Almost overnight, the coup transformed Wilmington from an American mecca for blacks to a bastion of white supremacy virulently hostile to its black citizens. Before the 1898 coup, Wilmington was 56 percent black. That percentage dropped precipitously in the years after 1898. The 1900 federal census listed Wilmington as 49 percent black. The rate continued to plunge—from 47 percent in 1910 to 40 percent in 1930, 35 percent in 1950, 33 percent in 1990, and just 18.3 percent by 2018.
