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A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article summarizes what was known in the first 24 hours after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo.

Read a transcript of the press conference that took place ten days after Michael Brown’s death and several days after responsibility for security in Ferguson was transferred from local police to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

The 1876 presidential race between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden was extremely close. Amidst violence, intimidation, and voter fraud, the winner of the election for president and governor in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana was disputed. These states were the last three former Confederate states governed by Republicans. Congress set up a special commission to decide the election, and a compromise was reached. According to the Compromise of 1877, the three Southern states would give their electoral votes for president to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, but Democrats would be allowed to take control of the governments of those states. Hayes was inaugurated on March 5, 1877. Among his first acts was to end Northern occupation of the states still under military control.

In Virginia in the 1620s, slavery and indentured servitude existed, but there were both white and black servants and slaves. No one was a slave for life; rather, many immigrants to North America agreed to work for a planter for a specific period of time in exchange for their passage to the New World and food and shelter once they arrived. In 1622, a black indentured servant named Anthony Johnson appeared in the historical record. Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith tell his story.

Learn about the accomplishments of the first interracial legislature in Mississippi from the account of John Roy Lynch, a freedman who served in the state’s House of Representatives.