Sign

Ferryboats crossed the Cape Fear River from the Wilmington docks to Negro (Nigger) Head Point for centuries. The peninsula, known as Negro Head Point, is created by the confluence of the Northeast and Northwest Cape Fear Rivers. In colonial times this “point” was the site of wharves and a tavern. Negro Head Point was known for its holding pens for slaves marketed in Wilmington. Plantation slaves were kept at the point before and after auctions to reduce contact with free blacks and urban slaves. These factors, along with the periodic “head” counts used to ensure no slave had escaped, earned the site its name.
Negro Head Point Road took its name from this terminus as it wound its way to colonial Campbelltown and Cross Creek (present day Fayetteville). The road appears on maps as early as 1743. Moores Creek National Battle field protects a remnant of this historic trace used by Patriot and Loyalist forces during the Moores Creek Bridge Campaign in 1776. 
After the Nat Turner slave rebellion in Virginia (1831), a similar slave revolt was building in Wilmington. A slave named Dave, who belonged to Sheriff Thomas K. Morrisey, was planning to march to Wilmington with a group of conspirators, killing white land owners on the way. In Wilmington, they planned to meet up with over 2,000 other slaves and free blacks to continue their killing raid. Dave was tortured into admitting that he was the leader of this revolt, and he and his accomplice, Jim, were killed and decapitated. Their heads were then staked on poles and placed along the road as a warning to other slaves. These slaves would be marched through the road, forced to look at the display, as a clear threat of what would happen to them if they misbehaved. In Wilmington, 15 blacks were arrested, and 6 were found guilty and killed. Their heads, too, were staked and placed along the road, with one at Negro Head Point, marking the entrance to Negro Head Point Road. This display was also used to warn children of how to treat whites and what would happen if they didn't behave, creating a scared and submissive younger generation at the time.


A part of the history here in the south.