existed in Florida schools and I experienced separate Colored & White bathrooms, water fountains, waiting rooms, and recall a time when blacks had to enter a side door and sit in the balcony of the local theater.  I witnessed all of this ultimately change (for the better), but not without the resistance and results of it.  I saw battles for civil rights being waged on the streets and in the news. 

I lived through the Vietnam War, the draft and its resistors, the demonstrations and card-burnings, the "My Country Right or Wrong" response by many, families divided and people with whom I grew up coming home in body bags.  The Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 saw mayor Daley send out the police to "bust heads" of protestors in the streets, while the Republican National Convention that year in Miami resulted in the trial of Scott Camille and the "Gainesville Eight". 

I recall domestic terrorism and anarchists, bombings, groups such as SDS and the Black Panthers, Hippies and Yippies, Abbie Hoffman and Eldridge Cleaver .... along with the KKK (yes, they were still around at that time), GA Governor Lester Maddox handing out axe handles at restaurants, AL Governor George Wallace standing on the steps of the University of Alabama and defying the federal government, and more.

I lived through Nixon and the Watergate scandal.  I practiced sitting under my desk during the Cuban missle crisis, at the same time I watched from a sidewalk as convoy after convoy of US Army troops headed south during this time ... the Interstate Highways had not yet opened in Florida.  

And while I certainly didn't live during the Civil War/War Between the States, I suspect that was an even more wrenching time for America.  I did grow up listening to old women (and some men) talk about it and the impact of Reconstruction on their lives .... much with a tinge of bitterness.  Even more people during my youth would relate stories of the Great Depression which highlighted divisions as much as common bonds.  

But my point wasn't exclusively, or even primarily, about what I've seen personally.  It was a reminder to myself and everyone that what we see today likely isn't the worst the USA has experienced, and doesn't have to preclude healing, or at least finding a way forward.  I truly believe we will, just not necessarily the way I might prefer wrt every detail.  William Faulkner famously said, "I believe that man will not merely endure, he will prevail".  I happen to believe that about America.