In 1877, Hayes called out the U.S. Army to deal with a strike by Baltimore & Ohio Railroad workers. The strike began in West Virginia, quickly spread to neighboring states, and turned pretty vi...

Eisenhower wasn't the first president who had to issue an executive order to achieve racial integration against the wishes of many of the rank-and-file. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to do it in 19...

When the U.S. was about to enter the war against the Nazis—no slouches in racial discrimination themselves—the question arose whether Black and white Americans could successfully fight together...

When John F. Kennedy vowed in his 1961 inaugural address to be "unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human right to which this nation has always been committed," James Meredith...

Oops, they did it again in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy had to federalize the Alabama National Guard in order to desegregate the University of Alabama after Governor George Wallace made it c...