Most people think they know Black history because they can name a few moments, recognize a handful of dates, and recall a few speeches they were taught mattered. And yet, many of those same people are consistently surprised by the present, by backlash, by retrenchment, and by how fragile progress actually turns out to be.

The United States treats 1865 as a clean break: the war ends, the amendment passes, freedom arrives, and the story insists history moves on. It’s a comforting version of events, one that suggests moral progress, offers closure, and frames everything that followed as the result of individual failure rather than inherited systems. But history doesn’t work that way. Slavery didn’t end as a system in 1865; it ended as a legal designation