On April 21, 1967, a group of mid-ranking Greek army colonels overthrew the elected government of the country that invented democracy, and the Western world mostly looked the other way. In this episode of The Daily History Chronicle, we explore the military coup that silenced Greece for seven years: the colonels who believed they were saving their nation, the Americans who chose strategic convenience over democratic principle, and the fragile institutions that couldn't protect themselves. This is a story about how democracies come apart and what it takes, and what it costs, to put them back together.

On April 20, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act a law that gave him the power to suspend habeas corpus and deploy the U.S. Army against domestic terrorism. The man he chose to enforce it was a former Confederate officer who had once owned eleven enslaved people. Their story is one of the most complex, forgotten chapters of Reconstruction and the law they created together is still the foundation of civil rights litigation in America today.

On April 19, 1960, South Korean students took to the streets by the tens of thousands and toppled a dictator, then watched as the military dismantled the democracy they had bled for in less than a year. Today's episode explores the full, complicated life of Syngman Rhee, a liberation hero turned authoritarian, and asks the question that the 4.19 Revolution forces us to confront: what is the difference between the courage to remove a bad leader and the institutional foundation required to build anything lasting in his place?