We have taken a city as thoroughly, as completely as if captured in battle.

It was the only armed overthrow of an elected government.

We really don't know how many people were murdered that day.

Whole families have broken up and scattered.

The homes representing their savings are deserted.

I've always felt like this story was always meant to be told.

In North Carolina, the Negro holds the balance of power.

There was really no other major city in the south like Wilmington.

You have the Black leadership with college degrees.

And there was a professional class there, doctors and teachers and lawyers.

White vendors are having to compete with black vendors for customers.

And black men were able to hold public office at multiple levels of government.

Wilmington is essentially a promised land for African-Americans.

It was a different vision of what American democracy could be, that it could actually be multi-racial and work.

Men, do your duty.

This city, county and state shall be rid of Negro domination once and forever.

The Confederacy was trying to take power back.

And white supremac is going to be the rallying cry.

So leaders of the conspiracy turned to actually taking over the city government at gunpoint.

A definition of a coup detat is an armed overthrow of a legally elected government, which is what happened on this day in Wilmington.

This was a coup based on the devaluatio of African-American citizenship.

You think about the loss of weal the stealing of their generational legacies.

What Wilmington tells us is how fragile American democracy is.