From Wilmington Delaware 1968 to Twin Cities Minnesota 2026: What Can We Learn?

The number of people who know that the Black community of Wilmington, Delaware was occupied by the National Guard for nine months after the 1968 assassination of MLK is minuscule.  That is not an accident. The Military/Historian/Media Erasure business is more robust than we realize.  It’s so effective that most of us have no idea how many things we don’t know.

One of us, Say Burgin, is a historian who studies the movements of the 1960’s.  Frank Joyce is a movement Elder who was personally involved in the opposition to the Wilmington occupation in 1968.  We are thinking about Wilmington because of the news from Minneapolis.

Here’s another relevant erasure from public memory.  The current brutal mass deportation is the third such program in the last 100 years, not the first.  Mexican Repatriation in the 1930’s deported at least one-million people to Mexico.  Under the name “Operation Wetback,” the same thing happened again in 1954.

Relatives and friends wave goodbye to a train carrying 1,500 persons being expelled from Los Angeles back to Mexico on August 20, 1931. Many were U.S. citizens.

The U.S. Border Patrol packed Mexican immigrants into trucks when transporting them to the border for deportation. June 1954.

Manufactured Amnesia has prevented almost any reporting on this.  But Donald Trump is very aware of the precedent.  In a convoluted way, he referenced it in his address to Congress on March 4, 2025.

I have sent Congress a detailed funding request laying out exactly how we will eliminate these threats to protect our homeland and complete the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a moderate man but someone who believed very strongly in borders.  Americans expect Congress to send me this funding without delay so I can sign it into law.

Did Congress send the funding?  They did and then some.  ICE is best funded so-called law enforcement agency ever.

Connecting the dots

Wilmington, Delaware and ICE in Minnesota are connected in two ways.  Extended government occupation of parts of U.S. cities by heavily armed forces for dubious reasons is one.  The blackout of the Wilmington occupation and previous mass deportations by historians and media is another.

Like the ICE/Border Patrol/National Guard/Palintir occupations currently underway in the Twin Cities and elsewhere, the Wilmington Occupation encountered resistance.  It also involved a civilian fatality.

As a report issued by People Against Racism (PAR) and the National Committee Against Repression in Wilmington explained:

Sound familiar?  Yes, but only if you are aware of it.  Sad to say mainstream historians routinely contribute to the fragmented and expunged awareness of our national past.

The 1968-69 occupation of Black Wilmington began after a very short uprising took place there. On April 4^th, 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Across the country, cities rose up in grief. Black people in Wilmington had suffered “slum clearing” programs that un-housed many, rising joblessness, and police brutality. King’s murder was salt on these wounds.

So, a few days after the assassination, young people left a rally in memory of King and took their despair to the streets, setting a few fires and looting some stores. Governor Charles Terry called up the Delaware Air National Guard and Delaware Army National Guard. Thirteen hundred descended on the small city. In the days that followed, hundreds got arrested and the uprising was quickly quashed.

But Governor Terry would not demobilize the troops.

He insisted on keeping them “until people are no longer frightened and afraid,” by whom he clearly meant white Wilmingtonians. Terry was facing a reelection campaign and wanted to feed and leverage white people’s fear of urban rebellions. Despite immense pressure, he insisted that about 50 troops would remain in Wilmington and assist Delaware State Troopers with arrests.

Just as with the Twins Cities today, there was little residents could do to stop the abuses by the armed personnel roaming around Wilmington. One child informed a journalist that, “They [Guardsmen] point their guns at you and call you black motherf***r.” Another resident told Jet magazine, “I’ve seen them making insulting sexual remarks at Black women so many times, I can’t recall them all.” Journalists themselves reported being threatened, disrespected, and had their cameras and film destroyed. Police raided a house party thrown by young Black people at one point. Activists pointed out that they showed up with no warrant but searched the home, arrested everyone and, at headquarters, forced the girls “to strip in front of male officers.”

Community groups mobilized to demand justice for slain resident, Douglas Henry, and to insist the Guard leave the city. A month into the occupation, the city’s mayor was even calling on the governor to remove the troops. But Terry instead called in the Delaware State Police, expanding the occupation. Activist groups in the city banded together under the banner of Operation Free Streets. Frank took part in building a national mobilization against the occupation, with a focus on helping to organize white communities. (Say played no part in the history but wrote about it later.)

Why does the Wilmington occupation matter now? 

We generally agree with Hegel’s observation that the only thing we learn from the history is that we don’t learn from the past.

But that doesn’t render the past irrelevant.  Just as the mass movement that opposed the war on Viet Nam was unique in U.S. history, so too is the current resistance to mass deportation.  There was nothing even close to what’s happening now in response to ICE during either Mexican Repatriation or Operation Wetback.  You might think such departures would make them interesting to historians, journalists, and media pundits, but they don’t.  Their loyalties and priorities lie elsewhere.

Our point however is not necessarily about learning from history as that’s commonly meant.  Hegel is right that despite knowing about war and other horrific and self-defeating human activities, they recur. Just knowing that we have elected racist Presidents in the past doesn’t mean we didn’t elect one for the present.

That aside, we think it’s worth understanding that there is history.  Raising awareness can present history as a form of resistance to those who would erase it.  It can also educate about systems, regressions and patterns, to better determine whether things can be repaired or need to be replaced.

If it doesn’t make sense to fix it, then the time has come to nix it.  If the transmission of your car fails once, that’s one thing. If you know it’s failed several times previously, that’s another.  That’s why Carfax is a valuable service.

“Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?”

This plaintive and poignant question, posed by Keri Ottesen on Threads, went viral across social media platforms.  (It was also highlighted by Dr. Allison Wiltz on Medium.) It sharply defines the questions we face. It evokes a history much further back than Mexican Repatriation.  Who gets brought here; who gets to stay; who gets moved around; who gets asked to come, then kicked out; who must be off the streets at Sundown—all that stuff—goes back to the very beginning.

It seems clear that we are at a turning point. Will we use the current moment to contemplate deep systemic change?  Can we recognize the pattern of repeated relapse to violent enforcement of entrenched inequities?  Or will we squander our time trying desperately to revert to the perpetual teeter-totter struggle that sustains the entrenched gender, race and class hierarchies that were institutionalized by 1776?

Authors note: This article is adapted from an earlier version that appeared at the King And Breaking Silence website as part of its Begin Again series. 

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