Josephus Daniels

Josephus Daniels, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1985
János Farkas
Bronze
97 x 36 x 37 in. (246.4 x 91.4 x 94 cm)
Daniels Family Charitable Foundation, Raleigh, North Carolina
Filed Under:
Josephus Daniels
Sponsor: Josephus Daniels Charitable Foundation
Dedicated: 1985
Removed: 2020
Josephus Daniels (1862-1948) was the longtime owner, editor, and publisher of The News & Observer (The N&O), the largest newspaper in North Carolina, headquartered in Raleigh. Daniels was the epitome of a Progressive Southern Democrat: he supported women’s suffrage, free public education, trust busting, and restrictions on child labor, while simultaneously advocating for white supremacy and the disenfranchisement of Black citizens. Though he would go on to serve as Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson and ambassador to Mexico under Franklin D. Roosevelt, Daniels is chiefly remembered for his role in the Wilmington Massacre of 1898.
In the late nineteenth century, several Southern states saw white Republicans and Populists unite with Black voters and politicians to form biracial political parties like the Fusionists in North Carolina. In an attempt to take back the state legislature, the Democrats ran the “White Supremacy campaign” for the election of 1898. The N&O, under Daniels, supported the white-supremacist ticket with inflammatory editorials and cartoons demonizing Black politicians and decrying the danger of “Negro rule,” inciting violence against Black voters. As Daniels himself stated about the editorial direction the newspaper took under his leadership after he and a group of friends acquired it in 1894, “The News and Observer was relied upon to carry the Democratic message and to be the militant voice of White Supremacy, and it did not fail in what was expected, sometimes going to extremes in its partisanship.” Following months of intimidation, including a torchlit parade evocative of the 2017 Unite the Right rally, a paramilitary group known as the Red Shirts prevented Black people from voting on election day and stuffed ballot boxes. The Democrats prevailed in the election, winning a majority in the statehouse.
This, however, was not enough for the Red Shirts, who wanted to remove Fusionist politicians altogether. On November 10, two days after the election, a mob of white supremacists ransacked the city of Wilmington, burning down the city’s Black newspaper building, killing between 60 and 300 Black residents, and forcing 1,400 people into exile. The white Republican mayor Silas P. Wright, the Black and white board of aldermen, and the white police chief John Melton, all of whom had two years left in their terms, were ousted at gunpoint, and Alfred Waddell, a former Confederate soldier, was installed as mayor. The Wilmington Massacre remains the only successful coup on American soil in which a duly elected government was removed from office. In an unpublished memoir, Daniels wrote that “the paper was cruel in its flagellations. In the perspective of time, I think it was too cruel.” Nonetheless, he never apologized for the violence of the white supremacy campaign or his role in the massacre.
Daniels continued to head The N&O until his death in 1948. Under the leadership of his sons, the newspaper became a uniquely progressive voice in the Jim Crow-era South, advocating for school desegregation among other issues, prompting outspoken conservative Jesse Helms to claim in 1953 that the paper was “selling out the South.” The paper continued to be run by the family until 1995.
Despite a 1949 state commission to build a monument to Daniels, none was erected until 1985, when the Josephus Daniels Charitable Foundation commissioned Hungarian-born Greensboro-based sculptor Janos Farkas to design a statue to The N&O’s longtime editor and publisher. Intended as a gift to Josephus Daniels’s son, Frank Daniels Sr., the monument was installed in Nash Square, a public green space across the street from The N&O building. In situ, Daniels gestured toward the building that housed the newspaper until 2015.
Amidst the global Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, the Daniels family opted to remove the statue from public display without pressure from activists or city officials. Frank Daniels Jr., former president and publisher of The N&O and grandson of Josephus, released a statement:
Josephus Daniels’ legacy of service to North Carolina and our country does not transcend his reprehensible stand on race and his active support of racist activities. In the 75 years since his death, The N&O and our family have been a progressive voice for equality for all North Carolinians, and we recognize this statue undermines those efforts.




































































































































































































































































































































































