Wilmington Ten - Background

Background

In the 1960s and 1970s, black residents of Wilmington, North Carolina were unhappy with the lack of progress in implementing integration and other civil rights reforms legally achieved by the American Civil Rights Movement. Many struggled with poverty and lack of opportunity. The 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. increased racial tensions, with a rise in violence, including the arson of several white-owned businesses.

Racial tension increased after the 1969 integration of Wilmington high schools, as the city closed the black Williston High School, a source of community pride. It laid off black teachers, principals, and coaches, transferring students to other schools. There was little preparation of whites or blacks for the changes. The school administration resisted meeting with the students to hear their grievances, including separation from friends and the lack of opportunity to play sports in new schools. Several clashes between white and black students had resulted in a number of arrests and expulsions.

In response to tensions, members of a Ku Klux Klan chapter and other white supremacist groups began patrolling the streets. They hung an effigy of the white superintendent of the schools and cut his phone lines. Street violence broke out between them and black men.

Students decided to boycott the high schools in January 1971. In February, the United Church of Christ sent Reverend Benjamin Chavis, Jr., from their Commission for Racial Justice, to Wilmington to try to calm the situation and work with the students. He preached non-violence to them and met with students regularly at Gregory Congregational Church to discuss black history, as well as to organize the boycott.