The co-directors discuss a devastating event in North Carolina around the turn of the 20th century that wiped out a thriving Black community. In some ways, Brad Lichtenstein and Yoruba Richen were reckoning not only with the history of the United States, but with the history of their own medium in taking on “American Coup: Wilmington 1898” when it was the same event in North Carolina following the Civil War that inspired Thomas Dixon to write the source material that D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” was based on. A cinematic landmark by virtue of its length, exceeding the limits of single-reel serials that were virtually all that were possible at the time of its making in 1915 with a two-hour runtime, the film became inextricably intertwined with how the Reconstruction era was remembered in the popular consciousness as it portrayed the Black men (infamously with white actors in blackface) that were suddenly enfranchised and allowed to run for higher office in the wake of the Union prevailing as drunkenly cavorting around state houses. By the time of its release, any power that Blacks had accrued in building communities of their own was being systematically erased both on the ground where Black businesses would be attacked, culminating in the Tulsa race riots a few years later, and in local government where laws were created around voting to prevent people from expressing their right at the ballot box.