Searing images from this month’s mostly white insurrection in Washington, D.C.—including a hangman’s noose on the Capitol grounds and the Confederate flag carried inside the U.S. Capitol—harken back to another era when both were tools and symbols of white supremacy across the country.

Congress set a new diversity record this year with its highest-ever number of women and racial minorities, including 60 Black lawmakers.

But that's mostly in the House.

(CNN) -- Whether you lived in rural America, the bustling streets of a big city or even another country, you couldn't ignore the nation's racial reckoning of 2020 -- and how Black Lives Matter resonated throughout popular culture.