Southern race riots in 1866 galvanized support for more radical Reconstruction

Radical Reconstruction began in response to the lenient policies of Andrew Johnson

In 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts—overriding Johnson's vetoes—placing the South under military rule and requiring new state constitutions, Black male suffrage, and ratification of the 14th Amendment before readmission.

More than 2,000 Black Americans were victims of racial terror lynchings from 1865 to 1876

The Equal Justice Initiative documented over 2,000 lynchings of Black people during Reconstruction—violence that attempted to restore white supremacy, suppress Black political power, and terrorize communities in the aftermath of emancipation.

White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan emerged to undermine Reconstruction

Founded in 1865 by former Confederate officers in Tennessee, the Ku Klux Klan used terror, murder, and intimidation to suppress Black political power and restore white Democratic control across the postwar South.

The end of Reconstruction paved the way for Jim Crow segregation

After federal troops withdrew in 1877, white Democrats regained control of Southern governments, dismantled Reconstruction reforms, and imposed segregation laws. By the 1890s, Jim Crow statutes had entrenched racial discrimination and Black disenfranchisement across the South.

Thousands of Black men held local, state, and federal offices during Reconstruction

Between 1865 and 1877, more than 1,500 Black Americans served in local, state, and federal offices—including 16 in Congress. This unprecedented political participation largely ended after Reconstruction as Jim Crow laws and racial violence suppressed Black voting.

Southern Black Codes sought to preserve prewar racial labor structures

With little federal oversight, Southern states enacted laws effectively reestablishing slavery's economic and social order. These laws, known as the "Black Codes," restricted freed people's movement, labor, and property rights.

Rockwell's 'Murder in Mississippi (Southern Justice)' was a response to real events

The 1965 painting was inspired by the 1964 murders of three men—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. The men were affiliated with the Council on Racial Equity and killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The painting accompanied an article about the inequities of the justice system, which is why its title often includes the parenthetical "(Southern Justice)."

One of the earliest Memorial Day ceremonies was held by newly freed Black Americans in South Carolina

On May 1, 1865, roughly 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves, paraded around a Charleston racetrack where Union prisoners had been buried, predating the first national commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery by three years.

'Black Wall Street': the affluent neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Black-owned businesses once thrived

A white mob destroyed Black Wall Street in 1921. America also had other "Black Wall Street" neighborhoods in places like Richmond, Virginia.

How baseball shaped Black America during Reconstruction

A cornerstone of the budding Black culture following the Civil War was baseball, with several clubs springing up in Black neighborhoods and leaders like Frederick Douglass cheering on the players, including his son, who played for a team in Washington. This detailed history of the early Black leagues unpacks how the game enhanced the upwardly mobile community—and why that fact led to the segregation of what would become Major League Baseball.

The NAACP encouraged and accommodated the early Harlem Renaissance

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization better known as the NAACP, recognized the disenchantment Black soldiers who served in World War I experienced when returning home to a segregated country and began advancing, and, in many ways, funding a "New Negro Movement," which would lead to the Harlem Renaissance.

Nine Black students were arrested in 1961 for refusing to stop reading at a segregated Mississippi library

Public libraries across the South were segregated by law, with Black residents directed to separate, underfunded facilities. When nine Tougaloo College students sat down to read at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library, they were arrested. Their act helped the NAACP push for the desegregation of public spaces in Jackson.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act sparked violence that foreshadowed the Civil War

The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act let settlers vote on whether to allow slavery, repealing the Missouri Compromise. Competing proslavery and antislavery groups poured into Kansas, sparking years of bloody conflict known as "Bleeding Kansas."

The Great Migration spread jazz to various parts of the country

The large-scale migration of Black Americans looking to escape Jim Crow laws in the South began in 1915 and helped bring New Orleans music to other parts of the country, including Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

Malcolm X's 'Ballot or the Bullet' speech emphasized the political power of Black voters

The 1964 speech addressed institutionalized racism in the United States and urged Black Americans to exercise their right to vote or be prepared to defend themselves if democracy continued to fail them. It is lauded as one of the most unflinching speeches from the Civil Rights movement.

A 2013 Supreme Court case weakened federal oversight of redistricting

In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act's preclearance formula, reducing federal oversight of voting laws—including redistricting—and allowing changes to take effect without prior approval.

The Red Power movement pushed back against poverty and broken treaty rights in the 1960s and 1970s

Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Indigenous activists founded the American Indian Movement, a national advocacy organization, to protest excessive police violence and federal violations of treaty rights, drawing national attention to conditions on reservations.

In 1976, segregation was outlawed in private schools

Over two decades after Brown v. Board of Education, Runyon v. McCrary banned the segregation academies, forcing them to admit non-white students or shut down.

How failures at Versailles Conference led to more racial inequality

Suffering a pandemic and the aftermath of a war that killed 50 million, the world in 1920 faced a turning point as it negotiated a new political order. As today, the key issue was racial inequality.

The first recorded American Mardi Gras was in Alabama

French explorers observed celebrations in what would become the United States in the late 1600s, but the first recognized modern American Mardi Gras took place in Mobile, Alabama, on New Year's Eve, running from 1830 into 1831. By 1840, the town had incorporated costumes, masks, and themes into its parade. After the Civil War, Mobile's Mardi Gras was moved to the more traditional date of Fat Tuesday. By 1850, a group from Mobile migrated to New Orleans, bringing the city's traditions with it.

Support for slavery helped drive Texas to revolt against Mexico

Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, but many Anglo-American settlers in Texas brought enslaved people and refused to comply. Their desire to preserve slavery was a major factor in Texas’s 1836 rebellion and independence from Mexico.

Whitman's view on slavery was informed by a trip to New Orleans

In 1848, Walt Whitman traveled with his brother to New Orleans to pursue a job opportunity at the Daily Crescent newspaper. While there, he witnessed firsthand the horrors of the slave trade, an experience that would inform the political and artistic projects that followed.

New York was a hotbed of early revolutionary activity

In the decade before independence, New York City saw Stamp Act riots, liberty pole confrontations, the 1770 Battle of Golden Hill, and defiance of the Quartering Act, and organized efforts to block and destroy taxed British tea.

'The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them'

- Ida B. Wells, co-founder of the NAACP (1862-1931)

That time General Ulysses Grant barred Jewish residents from the war zone

In 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant issued an order that banned all "Israelites" (meaning Jews) from a military zone consisting of parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi. After much outcry, the order was rescinded by President Abraham Lincoln and Grant feebly explained it was a misunderstanding. Learn more about this odd bit of history here,

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Fireworks-related ER visits are on the rise—in 2024, they increased by 52% as compared to the prior year.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day