We have waited two hundred and fifty years for liberty, and this is what it is when it comes.
O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name! – Rev. Charles S. Morris
The Rev. J. Allen Kirk gave this statement
about the experience of November 10, 1898.
It was a great sight to see them
marching from death,
and the colored women,
colored men, colored children,
colored enterprises and colored people
all exposed to death.
Firing began,
and it seemed like a mighty battle in war time.
The shrieks and screams
of children, of mothers, of wives
were heard,
such as caused the blood
of the most inhuman person
to creep.
Thousands of women, children and men
rushed to the swamps
and there lay upon the earth
in the cold to freeze and starve.
The woods were filled
with colored people.
The streets were dotted
with their dead bodies.
A white gentleman said
he saw ten bodies lying
in the undertakers office at one time.
Some of their bodies were left lying
in the streets until up in the next day
following the riot.
Some were found
by the stench and miasma
that came forth from their decaying bodies
under their houses.
Every colored man
who passed through the streets
had either to be guarded
by one of the crowd
or have a paper
giving him the right to pass.
All colored men at the cotton press
and oil mills
were ordered not to leave their labor
but stop there,
while their wives and children were shrieking
and crying
in the midst of the flying balls
and in sight of the cannons and Gatling gun.
All the white people had gone
out of that part of the City,
this army of men marched through the streets,
sword buckled to their sides,
giving the command to fire.
Men stood at their labor
wringing their hands and weeping,
but they dare not move
to the protection of their homes.
And then when they passed
through the streets
had to hold up their hands
and be searched.
The little white boys of the city
searched them
and took from them every means of defense,
and if they resisted,
they were shot down .
The city was under military rule;
no Negro was allowed
to come into the city
without being examined
or without passing through with his boss,
for whom he labored.
Colored women were examined
and their hats taken off
and search was made
even under their clothing.
They went from house to house
looking for Negroes
they considered offensive;
took arms they had hidden
and killed them
for the least expression of manhood.
They gathered around colored homes,
firing like great sportsmen
firing at rabbits in an open field
and when one would jump his man,
from sixty to one hundred shots
would be turned loose upon him.
His escape was impossible.
One fellow was walking along a railroad
and they shot him down
without any provocation.
It is said by an eye witness
that men lay upon the street dead
and dying,
while members of their race walked by
helpless
and unable to do them any good
or their families.
Negro stores were closed
and the owners thereof
driven out of the city
and even shipped away
at the point of the gun.
Some of the churches
were searched for ammunition,
and cannons turned toward the door
in the attitude of blowing up the church
if the pastor or officers
did not open them
that they might go through.
Another ‘Man of God’ offered a different perspective.
A survivor of the incident, who fled the city, Rev. Charles S. Morris, told his account of the event before the International Association of Colored Clergymen in January 1899:
Nine Negroes massacred outright; a score wounded and hunted like partridges on the mountain; one man, brave enough to fight against such odds would be hailed as a hero anywhere else, was given the privilege of running the gauntlet up a broad street, where he sank ankle deep in the sand, while crowds of men lined the sidewalks and riddled him with a pint of bullets as he ran bleeding past their doors; another Negro shot twenty times in the back as he scrambled empty handed over a fence; thousands of women and children fleeing in terror from their humble homes in the darkness of the night … crouched in terror from the vengeance of those who, in the name of civilization, and with the benediction of the ministers of the Prince of Peace, inaugurated the reformation of the city of Wilmington the day after the election by driving out one set of white office holders and filling their places with another set of white office holders – the one being Republican and the other Democrat.
All this happened, not in Turkey, nor in Russia, nor in Spain, not in the gardens of Nero, nor in the dungeons of Torquemada, but within three hundred miles of the White House, in the best State in the South, within a year of the twentieth century, while the nation was on its knees thanking God for having enabled it to break the Spanish yoke from the neck of Cuba. This is our civilization. This is Cuba’s kindergarten of ethics and good government. This is Protestant religion in the United States, that is planning a wholesale missionary crusade against Catholic Cuba. This is the golden rule as interpreted by the white pulpit of Wilmington.
Amen, my brother.