Mary Washington Howe
The Promise of Black Reconstruction
By: Melissa Story, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Introduction
Mary Washington Howe (1852-1900) was a celebrated and devoted educator. As the first female African American principal of Williston School, she was a trailblazer in education in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her family, the Howes, were one of the most prominent and influential African American families in Wilmington through the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond. Their success, social status, and political power exemplified the threat to white supremacy that contributed to the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état, a deadly attack on Wilmington’s African American community. In this research, I explore how Mary Washington Howe achieved her professional success and what her story reveals about the lives of Black women at the time. Mary Washington Howe’s life was the fulfillment of the promises of Black Reconstruction as demonstrated through her professional achievements, education, and respectability.
W. E. B. Du Bois outlines the achievements and aspirations of African Americans in the immediate postbellum period in his 1935 monograph Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. Du Bois challenged the dominant early twentieth century narrative of Reconstruction, one of failed governance in the South. Instead, he presented Reconstruction as a distinct era of advancement and hope in which African Americans, most newly freed from enslavement, actively participated in the creation of a pluralistic democracy. Du Bois emphasized several key accomplishments of Black Reconstruction such as investment in public infrastructures, most especially with the creation of the first public education in the South. This essay examines Mary Washington Howe’s life as the product of Black Reconstruction through the lens of African American education in Wilmington, North Carolina during Reconstruction, Redemption, and into the first days of Jim Crow. Additional consideration is given to what Wilmington’s Black community looked like during this period. An emphasis is placed on Black joy, success, and vibrancy as a threat to white supremacy leading into the 1890s as a causation for the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état. Gender and class are considered as they relate to Mary Washington Howe.
Regarding gender, it must be articulated that research involving Mary Washington Howe was largely predicated on information related to men in her family. There was significant insight about her grandfather, father, uncles, brother, and male cousins, but little about Mary directly. Piecing together a history of Mary Washington Howe’s exceptional life was done primarily through the identities of her male relatives. While frustrating, it reveals that postbellum African American communities in North Carolina were decidedly patriarchal and makes her personal and professional success that much more vivid.
This research relied on many sources to bring Mary Washington Howe’s narrative to life. Several monographs about Wilmington during Reconstruction and Redemption, as well as those related to the 1898 Massacre and Coup d’état and the first years of Jim Crow were studied, such as David Zucchino’s Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy and LeRae Sikes Umfleet’s A Day of Blood: The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot. Books about African American education in North Carolina were examined too, such as Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation (Making the Modern South) by John E. Batchelor. The sources these historians gathered their information from included diaries, memoirs, interviews, and newspapers. The University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) Center for Southeastern North Carolina Archives and History (CSENCAH) and New Hanover County Public Library’s North Carolina Room provided meaningful primary sources.
The Howe Family: Scions of Black Wilmington
The Howe’s of Wilmington were one of the most prominent African American families in the nineteenth century and beyond. We know from the scholarship of David S. Cecelski that Wilmington was home to a large population of free Black people in the antebellum era. This was due to Wilmington’s role as the most prominent port city in North Carolina. Additionally, Cecelski states that Wilmington “had its roots in a culture of slave resistance that African Americans had managed to create.”[1] Anthony Walker Howe, son of an Igbo chieftain and born in southern Nigeria, was part of that resistance. [2] He wandered onto a slave ship as a child and was sold into slavery by accident, and then enslaved in the Lower Cape Fear in the late eighteenth century.[3] He was bought by a man whose widow sold him to Colonel Robert Howe.[4] Anthony Walker Howe was Mary’s grandfather. He was a well-known and in demand builder, skills he learned as a child in Africa. He used those building skills on the Howe plantation, which impressed his enslaver, Colonel Robert Howe. He eventually hired Anthony Walker Howe, and the enslaved construction crew Anthony had assembled, out to plantations throughout the Lowcountry.[5] In this way, Anthony Walker Howe built the wealth of his enslaver, Colonel Robert Howe. In turn, Howe passed his knowledge of building and construction to his children, who used it to build considerable wealth and power during the antebellum period and through Reconstruction.
Anthony Walker Howe married a Tuscaroran woman named Tenah, who was orphaned and then enslaved by the Howes.[6] They both were manumitted by Colonel Robert Howe per his will at the time of his death in 1786.[7] Tenah was Mary Washington Howe’s grandmother. This means that Mary Washington Howe was Igbo and Tuscaroran. Anthony Walker Howe died in 1837 and Tenah died the year Mary was born, in 1852.[8] Additionally, Mary’s mother, Mary Moore Walker, was the daughter of Peter Walker, who had also been enslaved in Africa, and Flora, who was indigenous. Therefore, both sets of Mary’s grandparents were African and Native American.[9] Anthony and Tenah Howe were first buried in a family cemetery at Fourth and Queen streets, but were later moved to Pine Forest Cemetery, which was assigned for Black burials in 1860.[10] The Howe family served on the Board of Directors for a company that cared for the burial grounds.[11]
The 1860 census notes two free Black Howes in Wilmington, Anthony and Alfred.[12] Alfred Augustus Howe, Mary’s father, learned building skills from his father, Anthony Walker Howe. Alfred Howe helped build Bellamy Mansion and supervised civic construction jobs such as the jail and courthouse.[13] By 1865, Alfred owned sufficient property to pay property taxes in Wilmington, one of only fourteen Black men to do so.[14] He also served on the Wilmington Board of Alderman in the 1870s and as the president of Pine Forest Cemetery in 1872.[15] Mary Washington Howe had four siblings: two sisters and two brothers. Anthony and Alfred Howe were neighbors and heads of households, and they also lived next to their brother Pompey’s widow and children, as evidenced by the Census of 1870.[16] They owned an entire block in downtown Wilmington on Queen Street, between Second and Third Streets.[17] This information suggests that the Howe family built their wealth and prestige collectively, by pooling resources and working together. Alfred Howe built his house, the Alfred Howe House, on the corner of South Third and Queen Street.[18] By the 1880s, the Howes had many residences and workshops. They were thriving, and known for their exemplary citizenry and construction skills.
Mary Washington Howe
Childhood
The Howe family prioritized education. The ability to read and self-determine was strong amongst formerly enslaved people. W. E. B. Du Bois informs us in his seminal work, Black Reconstruction in America, of the importance of education and of the founding of public schools in the postbellum era. He states that, “the eagerness to learn among American Negroes was exceptional in the case of a poor and recently emancipated folk.”[19] Enslaved people had been explicitly forbidden by law from education.[20] Enslavers feared mutiny if enslaved people were allowed to learn, connect, and communicate freely. Knowledge was power. This was especially true following Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831.[21] As Blair LM Kelley shares in her book, Black Folk, “slaveholders knew that a community of slaves left to think for themselves could be formidable, and if organized against them, dangerous.”[22] Literacy and education were extremely important to African Americans in the postbellum era because it allowed for increased autonomy, ability to create wealth, and political engagement.[23]
The Howes clearly valued education as evidenced by Mary’s educational trajectory. Private tutors taught her, and she then participated in further education in the North, which positively impacted her professional horizons.[24] This communicates the wealth and privilege of the Howe family, that they had the financial resources to send Mary to the Institute for Colored Youth, a Quaker school in Philadelphia.[25] Founded in 1842, “requirements for entry as a student at the Institute were somewhat high.”[26] This communicates that the Howe family invested precious care in the preparation of Mary’s education and future. They instilled in Mary the “politics of respectability,” and trained Mary to “promote race pride and dispute race stereotypes” through her academic excellence and service to her community.[27] Mary’s parents knew that without an education, her opportunities in life would narrow considerably. She would be relegated to work as a maid or as an agricultural laborer. Both positions had an increased risk of sexual harassment or assault.[28] The Howes understood that for Mary to “receive the best and the most opportunities available, [she] would have to be extremely circumspect and never give even the slightest hint of impropriety.”[29] The Howes prioritized the education of their daughter and intended a respectable and fruitful career for her.
Professional Life
Mary returned to Wilmington in 1874 and began teaching at one of two schools for Black students in Wilmington, Williston Graded School.[30] She taught Reading, Spelling, Language, Geography, Arithmetic, and Miscellaneous, which consisted of art, music, and gymnastics, among other subjects.[31] New Hanover County Schools remembers that “she served with distinction, ability, efficiency, and faithfulness.”[32] Teaching was an act of courage on Mary’s part, as “in North Carolina, instances [were] found where persons who taught in Negro schools were assaulted, schoolhouses burned, and threats made against the lives of those who engaged in the work.”[33] In 1896, towards the end of Mary’s career at Williston, arson was attempted at least three times, in February, March, and April.[34] Mary Washington Howe engaged in important work that came at personal risk.
Mary’s students were among the most prominent members of Wilmington’s African American community, including the Sadgwar children. Carrie Sadgwar would later become a celebrated Fisk Jubilee singer and the wife of Alexander Manly, a leader of Black thought in Wilmington and owner of the newspaper, the Daily Record, a preeminent voice for African American discourse in late nineteenth century southeastern North Carolina and beyond.[35] Manly’s bold rhetoric, in which he publicly rejected statements by white supremacists calling for the mass lynching of Black men to defend the virtue of white women from the fabricated threat of Black male bestiality, articulated a defiant stand against white supremacy.[36] Mary’s role as Carrie Sadgwar Manly’s teacher helped create the rising generation of Black resistance to white supremacy in the last three decades of the twentieth century.
In 1880, Mary Washington Howe was promoted to the position of school principal of Williston Graded School, while still only in her twenties.[37] She held this role for twenty years as the first and only female principal of the school.[38] Mary reported to Donald MacRae, a supervisor of the Wilmington School Committee, who just five years later led a violent and murderous assault on her community.[39] Even so, Mary read the Emancipation Day Proclamation at the annual Emancipation Day celebration in Wilmington, in January of 1893, the first year women were invited to participate.[40] This informs us of the courage Mary showed, the obstacles that she faced, and the respectability she had carefully worked towards her entire life. She was a bright star of Wilmington’s African American community and the promise fulfilled of Black Reconstruction. Mary died in 1900, at the age of forty-six, after giving over half her life in service to educating the African American youth of Wilmington. Her nephew, Crummell Howe McDonald (1899-1985) became principal of Williston in 1933.[41] In 1963, an elementary school was named after her, Howe Elementary School, where the legacy of this Black luminary of nineteenth century Wilmington is honored.[42]
Williston School
On April 3rd, 1865, between six and seven hundred Black Wilmingtonians attended a meeting to express their support for a school.[43] Thus, Williston School was formed as the South Side Freedman’s School. It was first funded by the American Missionary Association and then the Freedmen’s Bureau, an organization established in 1865 which attempted to address issues resulting from the Civil War.[44] The Freedmen’s Bureau aided formerly enslaved individuals and managed abandoned or seized lands.[45] They paid Mary’s father, Alfred, $250 to make chairs and desks for the school.[46] Williston was located at South Seventh Street, between Nun and Ann Streets, roughly four blocks from where Mary lived. It was named for a northern philanthropist, Samuel Williston, who donated funds for the school to the American Missionary Association.[47] The first building was a tobacco barn that was brought from the other side of the Cape Fear River.[48] In 1873, a year before Mary’s tenure at Williston began, the building was sold to the Wilmington Board of Education for $3,000.[49] All of the white faculty was replaced with Black teachers, Mary Washington Howe being among the first.[50]
Jim Crow Comes to Wilmington
Mary Washington Howe was born into a tenuous yet hopeful time of increasing prosperity for African Americans in coastal North Carolina. Throughout its history, and certainly in the 1890’s, Wilmington was the political and economic gem of the state. In Wilmington’s Lie, David Zucchino wrote that, “In 1898, a field representative for the American Baptist Publication Society called Wilmington ‘the freest town for a negro in the country.’”[51] Wilmington’s Black community was vibrant, and filled with optimism, talented, and skilled workers. University of North Carolina Wilmington Professor Emeritus Chris Fonvielle called Wilmington in 1898 the “Las Vegas of the South.”[52] In 1898, Wilmington had a total population of 22,055 with a majority Black population of 11,324 people and a minority white representation of 8,731 people.[53] Black Wilmingtonians had successfully gained political power within the Fusion party and held prominent positions in local government and community leadership. Black men served on the Wilmington Board of Alderman, police force, and fire department.[54] In fact, Mary’s father, Alfred, served on the Board of Alderman.[55] Her uncle, Anthony (Alfred’s older brother), also served as a city alderman and justice of the peace in the postbellum era.[56] African Americans worked as mail carriers and a Black man served as coroner.[57] All but one of the city’s eleven restaurants were Black owned and all but two of Wilmington’s twenty-two barbers were Black.[58] Wilmington was a Southern city with a thriving Black community, which is exactly why it was targeted by white supremacists.
Largely through the political work of the Fusion party, which united the vote and consolidated the power of poor people, both Black and white, Wilmington had valiantly resisted the effects of Plessy v. Ferguson, which quickly ushered in apartheid across North Carolina and throughout the American South in 1896 with its “separate but equal” mandate. Expressions of African American political or economic power incensed the Democratic Party, who had succeeded via white supremacist intimidation tactics in toppling the Fusion vote across the state, town by town. Wilmington was the last stand. It finally fell to Jim Crow in 1898, when white supremacists used terror and voter intimidation to disenfranchise African American voters in the November elections. Additionally, they threatened lower class white citizens with brutality, thus breaking the Fusion ticket and sweeping the election and control of the city. However, the Democratic white supremacists did not want to wait for slow political change so they sent a strong and violent message to Black people and their allies in the region. They intricately planned a coup d’état to follow the election, in which they overthrew the local government. Additionally, they murdered and terrorized Wilmington’s Black citizenry and any white sympathizers. Thousands of African Americans escaped, some at gunpoint, and an untold number were murdered.[59]
In the months following the massacre, white supremacists worked hard to permanently disenfranchise African Americans in Wilmington. George Rountree, a white supremacist leader, enacted a racist “grandfather clause,” which ensured that if your grandfather was not able to vote in 1867, you could not either.[60] His politically motivated violence and coercion paved the way for his run for state legislature in 1898. Rountree’s “grandfather clause” stopped most African Americans in Wilmington from voting, which curbed their political power.[61] Thus, life for African Americans in Wilmington grew harder and Wilmington, seemingly overnight, became a majority white city.[62] Mary Washington Howe’s community abruptly and dramatically shifted from a beacon of promise and hope for African Americans to a place where African Americans became a frightened minority.
The Howe Family and the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état
Mary Washington Howe, and the entire Howe family, represented exemplary citizenship and leadership of Wilmington’s African American community and the fulfillment of the promise of Black Reconstruction. Mary’s cousin, Valentine Howe (1842-1904), was a builder, longtime leader of African American volunteer firemen in Wilmington, and the president of the North Carolina Colored Firemen’s Association.[63] Additionally, in 1887, Valentine was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives.[64] He beat white supremacist leader Alfred Moore Waddell for the position.[65] This is an interesting and direct link to the 1898 Massacre and Coup d’état, as Alfred Moore Waddell was an integral part of the violence in 1898. Valentine, an accomplished and successful Black man, was the embodiment of everything that Waddell hated. The fact that Valentine beat him politically likely stung Waddell. In these ways, the Howes’ wealth, prominence, and growing affluence threatened white supremacists in Wilmington.
Another direct link to the 1898 Massacre and Coup d’état was Mary’s brother, John. Politically active, he served in the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1897.[66] In 1898, he worked for Alexander Manly at the Daily Record as a traveling agent.[67] He used his connections to support Black empowerment and connection throughout North Carolina.[68] Manly’s condemnation of the predatory sexual behavior of white men towards Black women, coupled with the Daily Record’s effectiveness in communicating essential information and organizing the Black community, threatened white supremacists in Wilmington. Historian Blair LM Kelley reminds us that “independent Black presses were an essential component of Black organizing.”[69] Manly’s editorial was weaponized by white supremacists in the months leading to the 1898 Massacre and Coup d’état to justify violence and murder; they focused their rage on Manly and his newspaper. He barely escaped town with his life, and the Daily Record, which was just three blocks from both Mary’s house and Williston School, was burnt to the ground.[70] This connection between white supremacists involved in the 1898 Massacre and Coup d’état and Manly and her male relatives means that Mary Washington Howe likely experienced or witnessed the violence that defined the white supremacy campaign which terrorized Wilmington’s Black community in 1898.
Nada R. McDonald Cotton, a Howe descendant who was three years old at the time of the massacre, informs us that the Howes were targets of white violence on November 10th, 1898. She shares that “many, many negroes were killed, marched out of town, or their life savings taken from them,” but that the Howes were protected by their white neighbors.[71] The men and boys surrounded their home, armed with weapons, and took shifts to protect the Howe family from the murderous mob. The fact that the Howes were not exiled, as so many other affluent Black families were following the white violence, speaks to their esteem in the community.[72]
Conclusion
Mary Washington Howe’s life was the fulfillment of the promises of Black Reconstruction as demonstrated through her professional achievements, education, and respectability. Her family raised her with the expectation that she would “shift public perception and ideas about African American women through [her] work on the public stage.”[73] This analysis of Mary Washington Howe and African American education sheds light on Wilmington, North Carolina during Reconstruction, Redemption, and the first days of Jim Crow. Mary Washington Howe is an important link from the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état that has been overlooked. This interrogation matters because it helps the communities of southeastern North Carolina better understand the achievements and accomplishments of African Americans that resided there. Additionally, “remembering and documenting marginalized communities [is] an act of restorative justice.”[74] This research elucidates ways in which white supremacy worked to shape inequitable realities.
This topic is urgent as evidenced by current issues, both federal and local. The Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in June of 2023.[75] At the local level, as New Hanover County grimly commemorates the one hundred and twenty-sixth anniversary of the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état, there is an aggressive attack on what African American history is allowed in New Hanover County Public Schools (NHCS) and how it is taught.[76] This research pushes back on that, acknowledging that “when school curricula minimize the role of Black people in the shaping of history, it perpetuates marginalization and destroys the potential for public memory.”[77] Additionally, the NHCS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee was recently dissolved.[78] This examination offers a nuanced accounting which includes the harm that was inflicted upon the African American community of New Hanover County, and all southeastern North Carolina, as well as the joy. In the end, Mary Washington Howe would likely be happy with this essay, as this consideration honors and continues what she loved the most, education.
Photos from Left to Right
1: Mary Washington Howe (January 8, 1852-March 20, 1900). Photo courtesy of New Hanover County Library.
2: Title page of School Records book which lists Black students in Wilmington Graded Schools (1876-1877), “School Records.” 1877-1881. Photo courtesy of New Hanover Public Library.
3: Gravestone of Mary Washington Howe, Pine Forest Cemetery, Wilmington, NC. Photo Courtesy of Melissa Story.
Notes
[1] David S. Cecelski, The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (Chapel Hill: North Carolina, The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 183.
[2] Nada R. McDonald Cotton, The Walker-Howe Family of Wilmington, North Carolina in New Hanover County, New Hanover County Public Library, North Carolina Room, 4. Also, Nigerian Igbo people are also referred to as “Ibo.”
[3] Ibid, 1.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid, 4.
[6] Tuscarora people were indigenous to the Cape Fear region. For more, see David S. Cecelski, The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 8-12.
[7] Cotton, The Walker-Howe Family of Wilmington, North Carolina in New Hanover County, 3.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Bill Reaves, Strength Through Struggle: The Chronological and Historical Record of the African-American Community in Wilmington, North Carolina, 1865-1950, (Wilmington: New Hanover County Public Library, 1998), 409.
[10] Cotton, The Walker-Howe Family of Wilmington, North Carolina in New Hanover County, 3.
[11] See the “Howe Family” plaque in Pine Forest Cemetery, Wilmington, NC.
[12] Catherine Bishir, “Howe Family,” North Carolina Architects & Builders, A Biographical Dictionary, NC State University Libraries, 2010, https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000509. Alfred and Anthony Howe were born free.
[13] Bishir, “Howe Family,” https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000509.
[14] Margaret M. Mulroney, Race, Place, and Memory: Deep Currents in Wilmington, North Carolina, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018), 95.
[15] See the “Howe Family” plaque in Pine Forest Cemetery, Wilmington, NC.
[16] Cotton, The Walker-Howe Family of Wilmington, North Carolina in New Hanover County, 4.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Bishir, “Howe Family,” https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000509.
[19] W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, (New York: Russell and Russell, 1935), 637.
[20] Ibid, 638.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Blair LM Kelley, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2023), 41.
[23] This reflects the thought of Tera W. Hunter. See To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 40.
[24] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 410.
[25] Ibid, 153.
[26] Milton M. James, “The Institute for Colored Youth.” Negro History Bulletin 21, no. 4 (1958): 83–85, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44213172.
[27] Tara Y. White, “History as Uplift: African American Clubwomen and Applied History,” The Public Historian 43 (May 2021): 11-19, 14. The term “politics of respectability” is the language of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, as seen in Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920, (Cambridge: MA, Harvard University Press, 1993).
[28] Stephanie J. Shaw, What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers During the Jim Crow Era, (Chicago: Illinois, The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 14.
[29] Ibid.
[30] The other school for Black children was Union Graded School, located between Nun and Church Streets. Williston Graded School was located on Seventh Street, between Ann and Nun Streets. See “Public Graded Schools: A Report.” City of Wilmington, North Carolina. 1886. New Hanover Public Library. Also, see Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 153, for more on Mary Washington Howe’s professional accomplishments.
[31] “Public Graded Schools: A Report.” City of Wilmington, North Carolina. 1886. New Hanover Public Library.
[32] “History of Education in New Hanover County, 1800-1980,” Committee of New Hanover County Retired School Personnel, Wilmington, North Carolina, 1981, New Hanover County Public Library.
[33] Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 646.
[34] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 153.
[35] For more on the Fisk Jubilee Singers see Lean’tin L. Bracks, Crystal A. DeGregory, and Nikki Giovanni, Heritage & Honor: 150-Year Story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, (Tennessee: TL Scott Publishing, 2022). For a more thorough account of Alexander Manly’s editorial see LeRae Sikes Umfleet, A Day of Blood: The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, (Raleigh: North Carolina Office of Archives and History, 2020), 62-65.
[36] See Rebecca Latimer Felton, “Mrs. Felton’s Reply,” Felton to the Atlanta Constitution, Scrapbook 24, 76-77, Felton Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia and Alexander Manly, Editorial, Wilmington Daily Record, August 18, 1898.
[37] Mulroney, Race, Place, and Memory, 109.
[38] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 153.
[39] “Public Graded Schools: A Report.” City of Wilmington, North Carolina. 1886.
[40] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 9.
[41] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 36.
[42] Ibid, 5.
[43] “History of the Williston Industrial School, 1865-1937,” The McDonald-Howe Papers. Randall Library Special Collections. University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC. https://archivesspace.uncw.edu/resources/sc-ms-034.
[44] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 152.
[45] “The Freedmen’s Bureau,” National Archives, last modified October 28, 2021, https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau.
[46] “Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of North Carolina Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1870| National Museum of African American History and Culture,” Smithsonian Institute, https://nmaahc.si.edu/freedmens-bureau/record/fbs-1662423774659-1662424352354-0?destination=%2Fexplore%2Ffreedmens-bureau%2Fsearch%3Fedan_fq%255B0%255D%3Dp.nmaahc_fb.pr_name_gn%253Aalfred%26edan_fq%255B1%255D%3Dp.nmaahc_fb.pr_name_surn%253Ahowe%26page%3D0.
[47] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 152.
[48] “History of the Williston Industrial School, 1865-1937,” The McDonald-Howe Papers. Randall Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, https://archivesspace.uncw.edu/resources/sc-ms-034.
[49] Reaves, Strength Through Struggle, 152.
[50] Ibid.
[51] David Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, (New York: Grove Press, 2020, xv.
[52] Hunter Ingram, “Unearthing 1898, Part I,” November 9, 2020, in Cape Fear Unearthed, produced by StarNews Media, podcast, 6:01. https://omny.fm/shows/cape-fear-unearthed/unearthing-1898-part-1-the-campaign.
[53] H. Leon Prather, “We Have Taken a City: A Centennial Essay,” In David S. Cecelski and Timothy Tyson, eds., Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), xv.
[54] Ibid, 16.
[55] Bishir, “Howe Family (Fl. 1850s-1900s),” https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000509.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Prather, “We Have Taken a City,” 16.
[58] Prather, “We Have Taken a City,” 17.
[59] Jan Davidson, “Story Map and Timeline of Events of the Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état of 1898,” https://nhcgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=5a4f5757e4904fb8bef6db842c1ff7c3.
[60] Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie, 303.
[61] African American men did not enjoy enfranchisement until the 15th Amendment passed in 1869.
[62] Mulroney, Race, Place, and Memory, 162.
[63] Bishir, “Howe Family,” https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000509.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Umfleet, A Day of Blood, 180.
[67] The Daily Record, [Wilmington, N.C.], Oct. 20, 1898, North Carolina Newspapers, North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073929/1898-10-20/ed-1/seq-2/.
[68] Mulroney, Race, Place, and Memory, 119.
[69] Kelley, Black Folk, 170.
[70] Umfleet, A Day of Blood, 184.
[71] Cotton, “A Historical Incident,” The McDonald-Howe Papers, Randall Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, https://archivesspace.uncw.edu/resources/sc-ms-034.
[72] Many African American were forced out of Wilmington following the massacre and coup d’état, often escorted to trains by gunpoint. See Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie, 248-252.
[73] Brittany C. Cooper, Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 18.
[74] Emma Johansen, “Metadata as Restorative Justice: A Case Study of the Sanders-Bullitt Digital Collection-- Part I,” History@Work, National Council on Public History, 30 December 2021, 2.
[75] Nina Totenberg, “Supreme Court Guts Affirmative Action, Effectively Ending Race-Conscious Admissions,” NPR, June 29, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1181138066/affirmative-action-supreme-court-decision.
[76] Rachel Keith, “Unpacking the Removal of ‘Stamped’ by the New Hanover County Board of Education,” WHQR, September 8, 2023, https://www.whqr.org/local/2023-09-08/unpacking-the-removal-of-stamped-by-the-new-hanover-county-board-of-education.
[77] Nishani Frazier and Hilary Green, “Black is not the Absence of Light: Restoring Black Visibility and Liberation to Digital Humanities,” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2023, Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, eds., University of Minnesota Press, 2023, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctv345pd4, 9.
[78] Rachel Keith and Camille Mojica, “NHC School Board Elects Leadership, Disbands Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee,” WHQR, December 6, 2023, https://www.whqr.org/local/2023-12-06/nhc-school-board-elects-leadership-disbands-equity-diversity-and-inclusion-committee.
