On June 13, 2020, David Cecelski published a
beautifully written piece about Thomas McKeller, an African American man, born
in Wilmington, North Carolina. The essay is a moving rumination on McKeller’s
life experiences. Before you go any further, you should read the article,
“Their Eyes, Their Faces.”
As I read the piece, my heart was struck by the beginning
and the ending of the post.
Cecelski starts his piece with “I always wonder what
happened to them– the men, women and children that fled Wilmington, N.C., after
whites started killing black people there in 1898.” His exploration of the relationship between Thomas
McKeller and the painter John Singer Sargent, ends with the words “Now I want
to know what happened to all the others who fled Wilmington. I want to know
where they ended up and what became of them. I want to see their eyes, their
faces.”
Today, I want to tell you a little bit about a couple who fled Wilmington in the aftermath of the violence of 1898. I don’t have a photo
or image of them, so can’t show you their eyes or faces. But I can tell you part of their story.
Sharing history seems simultaneously more and less important
as this interminable year keeps unfolding. It’s hard to continue to believe that
learning about the past is that critical when more than 450,000 people around
the world have died from Covid-19. It’s hard to continue to trust that
understanding the past matters, when yet another Black person lays dead because
of the actions of a police officer. Still, despite the weight of current
events, like Cecelski, I want to know what happened to all those who fled
Wilmington after 1898.
So, let’s learn a little bit about Alexander and Polly Avant
Rhone.
Alexander Rhone (also sometimes called Roan in the records) was
born in 1860 or 1861. And his wife-to-be
Polly Avant, was born later in the 1860s. We first see the pair in the record in
the 1870 census. At that time, Alex and Polly both attended school. A decade later, the census tells us Polly
worked as a servant and Alexander was a laborer.
Alexander and Polly married in
1889. Reverend Small, of St. Luke's Methodist Episcopal Church presided over
their wedding, which was held in a private home on Walnut Street.
The world that the Rhones lived in as adults was dramatically
different than the one that they would have experienced if they’d grown
up a generation earlier. As Polly and Alexander grew into adults, they lived in
a world where they could get an education, they could legally marry, they could
practice religion as they saw fit, they could control their own labor. Alexander and Polly lived in a
county where Black men, women, and children made up the majority of the
population.
After 1868, Black men could vote. And they used their new political power and elect African American men to local and state
government. Freedom also brought economic opportunities. Wilmington was home to black entrepreneurs, craftspeople, educators, doctors
and lawyers.
After Emancipation, members of the Black community created new
associations and organizations like the Giblem Lodge, and a chapter of the International
Order of Odd Fellows. Men who’d served in the U. S. Army set up a Grand Army of
the Republic in town. Alexander Rhone was definitely in the midst of some of these
changes. He was a member of the Asaph club, a singing group.
Alexander was also a longstanding volunteer
firefighter with one of the most renowned fire companies in the state, the Cape
Fear Steam Fire Engine Company.
 |
| Volunteer Hose Reel Company, about 1890 |
By the 1890s,
he was the assistant foreman of the fire company. Alexander Rhone and his firefighting brethren helped
organize the county’s Decoration Day celebrations – where pro-Union members of the community
joined together to hold memorial services at the National Cemetery.
 |
| African American firefighters, about 1895 |
By 1897, Alexander was also an entrepreneur - he’s listed in the city directory as a
confectioner, with a shop at 507 S. Front Street.
On the eve of the massacre the ripped Wilmington apart, Alexander
Rhone was a member of the paid fire department, having parlayed his years of
volunteer fire fighting into a position in the new organization. According to
an article in a Brooklyn paper from 1905 account, “When Alexander Rhone grew to
manhood he became a member of this company [Cape Fear Steam Engine No 3] and on
account of his excellent record as a fireman in the volunteer service he was
among the few selected to enter the paid service, when the old volunteer
service was discontinued. The political upheaval in 1898 caused the disbanding
of the negro companies in the City of Wilmington and that necessitated
Alexander Rhone’s leaving Wilmington for the North.”
Rhone, along with every other Black firefighter was kicked
off the job after the massacre and coup of 1898. On November 9, 1898 over 450 white men signed
a document, known to history as the White Declaration of Independence, that included
a call “….to give to white men a large part of the employment heretofore
given to negroes because we realize that white families cannot thrive here
unless there are more opportunities for the employment of the different members
of said families.”
City
officials could not pass a law that made businesses hire white people, but they
did control municipal hiring. And so within a week of the coup that put Democrats in charge of the local government, the fire department fired all its Black firefighters. Men like Rhone, who had experience in firefighting and
were upstanding members of the community were replaced with men like Mike
Dowling, a violent white supremacist who seems to have received the fire
department job as a reward for his role in the 1898 massacre.
Alexander and Polly left town shortly after Alexander lost his job with the city. They, like a
number of other folks from Wilmington, relocated to Brooklyn, New York.
 |
| Brooklyn, about 1897, courtesy of the Library of Congress |
In New York, Polly and Alexander made a new life, although
they didn’t forget their birth state. Rhone was a member of the Society of the
Sons of North Carolina, “…the largest and most influential organization among
the Afro-Americans of Brooklyn.” Alexander
Rhone was one of the organization’s board of directors. Mrs. Rhone was also
involved – she was President of the Ladies Auxiliary.
By 1904, Mr. Rhone had joined another AME church: the Fleet
Street A.M.E. Zion Church in Brooklyn. In 1905, Mr. Rhone’s quick thinking
helped save a number of people when part of the Fleet Street church collapsed
during a very large funeral. Rhone was on the first floor of the building at
the time, and as the New York Times put it, “The firemen found two ladders
raised against the windows on the eastern side of the church. Both had been
raised by Alexander Rhone, one of the Trustees of the church, and one of the
few that did not lose their heads when the crash came. He was in the Sunday
school room at the time, and promptly jumped through one of the windows into
the alley. Then he ran to the back of the church where the ladders were and
carried them, one by one, round to the eastern side. More than a score of
persons got out safely with his assistance.” Mr. Rhone was given a medal for
his efforts by his friends in April of 1905.
 |
| Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 6, 1905 |
Alexander and Polly’s journey from New Hanover County to New
York represents just two examples of the ways that the massacre of 1898 diminished
our county. They were just two of thousands who voted with their feet, leaving
Wilmington, New Hanover County, North Carolina, and the segregated South
behind.
