History buffs of Reddit, what's a really shitty thing the US did that most Americans won't hear about at school?

1. The Ludlow Massacre comes to mind Miners across Colorado united in 1913 in a strike demanding various rights and compensations. Naturally the mining companies and the state government responded with goons and the national guard. Things were violent, but hardly lethal, until Ludlow. Anti-union forces had been posted around a large miners camp outside Ludlow for a while, but on April 20, 1914 they enacted a plan. Luring away the miner’s leader under the pretense of prisoner negotiations, they then set up machine gun nests flanking the camp. They were spotted by a miner militia, and a day long battle ensued. Several men on both sides died, and a small group of women and children suffocated in a foxhole when the tent above caught fire. Eventually a freight train happening by stopped in front of the machine guns, blocking their shots and allowing the miners to retreat. The miner’s leader and his subordinate had run back to the camp at the first sign of trouble, but were captured, beaten, and executed. These events kicked off a miner’s rebellion that took many more lives, called the Colorado Coalfield Wars. edit: additions to aid readability (ex: changing "posted outside" to "posted around", since outside was in the sentence twice).
   — brazosriver


2. Kennedy bombing the ever-loving shit out of Laos every day for like, 3 years. Edit: [Some reading material](https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Laos.aspx)
   — GundamMaker


3. During WWII the FBI decided that the Germans living in South America,many of whom were coffee plantation owners, were Nazi sympathizers. By coercing their respective governments, the US rounded up over 4500 of these people, transported them to Brownsville, Tx and arrested them for entering the country illegally. They spent the rest of the war in camps in the US. From, "Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and how it changed our world", by Mark Pendergrast.
   — larry4bunny






4. We accidentally dropped a nuke on Spain. It didn't fully explode, but the non nuclear fuel exploded, contaminating 2 square kilometer area on the coast w/ plutonium. [Wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash) We've also accidentally dropped nukes on US soil as well... very lucky those didn't go off.
   — Els_worthy1


5. Native American boarding schools- they were still running in the 70's and 80's
   — peregrin_took


6.  In 1950, the US dropped bombs on the Puerto Rican towns of Jayuya and Utuado. An uprising that ended in rubble, the U.S. reported the violent destruction as an "incident between Puerto Ricans." They wrote it out of history. In 1985, the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a residential neighborhood where fire quickly raged through 50-60 row-homes, leaving 11 dead.
   — logicalsilly






7. In the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1851, the US basically ceded everything between the Missouri, North Platte and Powder Rivers to a coalition of Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow and other tribes. Then, as soon as gold was discovered there, the US promptly broke the treaty, leading to Little Bighorn, Wounded Knee, and the terrible conditions at Standing Rock and Pine Ridge today.
   — BZH_JJM


8. Overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran and installed a puppet dictator.
   — murkhaust