I titled this blog, "today is history", meaning that looking around today, you can see the effects of the past. Not just the recent past the distant past. These two maps illustrate my point.

This is a map of the distribution of blacks in this country before the Civil War, 1850. Most of them were slaves.

Compare that to this map from the year 2000, black population distribution. 

Hmmm. Change the dates and you could hardly tell the difference. In many ways, we are still living in the pre Civil War United States.