We’re used to recognizing someone powerful with a statue. But what happens when there’s no statue or memorial to a traumatic event?

Whoever lives with the impact of that painful history has to confront the kind of power it takes to keep it hidden for so long. In this special episode of the Monumental podcast from PRX, we uncover the story of the only successful coup d’etat ever to happen on American soil.

This act of racial violence was designed to eliminate all memory of a highly successful Black community in Wilmington, North Carolina back in 1898. That suppression involved racist mobs, as well as historians, city planners, journalists and countless others.

They conspired for decades to make a Black community’s onetime prosperity and strength unimaginable. Almost unimaginable.