In this article, the authors examine one approach to teaching hard history using an Inquiry Design Model (IDM) curricular loop. A curricular loop allows students to build a deeper understanding of a complex idea and develop a greater facility with the tools of inquiry over a course of study by regularly engaging in an inquiry. The curricular loop featured here was designed with and for eighth-grade social studies teachers in the Syracuse, New York, school district who wanted a series of inquiries that would enable students to confront challenging events of the past and to deliberate the question, "How do we make peace with the past?" The compelling question, "How do we make peace with the past?", threads together the six inquiries that make up the eighth-grade U.S. History curricular loop. Each inquiry in the loop serves as a case study of a hard history topic (e.g., slavery, internment), a group of people (e.g., women, American Indians), and the slate of tools that societies use to reckon with the past (e.g., monuments, reparations, formal apologies). Each of the six inquiries has its own compelling question that allows students to build an understanding of the historical context, an empathy for the people who were impacted by this event, and an appreciation for the ways societies might make peace with past oppression.