Wilmington's First Public Emancipation Day Parade, January 1, 1866

January 1, 1866. It was the first Emancipation Day since the South lost the Civil War. It was the first to be celebrated since the ratification of 13th Amendment in December of 1865 formally abolished slavery. And it was the first to be publicly celebrated on the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina.

First page of Emancipation Proclamation
courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration 

Since there was no Black newspaper in the city in 1866, we’re dependent on the white press for our information. In many instances, the white newspapers did not report on events in the African American community at all. On January 1, 1866, the Wilmington Herald did report that an Emancipation celebration was in the works, but the editors saw fit not to celebrate, but to wax on about their belief in African Americans’ racial inferiority. According to their editorial, “If the object be to celebrate their emancipation from slavery it occurs to us that they might better make it an occasion of lamentation and sorrow. No event in the history of the African race on this continent has ever occurred so pregnant with evil to those most interested as this one event of their emancipation from slavery. It is the signal for the extirpation.”

 

Despite this racist coverage, we can use the Herald’s coverage to imagine the joy and hope that this first celebration may have brought to those who participated in the day’s festivities. The streets of Wilmington were filled with members of the Black community, both those in the official parade, and the sidewalks were described as “...a moving mass of dark colored humanity” and “..all ages and sexes, sizes and conditions, were represented.” The paper noted some of the banners in the parade:

Wilmington Herald, January 2, 1866

The procession began in the city, and the city’s newly-organized Black fire companies “were out in full force in their red shirts and other paraphernalia appertaining to their organizations.” 

African American firefighters, 19th century 

The procession ended up in Hilton Park, where speeches were given, by “Norton and several other colored orators.” 

The Herald admitted that the speeches “would have done credit to any man, white or black.”

This first public Emancipation Day celebration began a longstanding tradition of celebrating Black freedom. Black community members and their allies celebrated Emancipation throughout the 19th century. In January 1899, right after the White Supremacy Campaign and Massacre of November 1898, there was no Emancipation Parade. While a brief note in the Wilmington Messenger, just noted there was no parade, it's not hard to imagine that the violence and terror of those November days and nights left the community reeling, and in no mood to celebrate freedom when it was so clearly under direct attack.

 

Despite this missing year, the community once again celebrated Emancipation in 1900, and continued to do so in the 20th century.

After 1898...

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.  

Discussing Democracy, part 1

In recognition of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 15th Amendment—and the 100th of the 19th Amendment—I’m planning on posting an episodic series of blog entries about voting and politicians this year.

1870 Lithograph, Library of Congress https://lccn.loc.gov/93510386

One hundred and fifty years ago, the 15th Amendment passed. It declared “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”  

15th amendment lithograph  https://lccn.loc.gov/2003690774, courtesy of Library of Congress

Thousands of people in New Hanover County celebrated when the 15th Amendment passed.  Our community organized a parade and festivities on May 2, 1870.  A local paper declared the it “The Day of Jubilee!”

The Wilmington Post’s account of the celebration noted that a crowd gathered early, and heard white and black dignitaries including Congressman Oliver Hart Dockery and the Honorable Abraham Galloway speak. Dockery declared “I am proud to participate with you in the Grand National Jubilee, over an event, the most remarkable known to ancient or modern times. As a republican I congratulate and rejoice with you in this great triumph.  The leaders of that infernal rebellion have been sorely disappointed in its results; they started out to perpetuate slavery, and behold the shackles have been broken and you are free!” 

Congressman Dockery https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017893712

Other speakers included then Howard University student George L. Mabson (who went on to be North Carolina's first black lawyer).  Mabson declared “The Fifteenth Amendment is today a part and parcel of the fundamental law of the land, and we are citizens of this great republic in law and in fact.” Mabson went on to advocate for more change: “But while it is true that a great battle has been fought and won, won too by the Republican party, the mission of that party is not consummated. Upon the statute books of this nation the word white still remains. Our laws are still unequal.” Mabson was referring to the fact that you couldn’t come to the US from Africa and be nationalized, and he wanted that to change as well.

The 15th amendment was one of three amendments that transformed previously enslaved peoples’ legal status in the U.S. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, “…except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The 14th Amendment’s first clause granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized” in the U.S. and included clauses designed to provide everyone with the same rights under the law.

Although the passage of the 15th Amendment was celebrated, African Americans in New Hanover County had been voting for three years by the time it passed.  In 1867, Congress took control of Reconstruction, divided the South into military districts, and insisted that southern states pass all three amendments to re-join the United States. North Carolina was readmitted to the Union in 1868. In order to get back in to the Union, each state had to pass a new constitution. North Carolina held a constitutional convention to rewrite the state’s laws. All males over twenty-one could vote for the delegates.  The majority of New Hanover County's residents were African American and the county's delegation reflected the new political landscape of North Carolina. Voters elected Abraham Galloway, who had been born in slavery in Brunswick County, as one of the county's representatives to the Convention. 

Engraved portrait of Abraham Galloway. From William Still's Underground Railroad, p. 150-151, published 1872, by Porter & Coates, Philadelphia. From the collections of the Government &Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.

Wilmington's first (and only) woman mayor

I recently gave a tour at Wilmington's historic Oakdale Cemetery, with a focus on some of the women who were laid to rest there. 

Katherine Mayo Cowan's headstone, Oakdale Cemetery

In the course of my research, I ran across the story of Katherine Mayo Cowan, who was mayor of Wilmington in the 1920s. And I wanted to know more about her.


Katherine was born in 1883. Her father was a machinist. She worked as a stenographer as a young, single woman. Katherine married James Hill Cowan in June, 1904. The newspaper at the time said that he was a "popular and polished" young man and that she was "the charming daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William E. Mayo." The pair were married in secret after a short engagement. 

Mr. Cowan is the reason Mrs. Cowan was mayor.  Mr. Cowan had a varied work life: he had been a newspaper editor, an actor, a show business promoter, Wilmington's Collector of Customs, and he worked at the Chamber of Commerce before he became mayor in 1921. He was inaugurated in front of an "immense throng" of people (Wilmington Dispatch, May 18, 1921). He died in office in 1924, and his widow, Katherine, was appointed to fill his term. 

Wilmington Morning Star, September 19, 1924

While Mrs. Cowan was appointed because of her husband, she gained real power and a good income by becoming mayor. The mayor was paid $5,000 a year, at a time when most women made much less than that - an experienced white teacher made $133 per month in North Carolina in the 1920s (and African American women made $100 per month). 

Wilmington Morning Star, September 22, 1924

After she was appointed mayor, Mrs. Cowan told reporters that she would "...do everything in my power to make this administration a success." (Wilmington Morning Star, September 23, 1924.). The newspaper went on to report on Mrs. Cowan's looks and demeanor: "Seated at the broad desk of her late husband, Mayor Cowan presented the appearance of being an altogether capable executive. She was becomingly clad in a black dress, her hair caught in the position one has grown to expect of the modern business woman and wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses." No known photograph exists from this era, so we don't know what the paper meant by these comments. It seems telling, however, that when the next mayor of Wilmington took the reins of office, the newspaper did not feel the need to talk about his hairstyle or clothing choices. The paper did see fit to remark that "the Mayor's gavel of authority passed back into masculine hands...." (Wilmington Morning Star, June 2, 1925)

Mrs. Cowan seemed to enjoy being mayor. She ran for her own term. She announced her candidacy in March of 1925, but, paradoxically, did not actively campaign for office.  Ideas about respectability held a powerful hold over women's lives and actions, and it may be that Mrs. Cowan thought it would not be appropriate to campaign for office.

Mayor Cowan came in dead last in the 1925 election. 

Over the course of the century, other local women followed Mayor Cowan's footsteps and held public office. In the 1960s, Hannah Block elected Wilmington City Council from 1961-1963, and held the position of mayor pro tempore.

Hannah Block materials from Cape Fear Museum collection

In 1972, Vivian S. Wright  became the first woman elected to the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners. The first black woman to run for city council, Augusta Mosely Cooper, ran in the late 1960s. Lethia Hankins served on the City Council in the 21st century. 

Campaign materials (Wright, 1972, Cooper, 1969, Hankins, 2003)

Still, Mayor Katherine Mayo Cowan remains the only woman who has served as Mayor of the city of Wilmington.

Privilege and Prejudice: An NEH Summer in Charleston

In June, 2010 I went to Savannah as a part of an National Endowment for the Humanities funded Summer Seminar program. These programs are designed for College professors, and give the attendees a chance to delve into a particular subject area in depth. In my first foray into NEH funded professional development, I spent a month at the Georgia Historical Society with a great bunch of scholars, talking about the Civil War and memory. I can, without hyperbole, say that this seminar changed the way I look at the world around me. I came to see the legacies of slavery all around me in the urbane and urban city of Savannah. I came home and looked at Wilmington, North Carolina with a deepened understanding of how the scars of the Civil War and slavery hide in plain sight.

Mural, Charleston, South Carolina, photograph by author, 2019

In June of 2019, I was fortunate enough to attend a Second NEH summer program. This one was housed at the College of Charleston, and was titled Privilege and Prejudice: Jewish History in the American South. I spent two weeks with 25 scholars, examining the history of the South by exploring the roles of Jewish people in Southern stories.

Summer Institute group photo, College of Charleston

As the summer draws to a close, I thought I'd post a few reflections on the experience.

When I read the Institute's description, I thought that there was a lot of potential to compare Charleston and Wilmington. Like Charleston, the port city of Wilmington has a longstanding Jewish population, dating back to the 18th century. I thought that attending “Privilege and Prejudice: Jewish History in the American South” would help me better understand where Wilmington’s Jewish history fits into broader historical context.

Wilmington's Temple of Israel, dedicated in 1876.

So with that in mind, let's look at the life of prominent Jewish merchant Solomon Bear as a way to reflect on what looking at the region's Jewish history might tell us about race and place. Solomon Bear, and his brothers Samuel and Marcus, came to Wilmington from Germany in the early 1850s. The brothers initially went into business together, as dry goods merchants. Like many immigrants to the U.S., the Bears engaged in what we call chain migration - where family members followed one another to a specific place, using the bonds of family to help make a new life in their new homelands. So in this sense, their story fits into a broader narrative of white people coming to the U.S. to try to make good. 



1867 City Directory listing Solomon Bear and Samuel, Marcus, Henry and Simon Bear, all of whom live with Solomon.

But Solomon and his brothers did not go to New York, a city that so many people associate with American Jewish culture and history. They came to Wilmington, a Southern port city, during a time of great sectional tensions. One of the questions we talked about a lot at the seminar was how Jews fit into the racial hierarchy in the South, and what sorts of relationships Jewish members of antebellum society had with slavery.  Overall, the seminar's answer was that many Jewish Southerners were imbricated in the slave system, benefited from claiming whiteness, and many were slaveholders. When Solomon Bear came to the Wilmington in the 1850s, New Hanover County was a slave society. While Mr. Bear was not an enslaver - according to the slave census of 1860 at least -- he did have financial success in the South. Solomon Bear lived the life of a well-to-do white southerner. He was worth $18,000 in 1860 and twice that much by 1870. He fought for the Confederacy, survived the war, and thrived.

Mr. Bear's story provides some evidence of the ways German Jews became acculturated business men, it highlights entrepreneurship, and shows how men like Solomon Bear became a part of the social life of the city of Wilmington.  Bear did not, however, shed his original faith. Solomon was one of the founding members of the oldest synagogue in North Carolina, the Temple of Israel.  He served as president of the Temple from 1872 until his death in 1904.

The Temple of Israel’s cornerstone was laid July 15, 1875, and on May 12, 1876, the temple was dedicated. Mr. Bear was president of the Temple of Israel for decades.

Looking at the city directory again shows that the city placed the Temple into equivalency with white churches (listed as "Hebrew" under the heading churches), even as Jewish organizations like B'Nai B'Brith was held separate from other organizations. Solomon Bear’s life is, potentially, a way to think about how a person's Jewish identity and faith created continuity between their lives in Europe, and their lives in the U.S. in society, and how that faith may have been a potential barrier to acculturation.

That said, I find myself dissatisfied with this as a story of Mr. Bear's life and as a way of understanding how Jewish people fit into the history of the South. 

Comparing this story to a different one helps explain why. In 2018, I set to work trying to figure out who the boy in this picture is. 

I sent the image of a boy in a tallit to a retired librarian, and asked if she knew anyone named Reitblatt, and she connected me to the Reitblatt family. Mrs. Zee Reitblatt identified the boy as her son, David, who had his bar mitzvah in 1968 at B’Nai Israel.  The photo came to us in a collection of images from a local camera store.  And as I looked through the photos, I saw more pictures of David in a different envelope.  I recognized him in the image of him in a living room in his Boy Scout uniform.

This family’s experiences of religion and leisure was literally separated in the evidence, then put together by me looking across the collection and recognizing a child. But how much richer is David’s story (and Solomon's story before him) when we acknowledge that people contain multitudes.

Our NEH institute had us reading a lot of history that seemed more a single snapshot than a contingent, varied set of entryways into the past. That reflects the state of the field of Southern Jewish History, more than the realities of said history. I like to imagine that if this Institute was held again in 20 years time, we'd have a very different reading list, filled with the work of scholars like one of our Institute leaders, Shari Rabin, whose article on ritual circumcision is a model for how the field could grow. As I am now more grounded in the field's history, and in the history of Jewish people in the South, I look forward to seeing a new scholarship develop.  I'm sure that many of the people I was at the institute with will be driving forces in that change.