Editor’s Note: The following first appeared on “Footnotes,” Dr. Jemar Tisby’s Substack Newsletter.
January 6, 2025, marks four years since an attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Riled by their leader, Donald Trump, a mob stormed the Capitol Building in an attempt to subvert the certification of votes that would confirm Joe Biden’s lawful victory in the 2020 presidential election.
History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
The January 6th insurrection wasn’t the first time a violent mob attacked democracy in America. It happened in 1898—and the lessons are as relevant as they are chilling.
Both the January 6th insurrection attempt and the Wilmington Coup of 1898 were rooted in efforts to undermine democracy, maintain white supremacy, and suppress political representation.
The Wilmington Coup of 1898
After the Civil War and Black emancipation, Wilmington, North Carolina emerged as a thriving port city where Black people were in the majority and achieved a remarkable level of economic and political success.
Even after President Rutherford B. Hayes pulled federal troops out of the South as part of the Compromise of 1877 that installed him in the White House, thus effectively ending Reconstruction, Black people continued to find political enfranchisement in Wilmington.
They joined with white populists and became known as the Fusionists. This bi-racial coalition was able to win many elected offices across the state and in the city of Wilmington.
White supremacists who remembered the bygone days of chattel slavery when Black people were “in their place” mobilized to restore the South to the white man’s rule.
Known as “Redeemers” and aided by racist propaganda outlets masquerading as newspapers, they waged a vicious political smear campaign in 1898 to paint Black men as rapists, incompetent to hold office, and propel a narrative that the South was being pulled further down by Black leadership.
It didn’t work.
During the November elections, the Fusionists won several elected offices and their victories heralded an era of impending multiracial democracy in the city.
But two days after the election on November 10, 1898, about 2,000 white people marched on Wilmington.
What ensued was a bloodbath in the name of white supremacy, the subversion of a lawful election, and an attack on the foundations of democracy in the United States.
At least 60 Black people were killed by members of the mob and many others fled the city in fear of white racial terrorism.
A former Confederate officer, Alfred M. Waddell, declared himself mayor, and supporters of the coup took over all political offices thus installing an all-white local government.
To protect their power, the white coup leaders initiated a series of measures to disenfranchise Black voters which typically included poll taxes, literacy tests, and lynching as a form of domestic terrorism.
Also known as the Wilmington Race Riot, it is commonly known as the only successful coup in U.S. history.
The Parallels Between Wilmington and January 6th
Even though more than 125 years separate the Wilmington Coup of 1898 and the January 6th insurrection, they retain several similarities.
Both attacks had the aim of undermining the lawful elections and stalling the gears of democracy.
In each instance, mobs overruled the will of the people and the rule of law when the perpetrators could not win in a fair election.
Another commonality between Wilmington and Washington, D.C., is that white supremacy was a driving force.
Both events tried to reassert white dominance in the face of broader voting rights and democratic participation.
The unlawfully seated white officials in Wilmington wrote a document called the “White Declaration of Independence” and published it in the local white-owned newspaper.
It read in part:
Believing that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people; believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of African origin; and believing that the men of the State of North Carolina who joined in forming the Union did not contemplate for their descendants a subjection to an inferior race;
We, the undersigned citizens of the city of Wilmington and county of New Hanover, do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled, by men of African origin.
The rhetoric used in their racist screed echoes themes from the present: the implicit belief that white men are best suited for political leadership, that Black people thereby make inferior leaders, that the nation was made for white people and white people only, and that any expansion of multiracial democracy spelled the demise of the country.
On January 6th, white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys showed up to carry on the idea that white people (and perhaps a few others who share the ideology of white supremacy) should lead and rule.
A man paraded a large Confederate flag through the hallowed halls of Congress in a move that not even the Confederate Army pulled off during the Civil War.
Strong anti-(Black and brown) immigrant views attended the insurrection as well.
Another parallel between the two events is the role of the media.
In addition to using white newspapers as propaganda machines, white officials in the city specifically called for the dismantling of the Black-owned newspaper in town, the Wilmington Daily Record, and demanded its leader, A.M. Manly, “leave this city within twenty-four hours after the issuance of this proclamation…If the demand is refused, or if no answer is given within the time mentioned, then the editor, Manly, will be expelled by force.”
Similarly, in the weeks and months after the 2020 election, social media and right-wing propaganda outlets perpetuated lies and misleading statements about election fraud and spread the “The Big Lie” that the election was stolen from Trump.
These messages primed the mob for insurrection in January 2021.
Contemporary anti-CRT and anti-DEI campaigns represent widespread attempts to suppress journalism and history related to sharing accurate accounts of racism in the past and present.
Of course, both the coup and the insurrection attempt had lasting negative effects on politics and society.
The violence in Wilmington opened the way for decades of voter suppression, segregation, and Jim Crow oppression.
January 6th only served to increase the massive divides between the political Right and Left and Democrats and Republicans.
It eroded trust in democratic institutions and processes, and it added fuel to restrict voting rights with measures that disproportionately affect marginalized communities such as Black people, the poor, and immigrants.
Finally, and perhaps most devastatingly, the perpetrators of the coup and insurrection faced no real accountability.
In Wilmington, members of the coup were often celebrated as heroes who had the temerity to do what was “necessary” to take back the city—even if it involved violence and killing.
Some participants and organizers of the January 6th insurrection have been prosecuted and imprisoned, but its most prominent leader, Donald Trump, has not only evaded justice, but he won re-election in 2024.
He is now promising to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who have been caught up in the legal system.
The Lessons of the Past in the Present
We might have gained some solace after January 6th if it appeared as one-time or rare event.
Instead, we see that the attempted coup in 2021 is part of a broader historical pattern of violent resistance on the part of white people to democratic progress.
It’s not enough to say that democracy is fragile and requires constant effort to maintain, even in its imperfect forms.
We must go further and acknowledge that the most violent and anti-democratic movements in the history of this nation are specifically connected to white supremacy and racial prejudice.
Both the Wilmington Coup of 1898 and the January 6th insurrection of 2021 reveal a hard truth: democracy cannot survive without dismantling white supremacy.
To defend one without confronting the other is to misunderstand history—and risk perpetuating its worst patterns.
