The Wilmington Ten An 1898 Mentality Prevailed Elizabeth

The Wilmington Ten: “An 1898 Mentality Prevailed” Elizabeth Hines University of North Carolina Wilmington

I. The 1898 Mentality

l 1898: 1898 Riot l 1971: 1898 Insurrection l 1998: 1898 Coup d’etat l 2006: 1898 Massacre l 2008: 1898 Terrorism

Wilmington’s Thalian Hall, where the Declaration of White Supremacy was read on November 10, 1898

News spread across the US and the world

II. 71 years of Jim Crow

III. 1968: Trouble Brewing

l Williston Industrial High School prepared thousands of black students for professions and vocations from the late 19 th century to 1968. l 1954 Brown v Board of Education mandated national school desegregation. l 1968: Wilmington’s Public Schools were integrated by closing Williston and sending its students and teachers to one of two white high schools, New Hanover or Hoggard.

Williston Industrial High School

l Martin Luther King, Jr. was scheduled to speak in Wilmington on April 4, 1968. l However, he canceled to remain in Memphis with the Garbage Worker’s Strike and was killed on that day. l Williston students’ protests turned to rioting, lasting for 5 days. 27 buildings were burned.

200 Williston students marched to Thalian Hall on 4/5/68 to protest the King assassination.

A Voice of Reason: Mrs. Bertha Todd, Librarian at Williston in ‘ 52 -68 (Hoggard in 6869), explained in 2006 that in 1971 “an 1898 mentality prevailed. ” (The Real Help)

l Williston was not integrated, but New Hanover and Hoggard received the Black students and teachers in Fall of 1968. l Two uneasy years of protests and inter-racial fights ensued. Tim Tyson described his 5 years in Wilmington’s Jr. & Sr. Highs as a “protracted prison movie. ” l Black students missed the opportunities in extracurricular activities that were denied them in the white schools. White students resented the Blacks’ presence. Although, many have commented that the real problem was the parents and a group known as the ROWP.

In late 1970 and early 1971, 22 buildings were firebombed, including the School Board’s building, the Hemingway, shown here.

The straw the broke the camel’s back.

When New Hanover High chose no black cheerleaders 1970, black students boycotted the schools and 100 s became truant. New Hanover, 1969 Hoggard, 1970

Refuge Perceived As Caldron

Gregory Congregational United Church of Christ

Pastor Eugene Templeton, his wife and students in Gregory UCC Church, 1971

l Reverend Templeton asked the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice to send a facilitator to organize and lead the student boycott. l On 2/1/71, the UCCCRJ sent 23 year old Benjamin Chavis, an ordained minister. l Chavis had been an organizer in Oxford, N. C. , his home town, where a racial murder had sparked riots, and in Charlotte, N. C. , where he had been a student organizer during desegregation of the schools there.

Benjamin Chavis (Muhammad) 1971; at the Ten’s Appeal Press Conference in 1973; & at the 35 th anniversary in 2006

• • • Chavis went to work for the UCC after he got out of jail. • He now works for Russell • Simmons’ Hip Hop Network. Later he became the National Chairman of the NAACP. After resigning amid a scandal, he joined the Nation of Islam and took the name Muhammad.

Chavis led a protest against the injustices to the high schoolers on the steps of Thalian Hall, February 1971

Lum’s Restaurant, a popular hangout in a white suburb, burned on 2/5/71. The owners claimed that a sophisticated timed incendiary device had been placed in the men’s room and that Chavis and several other blacks had lingered there all night. Others claimed that it was torched for an insurance claim.

The mayor and the lawmen

Mike’s Grocery burned on February 6, 1971. Police and firemen received sniper fire, said to be coming from Gregory Church.

Kojo Nantambu (Roderick Kirby in 1971(R)) counted 33 cars with white passengers “bristling with guns” circling Gregory on 2/6/71; In 2006 (L) is president of the Charlotte NAACP, an ordained minister and a Mecklenburg County Schools Administrator.

The ROWP arrived in 1970.

Mike’s Grocery was a white-owned business in the Black community near Gregory Church. Mike Poulos was reputed to have slapped a Black customer and refused to sell alcohol to minors earlier on the day of the firebombing. At the trial in 1972, Allen Hall, the prosecution’s main witness, admitted his own role as one of the arsonists at Mike’s, who then, with Chavis, sniped at emergency personnel.

Wilmington Ten sites

Steve Mitchell, a black 16 year old was killed on the night of the Mike’s Grocery arson in a nearby alley. An unfired shotgun was found by his body. Two people died. Harvey Cumber, white, was found shot to death in his truck near Gregory Church the next day. He had a loaded 38. His body was driven through town by his relatives on the back of a flatbed truck.

200 National Guardsmen arrived in Wilmington on 2/8/71 to restore order.

They found Gregory Church empty.

Shell casings and dynamite were found in Gregory Church.

The Reverend Leon White and Kojo at the Church of the Black Messiah, Castle Street

IV. The Wilmington Ten (originally the Wilmington 30)

Attorney James Ferguson’s Motion to Quash the Indictment

In 2012, Ferguson is the lead attorney in the first court case to test the Racial Justice Act.

A Good Defense Faced An Uphill Battle: l Attorney James Ferguson’s initial motion to quash the indictments argued that the Ten were denied their state and federal Constitutional rights to a jury of their peers was denied. l Ferguson discovered the D. A. ’s witness tampering, when Allen Hall, the state’s main witness, waived at him from the Holiday Inn at Wrightsville Beach, where the DA had him and the other witnesses sequestered. l Ferguson’s 5 attempts to force disclosure were denied. l Ultimately, his appeal was heard and the Ten were released.

The Wilmington Ten received a combined total of 232 years in 1972. Chavis’s sentence was the longest. Wayne Moore Anne Sheppard James Mc. Koy Ben Chavis Joe Wright Willie Vereen Connie Tindall Marvin Patrick Reginald Epps Jerry Jacobs

The Pender County Courthouse in Burgaw, N. C. 30 miles from Wilmington, where both trials were held.

Jay Stroud, Assistant D. A.

Two trials in 1972: l The first jury was composed of 10 blacks and 2 whites. Assistant DA Stroud developed a stomach ache, was taken to a hospital, and a mistrial was declared. l When he recovered, a new jury was selected after 40 dismissals by Stroud. The new jury consisted of 10 whites and two blacks.

State’s Witnesses Damned the Ten l Allen Hall, 17, committed to Cherry Mental Hospital for 5 weeks in October 1971 l Jerome Mitchell, 16, later imprisoned l Eric Junius, aged 12 at the time, was given a mini-bike after the trial by Stroud l All 3 eventually recanted their testimony.

Allen Hall, main witness for the prosecution

l The three state’s witnesses were bribed by Jay Stroud with stays in beachfront hotels, games, fishing, visits to parents and from girlfriends, and promised immunity from prosecutions for the firebombing and other crimes in exchange for their testimony against Chavis and his 9 co-defendants. l These favors and the witnesses’ whereabouts were hidden from the jury, although the defense knew that the boys were sequestered at the beach, because Allen Hall had waived to Attorney Ferguson from a balcony at Wrightsville Beach’s Holiday Inn. The witnesses were then moved to a cottage at Carolina Beach, where Hall attacked a guard with a knife and was taken to jail. No charges were filed against Hall in the attack.

l Stroud refused to disclose the witnesses’ whereabouts throughout the trial, despite repeated requests by the defense. l When questions arose about the reliability of Hall’s testimony, which conflicted with his sworn statements, Stroud refused to supply the amended written statement that he claimed matched the trial testimony, saying that he had corrected Hall’s statement by hand that the defense had no right to his working notes. l Stroud also refused to disclose Hall’s psychiatric evaluation, which included information that Hall’s IQ of 82, made him “borderline defective” mentally and therefore an unreliable witness.

Hall testified that Chavis l Played the leadership role at Gregory, advocating arson, the procurement of gasoline and instructing firebomb targets, manufacture, lighting & throwing l Counseled a break-in of a gun shop to procure weapons and ammunition l Advocated the "Chicago strategy" of firebombing buildings, then ambushing responding firemen and policemen l Planned, directed, and led an aborted firebombing of Mike’s on 2/5/71 (the night Lum’s burned) and the successful firebombing of Mike’s on 2/6/71 l Furnished guns to Hall and to others l and Hall fired at emergency personnel on 2/6/71 Hall implicated the 9 others as being in Gregory on 2/6/71

Stroud promised Hall immunity from prosecution for this and other crimes for his testimony against the Ten. Stroud reneged and Hall went to jail anyway. From there, he wrote to Ann Sheppard, threatening her life. Hall later recanted his testimony.

The Ten lost an appeal in 1973 anyway.

Allen Hall again recanted in a letter to Chavis and the two other witnesses recanted their testimony against the Ten when it became apparent that Stroud wouldn’t help them get out of jail.

In 1977 Amnesty International adopted the Wilmington Ten’s cause for justice.

President Carter’s Human Rights Initiatives sparked renewed interest in the Wilmington Ten.

l Drew S. Days, Carter’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, wrote an 89 page “friend of the court” brief that supported the defense’s contention that the Ten were denied due process based on the prosecutor’s handling of witnesses, his refusal to submit to the defense Hall’s corrected statement (which no one has ever seen), and his failure to disclose Hall’s psychiatric evaluation from his October 1971 stay at Cherry Hospital. l National and international outcry finally caused Governor James Hunt to release all Ten. l Their convictions were overturned, but they have not been exonerated.

Rallies were held at many U. S. embassies, around the world. Chavis received bags of mail from many groups in other countries, including Cuba, and he was interviewed by the Soviet Union’s Tass news agency.

Among the signers of the petition to President Carter: Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Harry Belefonte, Edward Asner, Norman Mailer, Dr. Benjamin Spock and 68 members of the U. S. House.

The 1978 Appeal Concluded: “The record is clear that when counsel sought to explore with Hall his initial denial of special treatment, that line of questioning was prohibited. It is true that some minor instances of special treatment had been made known to the jury from other testimony of Hall, but the amenities of his incarceration, his visits home, the visit of his girlfriend, and above all the decision not to punish him for his attack on his guard were all withheld from the jury. To a lesser extent, the same is true with respect to Mitchell. As we have shown, these witnesses, especially Hall, were crucial to North Carolina's case, and the case rested on the jury's determination of their credibility. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is reversed, and the consolidated cases are remanded with directions to grant the relief prayed. REVERSED AND REMANDED. ”

The 35 th Anniversary of the Wilmington Ten events was commemorated at Gregory Church in 2006. Security was tight.

1971 & 2006

Gregory UCC Church was packed.