set him on this path.
“I think establishing the relationships that I have now all came out of the early work at the endowment,” Buster said, adding he learned how to navigate the Wilmington community. “Keeping people in the know is a real key to moving work here in this community. One of the things that I always ask is: Who makes things happen and who can prevent things from happening? And so I’ve learned all of that from the endowment.”
Buster confirmed he does plan to apply for an endowment grant to help get the museum off the ground. He also will assess state and federal grants, one of many steps to take before the doors open to the museum — planned for 2028. At the top of the list is securing an archivist and getting an architect onboard to flesh out designs.
“We expect this project to be really energizing to the community,” Carter said, particularly when it comes to fundraising.
She added she has been in early talks with the city about an easement nearby that they own and connects to the museum land. The museum also would be accessible from Jervay Freedom Walk, named in honor of Thomas and Willie Jervay who started another Black newspaper in town, The Wilmington Journal.
Carter and Buster also have been traveling to other museums of the same ilk to meet with directors and understand the ends and outs of launching something of the same caliber. This includes Charleston’s International African American Museum and The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Buster said he reached out to the directors of Greenwood Rising in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum was erected in honor of former community members who lived and worked on Black Wall Street; they were mobbed by white residents who attacked, burned and destroyed 35 square blocks of their neighborhood in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Buster and Carter also have been in touch with Cape Fear Museum officials, who they said have expressed support. The local museum has an exhibition on the events, updated in 2016, which includes artifacts, images, a reproduction of the Museum’s October 20, 1898 copy of the The Daily Record, and an 8-minute film, as well as an 1898 StoryMap. The map indicates many Black residents were wounded, shot and killed near Third and Davis streets, where the 1898 Museum will be.
Digital copies also are available of The Daily Record online and Cape Fear Museum offers videos and resources to teach content to students via virtual field trips.
For years, 1898 was referred to as a “race riot,” leaving inference as to how it was caused and by whom — many putting the blame on the Black community. In 2019, its historical marker on Market Street was corrected as “Wilmington Coup.” Yet, for years, the history wasn’t spoken of among descendants, state and local representatives, nor was it taught in classes locally. It still remains unknown in many parts of the state today, though now it’s covered in New Hanover County elementary classes.
Carter said the land she purchased was an intentional choice for the museum, in that it is in full view of passersby entering downtown Wilmington from Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. It will be located behind a new food truck park being built on Fourth Street, as well as facing Third Street, with Flats on Front Apartments also in full view.
“This is a story on top of the story: the story of what happened, and the story of the concealing of what happened,” Carter said. “And something about the fact that this is such an exposed location, that seems to lend itself to the healing process, too, that this isn’t just tucked in some corner of Wilmington … it’s going to be pretty hard to miss, and I think that’s a pretty beautiful part of the location.”
While there will be artifacts at the 1898 museum — the community is reaching out daily with new offerings, Carter and Buster said — the two envision interactive exhibits to make visits more “experiential.” They are leaning on technology to create meaningful engagement that Buster said he has seen effectively launched elsewhere. For instance, he referenced a Montgomery exhibit where participants could pick up a phone to listen to a conversation someone was having about an issue they faced regarding lynching.
“Your brain just does something different when you are actually being told the story,” Buster said. “We will have voices, we have transcripts, we have articles, so people are getting involved — they’re experiencing the history.”
While exposing the history of the past, the museum also will tackle the scars that still exist in the community years later. Carter — who moved back to Wilmington from San Francisco in 2015, where she did grad work in counseling and psychology — is a trauma specialist. She said the museum can be used as a tool and a supportive agent for recovery and reconciliation.
She and Buster have had lengthy conversations about the atrocities of 1898’s history and how to honor it while also balancing the dark with the light.
“Because it’s really a story about both,” Carter said, “and truth-telling means you tell all of it. I don’t think you get to any point of relief, recovery, healing, freedom, without that. So I think we are up for the challenge of being able to represent both.”
The museum also includes “Democracy” in its name to encompass the idea that the underrepresented will be heard. And those who visit will be able to understand how this successful government coup d’état in American history took place.
“At the end of the day, these folks believed that they had representation — and they did have representation,” Buster said of the Black community of the time. “And then they didn’t.”
Tips or comments? Email info@portcitydaily.com
Want to read more from PCD? Subscribe now and then sign up for our morning newsletter, Wilmington Wire, and get the headlines delivered to your inbox every morning.
