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

by David Zucchino

Men in the mob fired into the attic, then set the house alight. Wright emerged from the flames and was shot instantly. He fell, his blood soaking the packed earth. Several men yanked him to his feet. Wright begged for mercy. Someone smashed him over the head with a gas pipe, drawing more blood and slamming him back to his knees. Several men yelled for him to be lynched from a nearby lamppost. They searched for a rope. But another man suggested that Wright be given a chance to run for his life. He was released. “Run, nigger, run!” a man shouted. Bleeding profusely, Wright stumbled through the packed sand at the edge of the street. He struggled about fifty feet before gunshots sounded. He tumbled to the ground, felled by thirteen bullets, five of them through his back. He lay in the dirt bleeding for about thirty minutes before several men took him to a hospital. Wright survived through the night but died early the next morning. Doctors who treated him told the Messenger: “They never saw one man with as many shots in him as he had.”