Wilmington, NC news and local guide

Early settlers came from the Albemarle and Pamlico regions, Virginia and South Carolina, but more came from the northern colonies, the West Indies and Northern Europe, many of them indentured servants. As fewer servants came, planters and merchants imported more and more enslaved Africans, and by 1767 they made up more than 62 percent of the people of the Lower Cape Fear, many working as laborers in the port. By the late 19th century Wilmington was a majority-Black, racially integrated and prosperous city, the largest in North Carolina. In the Wilmington massacre of 1898, white supremacists staged a coup that overthrew the legitimately elected Fusionist city government. They drove Black and white opposition leaders out of the city and destroyed Black-owned property and businesses, including the city's only Black newspaper, and estimates of the dead range from about 60 to more than 300. By 1910 Charlotte had passed Wilmington as the state's largest city. Sources Wikipedia: Wilmington, North Carolina