Before the holidays, The News & Observer did something unusual for a newspaper and aired its old dirty linen in public.
In a story about the 1898 Wilmington race riot, the paper noted that The N&O played a leading role in the events that led up to the riot and its aftermath, which included the disfranchisement of blacks in North Carolina for the next half century. Under its founder Josephus Daniels, the paper helped lead a statewide white supremacy campaign to boot Republicans, including many African-Americans, from power and install Democrats in their place.
The N&O under Daniels published stories about community crime and graft in Wilmington, then the state’s largest city, and published front-page cartoons depicting racist images of “Negro rule.” The riot resulted in the killings of blacks; banishment of Republican leaders, including blacks, from Wilmington; and overthrow of the elected town government — reportedly, the only coup d’etat in U.S. history. Meanwhile, the white supremacy campaign placed state government in the hands of Democrats, who promptly took away African-Americans’ right to vote.
In an editorial Dec. 17, Daniels’ successors at the modern-day N&O called his conduct an “embarrassing blot on the newspaper’s past. As an institution, the newspaper was complicit in a cause that brought shame, and that still brings regret.”
The story and editorial elicited interesting response from readers. Some praised the paper for being forthcoming about an ugly chapter in its history. Others said the paper wasn’t forthcoming enough and should have, instead of merely expressing “regret,” made “direct, full admission of wrongdoing and expression of deepest remorse,” as Jean Aycock of Cary put it in a People’s Forum letter.
The story and editorial were occasioned by issuance of a new report by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, a group appointed by the legislature to look into that event and issue recommendations. The 450-page report is an impressive work, full of gripping narrative and rich documentation, that I would commend to anyone interested in the state’s history. It can be found online at http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc/.
How severe were the transgressions of The N&O and its editor? Inescapably execrable, by most accounts. “The floodlight of fevered journalism which The News & Observer cast on conditions in the state’s chief seaport, where a sinister ‘Negro rule’ supposedly held sway, did its unworthy part in paving the way for…the Wilmington race riot” wrote Joseph L. Morrison in an otherwise admiring 1966 biography of Josephus Daniels. Daniels himself, in an autobiography written 41 years after the riot, said, “The paper was cruel in its flagellations. In the perspective of time, I think it was too cruel.”
In one way, it was easy for today’s N&O to cast a critical eye on that episode of its history, because the paper in 1995 passed hands to a California-based newspaper chain with no ties to The N&O’s past. We are no longer the newspaper family of 1898, or even 1995. That made me wonder how Daniels’ heirs today regarded The N&O’s critical look at their history.
“I’m assuming that it’s an effort to be sure the public knows that The N&O had a role in it, and we’re going to be the first to say so. I can’t quarrel with that,” said Frank Daniels Jr., Josephus’ grandson, who was publisher of the N&O from 1971 to 1996. He questioned whether the story reflected the “context” of the time — political and social conditions in Wilmington under Republican rule. As for the mea culpa on the editorial page, “I thought they went a little further than they needed to go, but that’s their prerogative.”
For a different perspective on the N&O’s attention to the commission report, I talked to Irving Joyner, vice chairman of the Wilmington Race Riot Commission and law professor at N.C. Central University. “I was pleased with the editorial,” he said, “although I was interested in knowing the specifics of the things that Daniels is supposed to have done to make amends for his role in those early days.”
Joyner credited The N&O with a progressive history in civil rights under the Daniels ownership, but he said there is more to be learned about the role of newspapers — not just The N&O — during the white supremacy campaign. He said he’d like to see the paper lead discussion, through its pages or in public forums with the race riot commission, in examining the role of the press in shaping public attitudes and opinions on race.
“One of my concerns is that we don’t just get to the point of saying, ‘Well, that happened. Let’s just forget and move on,’” Joyner said. “While I think we ought to move on, I don’t think we ought to forget. I don’t think we ought to avoid talking about what happened and the consequences of it.
“Some of the attitudes which existed in 1898 still exist today. To the extent that we can use this to challenge and change some of that attitude is a positive thing.”
One letter The N&O received in December suggested that African-Americans in Wilmington today are better off for the 1898 riot, because it paved the way for stability and prosperity. “Would it still be so if action had not been taken in 1898, or would it be more like Port-au-Prince?”
That suggests we have a ways to go.
Should The N&O say “we’re sorry”? Yes, certainly. It is a horrible history — although it’s somewhat disingenuous for us to apologize for sins that are not, directly, our own.
In 1998, the centennial of the riot, the paper ran in its Q section a report that included The N&O’s role in Wilmington. Editorial Page Editor Steve Ford has publicized, and criticized, the paper’s unproud history in two Sunday columns. But the newspaper has never done a thorough examination of its role in the white supremacy campaigns, or of its later leadership in civil rights in North Carolina. I for one think it would be both good journalism and interesting history for the paper to examine that century-old legacy of injustice to draw lessons for today that provide a measure of just how far we have, or have not, come.
