6 Forgotten Events That Shaped Modern America

American history textbooks often focus on the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World Wars, creating a familiar narrative that seems comprehensive. But between these milestone events lie fascinating chapters of our national story that have been overshadowed, forgotten, or deliberately obscured. These overlooked moments have shaped modern America in profound ways that few citizens recognize. As a lifelong student of history, I've found that exploring these forgotten events offers not just historical curiosity but essential context for understanding contemporary American society.

The Wilmington Insurrection: America's Forgotten Coup

In November 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina witnessed the only successful coup d'état in American history. A group of white supremacists overthrew the legitimately elected biracial local government, killed dozens (possibly hundreds) of Black citizens, and forced thousands more to flee. They burned the offices of the Daily Record, the city's Black-owned newspaper, and installed their own government by force.

What makes this event particularly significant is how thoroughly it was erased from mainstream historical accounts. For decades, it was portrayed in history books as a "race riot" started by Black residents, completely inverting the reality. The Wilmington Insurrection marked a devastating turning point in post-Reconstruction race relations and helped usher in the Jim Crow era across the South. Its successful suppression from our national consciousness demonstrates how historical narratives can be manipulated to serve political ends.

The reverberations of Wilmington continue today in debates about voting rights, political representation, and racial justice. Only in recent decades has this event begun receiving proper historical recognition.

The Business Plot: When Corporate America Allegedly Planned a Fascist Coup

In 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression, Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified before Congress about a shocking conspiracy. He claimed that wealthy businessmen had approached him to lead a coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, potentially installing a fascist government friendly to corporate interests. The plotters allegedly included representatives of prominent families and corporations concerned about Roosevelt's New Deal policies.

Congressional investigators confirmed some of Butler's allegations but downplayed the plot's seriousness in their final report. No one was ever prosecuted. While historians debate the plot's scope and viability, this largely forgotten episode illuminates the extreme political tensions of the Depression era and raises uncomfortable questions about the fragility of American democracy during economic crises.

The 1919 Seattle General Strike

For five days in February 1919, Seattle came to a standstill when 65,000 workers—nearly the entire workforce of the city—went on strike. This remarkable event began with shipyard workers but expanded into the first true general strike in American history.

What's particularly notable about this action was its organizational sophistication. Strike committees coordinated essential services, ensuring hospitals received supplies and residents got necessities. Rather than pure chaos, the strike demonstrated workers' ability to effectively manage a city.

The mayor deployed thousands of armed men and federal troops, framing the peaceful strike as a Bolshevik revolution. National newspapers stoked fear with headlines about "Reds" and revolution. The Seattle General Strike previewed key themes that would define American labor relations for decades: worker solidarity across industries, corporate resistance, government intervention, and the potent use of anti-communist rhetoric to undermine labor movements.

Though the strike ended without achieving its immediate goals, it left an indelible mark on American labor history and demonstrated both the potential power of unified workers and the formidable forces arrayed against them—themes that remain relevant in today's conversations about worker rights.

The Forgotten Pandemic of 1918-1919

While COVID-19 brought renewed attention to the 1918 influenza pandemic, for decades this catastrophic event remained strangely absent from American historical consciousness. Despite killing approximately 675,000 Americans (in a much smaller population than today's) and 50 million people worldwide, the pandemic barely registered in history textbooks for generations.

Why was such a consequential event forgotten? Partly because it coincided with World War I, which dominated headlines and historical narratives. Additionally, the speed and severity of the pandemic left little time for reflection, and many survivors preferred not to revisit the traumatic experience.

The forgotten pandemic of 1918-1919 profoundly shaped American public health policies, medical research, and hospital development throughout the 20th century, yet Americans lost the collective memory of these connections. Our national amnesia about this crisis left us less prepared for future pandemics—a lesson painfully relearned during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Operation COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War Against American Citizens

Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted a series of covert operations against American citizens under the COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) initiative. Originally targeting the Communist Party, the program expanded to surveil, infiltrate, and disrupt civil rights organizations, anti-war groups, feminist movements, and various political organizations both left and right.

COINTELPRO's tactics included psychological warfare, legal harassment, and violence. The FBI planted false stories in newspapers, forged letters to create discord within organizations, and in some cases, was complicit in physical attacks and assassinations. Martin Luther King Jr. was among its highest-profile targets, subjected to constant surveillance and elaborate attempts to discredit him.

The program remained secret until activists broke into an FBI office in 1971 and stole documents that revealed its existence. COINTELPRO represents one of the most extensive violations of constitutional rights conducted by the U.S. government against its own citizens, yet many Americans remain unaware of its scope or legacy.

These operations fundamentally altered the relationship between government agencies and political activism in America, establishing surveillance patterns and justifications that continue to influence domestic intelligence activities today.

The Tulsa Race Massacre's Long Concealment

For decades, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history—the 1921 destruction of Tulsa's prosperous Greenwood District, known as "Black Wall Street"—was actively suppressed in historical accounts. White mobs, some deputized by local authorities, destroyed more than 35 city blocks, killed hundreds of Black residents, and left thousands homeless.

What's particularly striking about this event is not just its horror but its erasure. It disappeared from newspaper archives, was omitted from history books, and went unmentioned in Tulsa for generations. The successful suppression of the Tulsa massacre demonstrates how control of historical narratives works as an extension of power, allowing some events to vanish from collective memory while others become defining national moments.

Only in recent years has the Tulsa massacre received widespread attention, following archaeological excavations of mass graves and popular cultural references that brought this history to new audiences.

Rediscovering Our Full History

These forgotten events aren't merely historical curiosities—they're essential pieces of the American story with direct lines to current political, social, and economic realities. Their absence from our common historical understanding creates distorted perspectives on present-day challenges.

By recovering these lost narratives, we gain a more complete and nuanced understanding of our national journey. The process of rediscovering forgotten history isn't about assigning blame but about achieving clarity—seeing our present circumstances as the product of complex historical forces rather than inevitable outcomes or coincidences.

As we face contemporary divisions and challenges, these forgotten chapters remind us that American history contains multitudes: moments of tremendous courage alongside terrible violence, democratic triumphs alongside failures, and countless events that defy simple categorization. By embracing this complexity, we move closer to understanding both where we've been and where we might go as a nation.