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1. The moon landing“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” and perhaps the defining image of U.S. history, a potent symbol of American ingenuity, persistence, and power.T-2. Migrant MotherDorothea Lange’s 1936 classic—depicting a 32-year-old mother of seven surrounded by two of her children and with an infant in her lap, her brow furrowed with resignation and uncertainty—is an image that became synonymous with the desperate poverty facing Americans during the Great Depression.T-2. Raising the flag at Iwo Jima (at top) An AP photographer captured this iconic image atop Mount Suribachi in February 1945. Before the year was out, it was on a postage stamp and had won the Pulitzer Prize.4. Washington Crossing the DelawareSeventy-five years after the fact, German American painter Emanuel Leutze memorialized George Washington’s Christmas night raid across the ice-choked and storm-sieged Delaware River in one of the nation’s most famous paintings.5. MLK leading the March on Washington for Jobs and FreedomThe enduring image of a quarter-million people surrounding the reflecting pool and watching a Black preacher deliver a historic speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial celebrates the best of America.T-6. Mushroom clouds over JapanThe explosive aftermath of the dropping of two atomic bombs by the United States over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is a fraught symbol of strength and terror, power and horror.T-6. The Terror of WarAlso known as Napalm Girl, this 1972 photo depicts nine-year-old Kim Phuc running naked, along with other children, from a napalm attack. It captured the horror of the war the United States was waging in Southeast Asia.T-8. The Scourged BackThis early 1863 photograph, which received broad attention when published in Harper’s Weekly, exposes the brutality of slavery in a way words never could.T-8. The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World)The 305-foot-tall symbol of America’s role as a beacon of democracy and freedom has welcomed countless immigrants to our shores since its dedication in 1886.T-8. Emmett Till in his casketTwo white Mississippians kidnapped and savagely murdered this 14-year-old. Till’s mother elected to display his nigh-unrecognizable body in an open, glass-topped coffin—and then Jet magazine published photos of him. The nation could not look away.T-8. Little Rock Nine photo of Hazel Bryan screaming at Elizabeth EckfordThe hate-filled Bryan and stoic Eckford instantly became the contrasting faces of school desegregation in 1957 Little Rock, Arkansas.T-8. Ruby Bridges integrating New Orleans schoolsSix-year-old Ruby just wanted to go to school, but in 1960, she needed federal marshals to get past screaming white protesters. She made an indelible impression photographically, and then in Norman Rockwell’s 1964 illustration for Look magazine, The Problem We All Live With.T-8. Eugene “Bull” Connor releasing dogs on and fire-hosing civil rights protesters in Birmingham, AlabamaConnor, the city’s commissioner of public safety and a rabid segregationist, took issue with young people protesting in Birmingham. He didn’t count on the media beaming images of the brutality to the rest of the country.T-14. American Progress by John GastIt “once represented unabashed notions of manifest destiny, then came to encapsulate for many the hubris of settler colonialism,” Calvin University’s Kristin Kobes Du Mez noted. Is it any surprise that Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security now uses it as a recruiting tool?T-14. 9/11 imagesNo American who was alive can forget the scenes from September 11, 2001.T-16. Declaration of Independence by John TrumbullTrumbull’s masterwork took more than three decades to complete as he tried to get each of the Founders’ faces correct.T-16. January 6No amount of Trump revisionism will remove this stain from our history, as he rallied supporters to violently halt the peaceful transfer of power.T-16. Kent StateMary Ann Vecchio’s face captures the anguish and outrage that would sweep the country when Ohio National Guardsmen shot 13 students, killing four, who were protesting the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.T-19. JFK in Dallas, November 22, 1963That day in Dallas was a demarcation point for a generation of Americans—afterward, the country’s very path seemed to drift into darkness.T-19. Bloody Sunday/Selma March1965’s “Bloody Sunday” saw 600 marchers on their way to Montgomery, Alabama, attacked and brutalized by law enforcement officers after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, yet another shock to the nation’s conscience in the civil rights era.

1776Declaration of IndependenceThe one that started it all—the reason we’re celebrating a semiquincentennial. The Founders “embrace[d] a world-quaking creed that values individual freedom and the rights of man over heredity, might, or wealth,” writer and historian John A. Farrell noted.1787The ConstitutionAn imperfect document (both because the framers tacked on 10 Amendments soon after and because of its slavery compromises), it was the result of a host of compromises that produced some epic arguments at the Constitutional Convention. Still, it created a flexible and enduring system.1863Emancipation ProclamationLincoln’s declaration didn’t immediately liberate anyone, but it made “the U.S. Army into a force for liberation,” University of California, Davis historian Eric Rauchway pointed out. “Every step a U.S. soldier took into rebel territory afterward created free soil and free people.”1865Victory in the Civil WarThe Union prevailed in what was not only an existential fight but also a contest to define the nature of freedom and start to expiate the nation’s original sin, slavery. It came at the price of more than 600,000 dead, and the assassination of our greatest president.1865–1870Reconstruction AmendmentsYes, it took a while for the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to achieve their full potential (OK, we’re still waiting), but they ended slavery while dramatically expanding all Americans’ rights.1920Nineteenth AmendmentIt’s strange to think that guaranteeing in the Constitution a woman’s right to vote was once a controversial idea. It’s even weirder to realize that there are still people around who think of it that way.1945Victory in World War IIThe United States led the original forces of antifa, liberating the globe and establishing itself as the moral and political leader of the free world. Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States was considered by many to be a huge mistake. We made him pay.1963March on Washington for Jobs and FreedomCapped by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, this August 1963 event attracted a quarter-million attendees and countless more watching on television. King’s moral and rhetorical might helped galvanize the nation.1964–1965Civil/Voting Rights ActsA century after the Civil War, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), laws that “actually began to fulfill the failed promise of the Union victory,” said Vanderbilt University political scientist John Sides.2008Election of Barack ObamaBy becoming the first African American to achieve the nation’s highest office, Obama became a living embodiment of our Union bending toward greater perfection.

UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin’s remarks suggesting that the increase in the number of teams at the World Cup could lead to “uninteresting matches” has been strongly criticized by several football federations. elevation , June 24, 2026

“Love thy neighbor” may be a central commandment of the Bible, but you’ll find no such law in the Constitution. For many Americans, bubbling beneath the surface of our collective psyche is a fear that our neighbors—whether next door or several miles away—are constantly poised to harm us. If not for our guns, fences, and extensive armies of Ring doorbell cameras, the very people living on our street may try to take what’s ours. As the subjects of HBO’s latest docu-series Neighbors know well, our nation’s real ethos may be: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Black farmers have lost millions of acres since the early 1900s. Today a generation of growers is working to rebuild and reconnect communities to the land. This story was produced by 19th News in collaboration with GBH News Rooted in Boston. On a sunny morning in June, about two dozen people walk the land of [...] The post For Black Women Farmers, Tending the Land Is Ancestral and Healing appeared first on DCReport.org.

It feels like an idea designed to give a very particular flavor of person a brain aneurysm: Lin-Manuel Miranda co-writing a gender-swapped Broadway musical version...

The Trump administration wants to give white South African “refugees” an arrival gift bag with an American flag, an Android tablet, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and hagiographic literature from PragerU minimizing the history of slavery and apartheid in the country and falsely accusing the South African government of “favoring the Black population.”This is the latest effort to woo the Afrikaner population, descended from seventeenth-century Dutch, German, and French Huguenot settlers in South Africa, since the Trump administration began allowing thousands of white South Africans into the USA based on debunked claims that they’re victims of “white genocide” pushed by Elon Musk, while maintaining Trump’s ban on people who legitimately need asylum.“Farmers are being killed,” Trump said last May, calling Afrikaners a “long-persecuted minority group.”The gift bags have yet to be finalized, according to The New York Times.One of the books from PragerU, titled Lwazi’s Hard Lesson, details a Black South African rugby player who protects his white teammate from an angry Black mob, and describes South African freedom fighter and first post-apartheid President Nelson Mandela as a “South African lawyer and activist who sought to end apartheid with acts of sabotage.”“Unlike South Africa’s Black population, the white population is declining in number,” the literature included in the package reads. “As an easy scapegoat for a failing government, more and more white South Africans are choosing to leave the country each year.”Brown University historian Nancy Jacobs described that account to the Times as “selective in the extreme, and even inaccurate.”As of 2025, white South Africans own nearly 75 percent of all farmland in the country, despite making up just 7 percent of the population.