America250 — 250 years since 1776. Explore two and a half centuries of American history. Start the tour

#Race

98 entries

People (27)

Aretha Franklin

The voice that carried the church into American popular music, 1942-2018

44th President of the United States, 2009–2017

Benjamin Banneker

Self-taught astronomer, mathematician, and the first Black man to receive a presidential appointment

The Empress of the Blues and the highest-paid Black entertainer of the 1920s, 1894-1937

Booker T. Washington

Educator, founder of Tuskegee Institute, and architect of the Atlanta Compromise

Enslaved man whose lawsuit for freedom produced the Supreme Court's most condemned decision

The composer who wrote for an orchestra of specific human beings, 1899-1974

The Memphis truck driver who carried Black Southern music into white America, 1935-1977

Fannie Lou Hamer

Sharecropper, Voting Rights Activist, and Voice of the Mississippi Freedom Movement, 1917–1977

Frederick Douglass

Abolitionist, orator, and the 19th century's most powerful voice against American slavery

Co-founder of the Black Panther Party and Revolutionary of the Black Power Era, 1942–1989

Journalist, anti-lynching crusader, and one of the founders of the NAACP

Jackie Robinson

The Man Who Broke Baseball's Color Line, 1919–1972

Novelist and essayist who bore witness to race in America with unmatched clarity

Four Gold Medals at Hitler's Olympics, 1913–1980

The Native American athlete often called the greatest of the 20th century

The heavyweight champion whose 1938 fight became a battle of nations

Langston Hughes

Poet, Playwright, and Voice of the Harlem Renaissance

Louis Armstrong

The trumpeter who turned a collective folk music into an art of the individual voice, 1901-1971

Madam C.J. Walker

The washerwoman who built a beauty empire and a Black fortune

The civil rights era's most uncompromising voice for Black self-determination and human dignity

Martin Luther King Jr.

Baptist minister who led the American civil rights movement

NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi, Assassinated June 12, 1963

The champion who refused the draft and became a global symbol of conscience

Civil rights activist whose 1955 arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Thurgood Marshall

The lawyer who dismantled segregation in court and became the first Black Supreme Court Justice

Sociologist, co-founder of the NAACP, and theorist of Black identity in America

Places (3)

The Pacific gateway where arrival often meant detention, not welcome

The phoenix city of the New South, rebuilt from Sherman's ashes into a regional capital

The Motor City that built America's middle class and paid the price of its collapse

Eras (2)

Civil Rights Era

The 14 years of legislation, protest, and federal action that dismantled legal segregation, 1954–1968

The unfinished project of rebuilding the South and remaking American citizenship, 1865–1877

Events (23)

American Civil War

The 1861–1865 war over slavery and union that remade the nation

Assassination of Malcolm X

The 1965 killing of a defining voice of Black radicalism

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The 1968 killing that convulsed the nation and the movement

Civil Rights Movement

The decades-long struggle that dismantled legal segregation and reshaped American democracy

Election of 2008

Barack Obama defeats John McCain to become the first Black president

Fort Pillow Massacre

The Confederate Slaughter of Black Union Soldiers, April 12, 1864

Freedmen's Bureau

The federal agency that tried — and was not allowed — to secure Black Americans' freedom

Internment of Japanese Americans

The forced relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II

June 19, 1865 — the day freedom finally arrived in Texas, and the holiday it became

Los Angeles Riots (1992)

Six days of urban unrest following the acquittal of officers who beat Rodney King

March on Washington

The August 1963 demonstration where 250,000 Americans demanded civil rights — and heard a dream

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The 381-day protest that launched the modern civil rights movement

Murder of George Floyd

The 2020 killing that triggered a global racial-justice reckoning

Nat Turner's Rebellion

The 1831 slave rebellion that terrified the South and hardened the institution it challenged

New York Draft Riots

The deadliest civil insurrection in American history, ignited by the inequities of the Civil War draft

Selma to Montgomery Marches

The 1965 voting rights marches that broke open the conscience of a nation

The Birth of a Nation

D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic — cinematic landmark and racist propaganda

The Freedom Rides

The 1961 campaign that put civil rights on buses and forced the federal government to act

The Great Migration

The movement of six million Black Americans from the South to the North and West, 1910–1970

The Harlem Renaissance

The explosion of Black art, literature, and music that redefined American culture, 1920–1940

The O.J. Simpson Trial

The 1995 "trial of the century" that exposed America's racial divide

The Philippine-American War

The war for the Philippines that followed the war with Spain, 1899-1902

Six Days of Uprising That Redefined the Civil Rights Movement, 1965

Documents (17)

Brown v. Board of Education

The 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared school segregation unconstitutional

Chinese Exclusion Act

The First Federal Law to Bar Immigration by Race, 1882

Civil Rights Act of 1866

The first federal law to define American citizenship and guarantee equal rights regardless of race

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Reconstruction's promise of equal public life — struck down 89 years before it could be replaced

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The landmark law that banned discrimination and made legal segregation a federal crime

Civil Rights Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act — Passed One Week After King's Assassination

Dred Scott v. Sandford

The 1857 Supreme Court ruling that declared Black Americans had no constitutional rights

Fifteenth Amendment

The 1870 amendment that prohibited denying the vote on the basis of race

Fourteenth Amendment

The 1868 amendment that defined citizenship and guaranteed equal protection under the law

Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963

Immigration Act of 1924

The Johnson-Reed Act That Closed America's Door by Race and Nation

Korematsu v. United States

The 1944 ruling that upheld Japanese American internment — and was later repudiated

Loving v. Virginia

The 1967 ruling that struck down bans on interracial marriage

Plessy v. Ferguson

The 1896 Supreme Court ruling that made "separate but equal" the law of the land

The Insular Cases

The decisions that held the Constitution does not fully follow the flag, from 1901

Twenty-fourth Amendment

The abolition of the poll tax in federal elections

Voting Rights Act of 1965

The law that finally enforced the 15th Amendment — nearly a century after its ratification

Concepts (20)

Affirmative Action

The Six-Decade Legal and Political Battle Over Race-Conscious Remediation

How a country assembled a sound out of Africa, Europe, and the South

American Slavery

The institution that built the republic's wealth, defined its politics, and nearly destroyed the nation

Black Lives Matter

The movement against racism and police violence born of a hashtag

A movement demanding Black self-determination, pride, and political independence

Equal Protection

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that government must treat similarly situated people equally under the law

The music of the Black church and the training ground of soul

From a 1973 Bronx block party to the dominant popular form

The New Orleans art of improvisation that became America's chief export

The system of racial segregation that governed the South from Reconstruction to the 1960s

Berry Gordy's Detroit hit factory and the sound of young America

Native American History

The nations who were here first — conquest, removal, and a story of survival

The recurring American belief that immigrants threaten the national character

The syncopated piano craze that ran from the 1890s to the First World War

The mid-1950s collision of rhythm and blues with country

The Legal and Social System That Enforced Racial Separation Across American Life

West African foodways, plantation rations, and a cuisine the Great Migration carried north

The Delta form that became the taproot of American popular music

The Confederate mythology that rewrote the Civil War — and shaped a century of American race relations

The Middle Passage

The brutal Atlantic crossing that carried millions into American slavery

Organizations (6)

The Black Panther Party

The armed revolutionary movement for Black liberation, 1966–1982

The Ku Klux Klan

The white-supremacist terror movement that rose, fell, and rose again

The civil rights organization that fought segregation in the courts, founded 1909

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Martin Luther King's engine of the nonviolent civil rights movement, 1957

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

The young radicals who put their bodies on the line for civil rights, 1960

Tuskegee Institute

Booker T. Washington's school for Black self-reliance, founded 1881

All Tags

Politics 178 Economy 171 Military 129 Reform 121 Civil Rights 118 Law & Justice 116 Presidency 113 Science & Technology 112 Foreign Policy 107 Arts & Culture 103 Race 98 Founding Era 96 Industry 90 Constitution 75 Modern America 67 Protest 66 Cold War 65 Civil War 62 Westward Expansion 61 War 59 Revolution 59 Slavery 57 Media & Press 57 Women 56 Indigenous 51 Diplomacy 47 Immigration 41 Labor 40 Environment 36 Colonial America 34 Congress 33 Religion 33 World War II 32 Supreme Court 32 Disaster 29 Exploration 27 Public Health 25 Progressive Era 25 Abolition 22 Finance 22 Reconstruction 22 Democracy 20 Gilded Age 19 Assassination 15 Education 15 Suffrage 11 World War I 9 Sports 9 Corruption 9 Prohibition 1