May 28 · This Day in America
President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act into law. On paper it sounds almost gentle: the federal government may negotiate with Native nations to trade their homelands east of the Mississippi for territory in the west. In practice it is a forced uprooting. Over the next decade, more than sixty thousand people from at least eighteen nations — Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, Chickasaw, Seminole and others — are driven from land they had lived on for generations. The Cherokee remember the march west as the Trail of Tears; thousands die of cold, hunger, and disease along the way. The Cherokee Nation took its case to the Supreme Court and won, and the government removed them anyway. It is one of the dates the 250th has to hold without flinching. The promise on the parchment was not yet meant for everyone, and here is the proof.
Source: guides.loc.gov
Also on this day · 1863
Thousands line Beacon Street to watch the 54th Massachusetts — the North's first Black regiment — march past the State House to the docks. At their head rides Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, twenty-five, son of Boston abolitionists. These men had to fight for the right to fight, and many will not come back. The moment is cut forever into bronze by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. They marched south knowing exactly what they were marching toward.
Source: www.nps.gov