By the afternoon, thirty fires had been set in abandoned buildings, two police cars were fire-bombs, 40 people were injured and 154 were arrested. "Fires were everywhere and people were looting and running and throwing bricks and fighting the police," Perkins said. The mayor called in the police and the National Guard to bring the situation under control. Perkins remembered that the black community greatly resented the way they felt the police treated them: "Well…they'd ride by and they'd stop us. We'd just be walking down the street and they'd stop us and they'd search us and say where are you going, what are you doing, that type of thing."

When the riot was over, the black community looked like a war zone, according to Clinton Perkins. "It was pretty bad. Especially the day after... But you know, the sad part about it, the next day when the day come by, and you walk through the streets and you survey, and you see, actually that was the Black community. There were white stores in there but that was a Black community." Though the riots were short-lived, the unrest led white families to move from the city, the so-called "white flight." The National Guard remained in Wilmington until January 1969, dividing blacks and whites in the city for years to come.