TIME asked historians to each nominate a low point in the history of the U.S.—and to consider what we can still learn from that time
, the city had a sizeable Black middle class and a multiracial government—but it was not free from the resentment of nearby white supremacists, who stockpiled weapons and promoted false reports of Black violence in the lead-up to the 1898 municipal election. Newspapers stroked white citizens’ fears and, despite numerous warnings, the federal government left Blacks in Wilmington to defend themselves.
Recently, Black Americans have been outraged by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. These Black Americans, like those in Wilmington, were citizens of a country where white-supremacist groups openly carry military-style weapons, and where forms of voter disenfranchisement exist in almost all 50 states. One thing I think we can learn from that moment is that we need white Americans to be just as outraged as Black Americans are.
At the same time that the American Revolution was raging in the East, a smallpox pandemic occurred in the West that affected the course of American history. Breaking out in Mexico City in 1779, it reached New Mexico and then spread along the networks by which horses had dispersed northward, devastating thriving and wealthy Native American tribes as it traveled along the Columbia River to the northwest coast and across Canada to the shores of the Hudson Bay.
The death tolls were staggering. This massive outbreak occurred in a region that was not yet “American,” but American history has always been shaped by events beyond the borders of the U.S. This event is a reminder that, even today, power and prosperity cannot guarantee immunity to disaster, and the heartland of America cannot escape the impact of developments thousands of miles away.
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