You have to go back 122 years to find the story of America's only successful attempt at a coup.

Yeah, so on November 10th, 1898, there was a race riot and coup in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Van Newkirk of the Atlantic has written about that day.

In Wilmington, which was seen as a relatively progressive place, recently and franchise black voters had elected black city leaders.

And the newspaper there, a black newspaper called the Daily Record run by Alexander Manley,

who run a couple of editorials speaking out against lynching and speaking out against the myth that black men were sexually violent and deviant against white women.

Following those editorials, which were published in the run-up to an election, white supremacists targeted the newspaper.

And used it as a pretext to burn down the Daily Record and then I continued to burn down and lynched black folks, homes and black people in the city of Wilmington.

And it culminated in them actually overthrowing the local government and installing a white supremacist government in the city, which was in the largest city in North Carolina.

What happened in Wilmington, North Carolina with white Americans moved to violence at the notion their country was being taken from them was seen as a harbinger for the ensuing decades of Jim Crow.

Van Newkirk thought about that coup this week, watching a mostly white crowd storm the US Capitol, trash the place, and for the most part walk right out the same doors they came in.

It's easy to let our guard down and say this was failed that the insurrection didn't work, that now this particular random Trumpism will recede into the darkness.

But there were enough things that were resonant with 1898 to make it very uncomfortable.

And I'm not sure exactly how future generations will look at what happened this week, because I'm not sure who the victors are yet.

Consider this, there's been only one successful coup on American soil. And it was about race. In some important ways this week's attack on the US Capitol was as well.

From NPR, I'm Audie Cornish. It's Friday, January 8th.

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It's considered this from NPR. One of the more striking videos to emerge from the insurrection of January 6th was taken by a reporter for the Huffington Post.

The single officer stands in a doorway in the US Capitol facing off with a mob of rioters. He has one arm outstretched. He's gesturing for them, not to come through the door. And with his other arm, he can be seen reaching for but not drawing his gun.

The officer is black. The mob he's attempting to prevent from entering, it's mostly male, and appears to be mostly white. They advance slowly, and the officer backs away. He picks up a baton from the ground, swats it in their direction a few times, but they keep coming, backing him up several flights of stairs.

And he turns around, takes the stairs to at a time, shouting his location into his radio. As they advance towards him up the stairs, he turns around a couple of times, hand on his weapon, but keeping it holstered.

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