Wilmington Heritage Tour tells the vast variety of black history in Downtown Wilmington
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY)–“We get people from Wilmington saying, ‘oh my god, I have never about this stuff!” said Cedric Harrison.
From the 1898 Memorial park to the Bellamy Mansion, Wilmington has a rich and vast variety of African American history, history that can be learned on a tour bus with Cedric Harrison, a storyteller with the Wilmington Color Heritage Tour
“The Heritage Tour is a 90-minute tour where we take to you to see AME Churches, Greenbook locations, fraternity, and sorority houses,” said Harrison. “We also take you to places that are affiliated and attached to the story of the only successful government overthrow to be carried out on United States soil, also known as the coup d’etat that happened here in Wilmington during 1898.”
The Wilmington Coup D’etat, is based on an event that occurred when a group of white supremacists overthrew the multiracial city government of Wilmington and led a to massacre of many black Americans.
Throughout the tour, the bus shows the areas where the massacre happened and even the location where the mob burned and ruined the Wilmington Daily record.
Harrison says learning about the 1898 massacre, and other important parts of black history in Wilmington, is something everyone should do
“Black history is American history. Yes, it’s important to learn this history in February, but February makes it a moment to be rejoiced in and makes it a bigger impact when you actually engage with this experience, during the time where everyone in the nation is engaging in an experience like this,” said Harrison.
Harrison says the Heritage Tour is just the start and looking to expand beyond Wilmington.
“We just recently created an experience that people are starting to book us for, to show what the black experience was like at Wrightsville Beach,” said Harrison “We are also showing the experience of what was like at the black part of Carolina Beach during segregation, and what some people still consider the black beach of North Carolina and Sea Breeze.”
To learn more about the tour, follow their website for more information and future events.
