Reconstruction Era: A False Dawn of Freedom?
With the end of the Civil War, four million formerly enslaved people in the South were now free. It was the beginning of a remarkable experiment: rebuilding the South on the foundations of freedom and...
10 Aug 42min
Plessy v. Ferguson: The Supreme Court Case That Enshrined Jim Crow
In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled that Jim Crow segregation laws were not unconstitutional in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. This is the case that Brown v. Board of Education would eventually overturn ...
6 Aug 38min
What Happened to the Confederates?
Across the defeated Confederacy, there had been an expectation that those who had taken up arms against their citizens would be punished. This did not happen however and instead ex-Confederates were g...
3 Aug 41min
How Did the Supreme Court Claim Power?
Can you think of a time in history when a law has been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?Having been used over 180 times, judicial review is one of the most important powers that the US Supr...
30 Jul 42min
Life in Mobland Chicago
Just how dangerous was it to live in Chicago during the 1920s? Was it all gangsters, tommy guns and spilt moonshine?Don is finding out what it was like to exist alongside the likes of Al Capone with P...
27 Jul 37min
Long Walk of the Navajo
Between 1863 and 1866, more than 10,000 Navajo (Diné) were forcibly removed from their lands by the U.S. Military and forced to marched hundreds of miles into present day New Mexico. Many died of star...
23 Jul 44min
The Robin Hood of the Wild West
Robbing from the rich to give to the poor and downtrodden - this is the legend of Joaquin Murrieta.But how true was it? Murder rates in 1850s California were 30 times higher than they are today, and J...
20 Jul 44min
The Best Presidential Speeches
The words of an American president have often carried the power to shape not only public opinion, but the course of the nation itself. In this episode, we explore three landmark presidential speeches,...
16 Jul 47min
