Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

by David Zucchino

As the proprietor of a white outpost in Brooklyn, Dr. Moore had been tasked by the city’s leading white citizens to serve as trip wire for any trouble arising from black men living there. Along with selected white men elsewhere in the city, Moore had been instructed to notify white leaders if blacks began to riot, as the newspapers had been predicting all summer. Shortly before noon on November 10, Dr. Moore was inside his drugstore when he heard the sudden rattle of gunshots from North Fourth and Harnett. He rushed to his telephone and called the armory of the Wilmington Light Infantry. “They’re fighting over the road!” he shouted into the receiver. More gunshots sounded. Five or six black men dressed in workers’ overalls fell dead. One wounded man, Samuel McFallon, crawled under a house on North Fourth Street and later bled to death. Clawson, the Messenger reporter, ran through the streets, trying to keep up with the wild shooting. “Gunfire rattled all around us and bullets whistled closely,” he wrote.