Major funding for Backstories provided by an anonymous donor, the National Dama for the Humanities,

and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory.

Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines.

I'm Brian Ballow, I'm Nathan Connolly, and I'm Joanne Freeman.

Each week, along with our colleague Ed Ayers, we explore a different part of American history.

And normally it's fair game for us to span across centuries and dive into everything from George Washington to Watergate.

But on this episode, we're going to be keeping our timeline a bit more concise.

As the calendar nears closer to the end of 2019, it has us reflecting on the end of the decade

and how the United States has changed since the start of the 2010s.

So, on this episode, we're bringing you an extended conversation between Brian, Nathan, and myself

about the memorable moments of the last 10 years.

But before we kick off our discussion, let's do a quick recap of the decade.

Back in 2010, Barack Obama was still in the beginning of his first term.

Meanwhile, Americans were recovering from the fallout of the Great Recession.

An economic collapse, many folks still feel the effects of today.

Two years later, the country was shaken to its core after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Debates about gun control ramped up after the tragedy.

Nevertheless, mass shootings continued to plague the United States.

By the middle of the decade, social unrest reached a boiling point after the deaths of young black men like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

The movement, Black Lives Matter, formed, sparking a national conversation about systemic racism and racial violence.

The 2010s also had its fair share of landmark legal cases.

...