On this day, a white supremacist mob violently overthrew the multiracial, elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina, in what is now recognized as the only successful coup d’état in U.S. history. The mob burned down the offices of The Daily Record, a Black-owned newspaper, and murdered an estimated 60 to over 300 Black residents—though the exact number is still unknown due to the lack of records and mass graves.

The insurrection was planned by white Democrats to reverse the gains of Reconstruction, suppress Black political power, and reassert white control. They installed their own leaders in local government by force, driving Black officials and their white allies out of town. This event marked a turning point, ushering in decades of Jim Crow laws and voter suppression across the South.

It’s a sobering reminder of how white supremacist violence was used to dismantle Black progress—and how history was often rewritten to obscure those truths.