American History Tellers

Before the 1950s, the Supreme Court was best known as an institution that adhered to the status quo. It often sought to protect the rights of property owners and businessmen, shying away from cases th...

The morning of Nov. 8, 2000, Americans woke up to an undecided election. Pollsters had predicted a close race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush, but no one knew just how...

In 1970, a 22-year-old woman in Texas named Norma McCorvey tried and failed to get an abortion from her doctor. Abortion was illegal in Texas, just as it was in most states. Women hoping to terminate ...

In the spring of 1865, the United States celebrated the end of four years of Civil War. As American soldiers laid down their weapons, four million formerly enslaved Black people in the South grappled ...

In December 1865, the first postwar Congress convened in Washington, D.C. With Black Southerners still facing rampant violence and discrimination, the Republican majority blocked the former Confederat...

In the spring of 1867, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, putting the U.S. Army in control of the South and giving Black Southerne...

In 1870, the ratification of the 15th Amendment enshrined Black men’s right to vote in the Constitution. Senator Hiram Revels became the first Black man to serve in Congress. Across the South, Black m...

On Easter Sunday, 1873, an armed white mob battled a Black militia over control of a courthouse in a rural Louisiana parish. In the end, as many as 150 Black citizens were massacred. It was one the de...

In 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden vied for the presidency. But when Election Day was over, no clear winner emerged. Amid reports of voter fraud, intimidation and viole...

After Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877, Reconstruction officially came to an end, and the battle to control the narrative began. For the next century, white Southerners espoused the Lost...