America's Darkest Fourth _ July 4, 1876

On July 4, 1876, America's hundredth birthday, a Black militia company was drilling in Hamburg, South Carolina, when a procedural road dispute set in motion a chain of events that would end Reconstruction in one of the last states where it was still functioning. Six men were killed. No one was convicted. And within months, a decade of constitutional progress was systematically reversed. This is the story of what actually happened on that centennial Fourth of July and why the structural pattern it reveals still shows up in conflicts around the world today.