Wilmington Massacre and Coup: Only Documented Overthrow of US Government by Force

On November 10, 1898, in Wilmington, North Carolina — then the state's largest city with a Black majority and a functioning interracial government — approximately 2,000 armed white men led by former Confederate soldiers overthrew the elected Republican city government, killing at least 14 and possibly 60–300 Black residents. The mob burned the offices of the Black newspaper 'Daily Record,' expelled Black and white Republican officials, and installed a Democratic government at gunpoint. It remains the only documented successful coup d'état against a US government. Wilmington had been a center of Black economic and political life; the coup destroyed its Black professional class. No federal intervention occurred; no prosecutions followed.