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- 1987–8.7 (6)TV EpisodeIn the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY, discovered that their homes, schools, and playgrounds were built on top of a former chemical waste dump.
- On 27 January 1967, the disastrous failure of Apollo 1 risked the cancellation of America's space program altogether. Within two years of the Apollo 1 fire, Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to escape the Earth's gravity and orbit the moon.
- 1987–8.6 (78)TV EpisodeThe years 1969-1970 take Americans to the moon and back; what happens to scientific and engineering programs after goals are achieved.
- 1987– 1h 50m8.5 (117)TV EpisodeAn assassin's bullet ended the life of William McKinley in 1901, making his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, an "accidental" president at the age of 42.
- Polio at age 39, president at age 50. Explore the public and private life of a determined man who steered this country through two monumental crises: the Depression and World War II. FDR served as president longer than any other, and his legacy still shapes our understanding of the role of government and the presidency. A film by award winning filmmaker David Grubin. This is the first of two parts.
- 1987– 6h8.4 (159)TV EpisodeThe story of the Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln's childhoods - his in a remote backwoods log cabin, hers in a wealthy Kentucky home - and describes their courtship.
- 1987–8.4 (87)TV EpisodeTracking the early years of the space race beginning in 1957 as the U.S. struggles to catch up with the Soviet Union.
- From PBS and AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: In the early 20th century, the average American medicine cabinet was a would-be poisoner's treasure chest, with radioactive radium, thallium, and morphine in everyday products. The pace of industrial innovation increased, but the scientific knowledge to detect and prevent crimes committed with these materials lagged behind until 1918. New York City's first scientifically trained medical examiner, Charles Norris, and his chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, turned forensic chemistry into a formidable science and set the standards for the rest of the country.
- A documentary that draws on input from a broad cross-section of people to examine to last five years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life.
- This final chapter provides a powerful portrait of the events leading up to and following 9/11, reaching back to when the idea of a "world trade center" was first conceived and the towers were constructed. Explore the physical, economic, and symbolic aftermath of the attack and what Americans can learn from the recovery effort.
- 1987– 1h 52mTV-PG8.3 (76)TV EpisodeEpisode one begins in 1609 and chronicles the arrival of the Dutch.
- 1987–8.3 (63)TV EpisodeThe film of the ships in New York harbor at the time of T.R.'s return is run backwards, as the smoke is seen going back into the smoke stacks.
- 1987– 1h8.3 (36)TV EpisodeFollowing the Union victory at Gettysburg, and the surrender at Appomattox, the president tells Mary Lincoln they can find some happiness again. Just days later, he is shot to death.
- Documentary exploring the struggles of The Donner Party, a group of American pioneers and their two Indigenous guides who became stranded in the Sierras during a horrible winter.
- Exploration of life in America in the first year of the 20th century, using archive film footage and photographs.
- A documentary based on the book "War Letters; Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars" by Andrew Carroll.
- Biography of U.S. President Harry S Truman.
- 1987– 1h 54mTV-PG8.2 (59)TV EpisodeEpisode two looks at New York's rise as a burgeoning cultural center and multi-ethnic port.
- 1987– 1h 51mTV-PG8.2 (59)TV EpisodeEpisode three turns the spotlight on greed and wealth.
- 1987– 1h 54mTV-PG8.2 (51)TV EpisodeReveals the immense new forces that were unleashed in New York.
- 1987– 1h 30m8.2 (105)TV EpisodeTodays theme is Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple.
- Chemist Dr. Harvey Wiley takes on food manufacturers to banish dangerous substances threatening the health of consumers, laying the groundwork for U.S. consumer protection laws and the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.
- 100 years after the 19th Amendment passed, The Vote tells the dramatic story of the hard-fought and transformative campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, resulting in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history.
- Polio at age 39, president at age 50. Explore the public and private life of a determined man who steered this country through two monumental crises: the Depression and World War II. FDR served as president longer than any other, and his legacy still shapes our understanding of the role of government and the presidency. A film by award winning filmmaker David Grubin. This is the second of two parts.
- American Experience investigates the My Lai massacre an atrocity during the Vietnam War that killed more than 300 unarmed civilians.
- From PBS and American Experience - This inspirational documentary is about a band of courageous civil-rights activists calling themselves the Freedom Riders.
- JFK's campaign for president is the first to be waged on television, a distinct advantage for the telegenic candidate. Despite his lack of legislative achievements and his Catholicism -- which many Americans see as a negative -- Kennedy wins the election on the promise that he will stand up to the Soviets and protect American preeminence in the world.
- This episode follows Kennedy into the White House, offering fresh assessments of the successes and failures of his tenure. In 1961, the most challenging issue facing the new administration is the spread of communism and continuing Cold War fears. Only a few months into his first term, Kennedy launches the Bay of Pigs invasion, an unmitigated disaster that teaches him a powerful lesson. Nikita Khrushchev proves a stubborn foe, and Kennedy takes a stand against the spread of communism in a country few Americans had ever heard of--Vietnam. On the domestic front, civil rights prove tricky for the administration, as they rely heavily on the support of Southern Democrats. Forced to intervene when Freedom Riders take direct action in Southern states, the administration sends in federal marshals to ensure their safety. Health issues continue to plague the president and pain is a constant companion. Glamorous first lady Jackie captivates the world on her travels, while rumors of the president's womanizing continue in Washington.
- Explore America's tortured, nearly three-year journey to war. In August 1914, a war unprecedented in size and violence broke out on the European continent. Ever the idealistic diplomat, Wilson vowed to keep his country out of "the Great War." His neutrality was supported but reports from Europe began to challenge America's delicate position. From behind the battle lines came reports detailing German atrocities in Belgium and France: history's first chemical attack and the sinking of the British liner Lusitania, killing 128 Americans. But Wilson stood firm, asserting that America would not fight - this was not her war. Despite Wilson's pleas, American men and women, volunteered in the hospitals and on the fighting fields of France, and by 1916, there was a growing sense that the war was coming closer to home. On April 2, Wilson asked a joint session of Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, proclaiming that "the world must be made safe for democracy."
- Americas entry into World War 1 is recalled, including the speed of mobilization.
- An award-winning documentary of the invasion of Normandy in World War II, using rare archival films and pictures from British, American, and German archives. The narrator provides the overall continuity, but the voices of over 50 participants who were involved in the staging of the invasion in Britain or were on the beaches of France bring the images to life.
- 1987– 1h 30m8.1 (103)TV EpisodeDocumentary chronicling the history of World War II's "Battle of the Bulge", when the German army launched a major surprise counteroffensive against the American forces that caught them almost completely off-guard, sweeping away major portions of the front line, pushing deep into the rear areas and causing tens of thousands of casualties before it was finally halted.
- 1987– 1h 52mTV-PG8.1 (118)TV EpisodeAward winning filmmaker David Grubin profiles one of the most controversial U.S. presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who rose from obscurity to the pinnacle of power, only to suffer disillusionment and defeat. Witness the events that brought LBJ from Texas to Washington, the White House, and a landslide election in 1964. Follow his triumphs in passing a wave of social legislation then his downward spiral which ends in withdrawal from politics. This is the first of two parts.
- Documentary on the life of American abolitionist John Brown.
- Part One: The Garish Sun: Robert F. Kennedy devotes himself to his brother John, then deals with the pain of the assassination.
- The life and career of American playwright Eugene O'Neill.
- 1987– 2h 17mTV-PG8.1 (51)TV EpisodeEpisode seven chronicles the history of New York from the end of the Second World War to the present.
- 1987– 1h 54mTV-PG8.1 (57)TV EpisodeEpisode four follows New York into a new century.
- Second of 2 2-hour episodes. Final few years of the struggle for woman suffrage, focusing substantially on the efforts of Alice Paul. Also sometimes airs as 4 one-hour episodes.
- 1987– 1h 55mTV-148.1 (106)TV EpisodeThe Blinding of Isaac Woodard: How a horrific incident of racial violence became a powerful catalyst for the civil rights movement. In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel's book "Unexampled Courage", the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jump-started the modern civil rights movement.
- 1987– 1h8.1 (48)TV EpisodeThe Lincoln marriage is both tempestuous and passionate: she has a temper; he suffers bouts of depression. But they share a powerful political ambition.
- 1987– 1h8.1 (47)TV EpisodeWhen the Lincolns arrive in Washington in 1861, the country is breaking apart. The country's president-elect is unknown, untested and mistrusted.
- 1987– 1h8.1 (40)TV EpisodeTormented by her grief and losing grip on sanity, Mary Lincoln turns to spiritualists for comfort. Though bowed down with sorrow, her husband never loses sight of the tragedy consuming the nation and issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
- Revisit the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, through stories of those whose ordeal riveted the world.
- 1987– 1h8.1 (38)TV EpisodeAs 1863 begins, Northerners resent fighting to free black slaves; others are furious with Abraham Lincoln for the devastating Union casualties. Mary Lincoln, worried about her husband, spends money compulsively.
- Based on the best-selling book by Drew Gilpin Faust, this film will explore how the American Civil War created a "republic of suffering" and will chart the far-reaching social, political, and social changes brought about by the pervasive presence and fear of death during the Civil War.
- The lively but neglected history of the women who changed the world while flying it.
- The pivotal year that essentially ushered in the true 1960s is explored.
- A look at Walt Disney's career from early films to Disneyland to ideas for a new community (EPCOT) that was not realized before his death. A great insight into his motivations and values.
- Explore the complex life and enduring legacy of the creative genius as he made films such as Cinderella and Mary Poppins and realized his dream project, Disneyland.
- Oklahoma City explores the intertwined narratives of the worst domestic terrorist attack in the U.S. and the anti-government movement that inspired the actions of Timothy McVeigh, including two standoffs with law enforcement with tragic outcomes - Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by the literature and ideas of the radical right, set off a truck bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and injuring 675 others. Oklahoma City traces the events that led McVeigh to that day and recounts the stories of the survivors, first-responders, U.S. Marshals, FBI investigators and journalists who covered the events. The film provides an in-depth and provocative exploration of the white supremacist, extremist militia movement that rose to prominence in the early 1990s and still makes news today.
- Chart the ways in which the bloodiest battle in American history, and the ensuing peace, forever changed a president and a nation. In the fall of 1918, the deadly flu swept through cities at home and at the front. When the tide of war turned, the Germans wanted a cease-fire on Wilson's terms. On November 11, 1918, the war was over, but for Wilson, the last fight remained. He negotiated the terms of the peace treaty and won the world over to his League of Nations, but felled by a stroke, he failed to convince the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, with tragic consequences. While Wilson had heralded the triumph of American values abroad, many were worried about democracy at home; with citizens persecuted, "aliens" interned, and cities torn apart by race riots. The Great War changed the country forever. African Americans who had fought in the war found ways to continue to push for change. Women's suffrage gained converts, including Wilson. And America stepped onto the world stage.
- The film explores the beginnings of America's first amusement park and takes us through its good times all the way up to its end. The show was originally produced for PBS's American Experience.
- Tells how in just 60 years Chicago grew from a remote, swampy frontier town into one of the most explosively alive cities in the world.
- 1987– 1h 51mTV-PG8.0 (110)TV EpisodeAward winning filmmaker David Grubin profiles one of the most controversial U.S. presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who rose from obscurity to the pinnacle of power, only to suffer disillusionment and defeat. Witness the events that brought LBJ from Texas to Washington, the White House, and a landslide election in 1964. Follow his triumphs in passing a wave of social legislation then his downward spiral which ends in withdrawal from politics. This is the second of two parts.
- The work of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, America's first female cryptanalyst, brings down Al Capone, breaks up a Nazi spy ring in South America, and lays the foundation for the National Security Agency (NSA).
- 1987– 1h 16mTV-PG8.0 (129)TV EpisodeThe Cherokee would call it Nu-No-Du-Na Tlo-Hi-Lu, "The Trail Where They Cried." On May 26, 1838, federal troops forced thousands of Cherokee from their homes in the Southeastern United States, driving them toward Indian Territory in Eastern Oklahoma. More than 4,000 died of disease and starvation along the way. For years the Cherokee had resisted removal from their land in every way they knew. Convinced that white America rejected Native Americans because they were "savages," Cherokee leaders established a republic with a European-style legislature and legal system. Many Cherokee became Christian and adopted westernized education for their children. Their visionary principal chief, John Ross, would even take the Cherokee case to the Supreme Court, where he won a crucial recognition of tribal sovereignty that still resonates. The Supreme Court ruling proved no deterrent to President Andrew Jackson's demands that the Cherokee leave their ancestral lands. A complex debate divided the Cherokee Nation, with Chief Ross urging the Cherokee to stay, and Major Ridge, a respected tribal leader, urging the tribe to move West and rebuild, going so far as to sign a removal treaty himself without the authority to do so. Though in the end the Cherokee embrace of "civilization" and their landmark legal victory proved no match for white land hunger and military power, the Cherokee people were able, with characteristic ingenuity, to build a new life in Oklahoma, far from the land that had sustained them for generations.
- 1987– 1h 30mTV-PG8.0 (163)TV EpisodeIn March of 1621, in what is now southeastern Massachusetts, Massasoit (actor Marcos Akiaten, Chiricauha Apache), the leading sachem of the Wampanoag, sat down to negotiate with a ragged group of English colonists. Hungry, dirty, and sick, the pale-skinned foreigners were struggling to stay alive; they were in desperate need of native help. Massasoit faced problems of his own. His people had lately been decimated by unexplained sickness, leaving them vulnerable to the rival Narragansett to the west. The Wampanoag sachem calculated that a tactical alliance with the foreigners would provide a way to protect his people and hold his native enemies at bay. He agreed to give the English the help they needed. A half-century later, as a brutal war flared between the English colonists and a confederation of New England Indians, the wisdom of Massasoit's diplomatic gamble seemed less clear. Five decades of English immigration, mistreatment, lethal epidemics, and widespread environmental degradation had brought the Indians and their way of life to the brink of disaster. Led by Metacom, Massasoit's son (actor Annowon Weeden, Mashpee Wampanoag), the Wampanoag and their native allies fought back against the English, nearly pushing them into the sea.
- In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst's media empire included 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations and 13 magazines. Nearly one in four American families read a Hearst publication. His newspapers were so influential that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Winston Churchill all wrote for him. The first practitioner of what is now known as "synergy," Hearst used his media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power, then ran for office himself. After serving two terms in Congress, he came in second in the balloting for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904. Perhaps best known as the inspiration for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and his lavish castle in San Simeon, Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, having transformed the media's role in American life and politics. The two-part, four-hour film is based on historian David Nasaw's critically acclaimed biography, 'The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst.'
- 1987– 1h 54mTV-PG8.0 (122)TV EpisodeThe American Experience looks at the history of American whaling from its off-shore origins in the 17th century to the golden age of deep water whaling and the eventual decline in the decades after the Civil War.
- This documentary recalls the confrontational, violent summer of 1964 in Mississippi, when student volunteers from around the country joined with local activists in an effort to register to vote as many African-Americans as possible.
- The life of President James Garfield, including his rise to power and the aftermath of his assassination.
- The origin, history, and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already there to become U.S. citizens.
- The history of the performing entertainment form in American history.
- During World War II and the era of staunch racial segregation, a Black carpenter's son named Vivien Thomas, who had a talent for surgery, along with a white surgeon named Dr. Alfred Blalock, who defied the medical establishment created a partnership that changed the course of cardiac surgery. With only a high school diploma, Thomas became a leading cardiac pioneer and educator of two generations of the United States' premiere heart surgeons. This moving documentary tells the story of Thomas and his relationship with Blalock, one that ushered in advances in surgery that are still in existence today.
- A documentary examining the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old boy from Chicago while visiting relatives in Mississippi, and the broad impact of his death, his funeral, and the subsequent trial and acquittal of his white killers.
- He was boxy, with stumpy legs that wouldn't completely straighten a short straggly tail and an ungainly gait; though he didn't look the part, Seabiscuit was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history. In the 1930s, when Americans longed to escape the grim realities of Depression-era life, four men turned Seabiscuit into a national hero. They were his fabulously wealthy owner Charles Howard, his famously silent and stubborn trainer Tom Smith and the two hard-bitten, gifted jockeys who rode him to glory. By following the paths that brought these four together and in telling the story of Seabiscuit's unlikely career, this film illuminates the precarious economic conditions that defined America in the 1930s and explores the fascinating behind-the-scenes world of thoroughbred racing. Scott Glenn narrates.
- An account of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent effort to rebuild.
- 1987–7.9 (179)TV EpisodeCelebrating the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the 1969 three-day music and art fair at a farm in New York that marked the end of one of the most turbulent decades in American History.
- 1987– 1h 26mTV-PG7.9 (152)TV EpisodeEach of the episodes focuses on important historical events and concludes with a short contemporary story that links the past to the present.
- Japanese American researcher Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, aka Mr. Tornado, created the Fujita scale of tornado intensity and damage and is credited with advancing modern understanding of severe weather phenomena.
- On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stepped up to a microphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Inscribed on the walls of the monument behind her were the words "all men are created equal." Barred from performing in Constitution Hall because of her race, Anderson would sing for the American people in the open air. Hailed as a voice that "comes around once in a hundred years" by maestros in Europe and widely celebrated by both white and black audiences at home, her fame hadn't been enough to spare her from the indignities and outright violence of racism and segregation. Voice of Freedom interweaves Anderson's rich life story with this landmark moment in history, exploring fundamental questions about talent, race, fame, democracy and the American soul.
- This film interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease
- 1987– 1h 30mTV-PG7.9 (115)TV EpisodeOn the night of February 27, 1973, fifty-four cars, horns blaring, rolled into a small hamlet on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Within hours, some 200 Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement activists had seized the few major buildings in town and police had cordoned off the area. The occupation of Wounded Knee had begun. The protesters were demanding redress for grievances-some going back more than 100 years-and the expulsion of Pine Ridge tribal leader Dick Wilson, who governed the reservation through corruption and intimidation. In Wounded Knee, the gripping and controversial story of the armed standoff between American Indian activists and the federal government that captured the world's attention for 71 suspenseful days is brought to life.
- The short but notable career of the coach and his team with stories from some of those who remember him.
- Richard M. Nixon was one of American history's most powerful figures. Recalling events etched in U.S. memory, this three-hour program explores a fateful mix of strength and weakness that made him president, and then brought him down. Events revealing Nixon's distinctive signature in American politics, from a meteoric rise to Congress to the presidency and the morass of Watergate, unfold in three parts: The Quest, Triumph, and The Fall. This is the first of three parts.
- Richard M. Nixon was one of American history's most powerful figures. Recalling events etched in U.S. memory, this three-hour program explores a fateful mix of strength and weakness that made him president, and then brought him down. Events revealing Nixon's distinctive signature in American politics, from a meteoric rise to Congress to the presidency and the morass of Watergate, unfold in three parts: The Quest, Triumph, and The Fall. This is the third of three parts.
- This documentary, part of American Experience (1987) series, examines the events leading up to what is now seen as the defining moment in the establishment of the gay rights movement in the United States: the riot at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in the summer of 1969. At that time, homosexuality was not only illegal, it was classified as mental illness. Bars like Stonewall were controlled by the mob and the police were paid to either look the other way or conduct their raids early in the day. On this night however, the police arrived when the bar was full. The reaction was swift with crowds quickly forming outside the bar. The next night, a crowd estimated in the thousands again confronted the police. As a result of these actions, the gay community made themselves known for the first time. A year later, in the summer of 1970, many of those involved staged the first Gay Pride parade.
- The divide between North and South deepens, touching off a crisis that is about to careen out of control.
- The stories of the major figures of the pre-American Civil War political movement to eliminate slavery.
- An in-depth biography of the influential author whose ground-breaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century.
- Efforts of the United Mine Workers, led by Mother Jones, to organize coal miners in southern West Virginia at the beginning of the 20th century leads to violence and insurrection.
- An account of an incident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Ark., in 1980 that almost caused the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The near-calamity was kicked off when a socket fell from the wrench of an airman performing maintenance in a Titan II silo and punctured the missile, releasing a stream of highly explosive rocket fuel. Included: first-person accounts of USAF personnel on the scene.
- A very special video segment featuring one of the Acclaimed president and spokesperson around Theodore Roosevelt.
- Tracing the movement to breed a "better" American race, which turned the science of heredity into an instrument of social control that led to forced sterilization campaigns.
- When he left the White House in 1989, Ronald Reagan was one of the most popular presidents of the century. A former Hollywood star and seemingly simple man, Reagan was consistently underestimated by his opponents. One by one, he overcame them all. Incorporating interviews with key political insiders, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and members of the Reagan family, "Reagan" explores the man who saw America as a "shining city on a hill" and himself as its heroic defender. The program follows Reagan's life from his itinerant boyhood in Illinois to his battle with "communist agitators" in the Screen Actors Guild and his dramatic 1980 victory over Jimmy Carter. Only 70 days into his presidency, a would-be assassin's bullet left him more debilitated than anyone knew. Reagan's massive military buildup and bold challenges to the Soviet Union caused his critics to portray him as a trigger-happy cowboy. But he negotiated deep cuts in nuclear weapons and resolved to end the Cold War. Five years after leaving office, Reagan announced he had Alzheimer's disease and dropped from public view. [info from DVD container]
- In the 1850s, thousands of homeless children roamed New York City streets in search of food and shelter. The Children's Aid Society sent the children on trains to rural areas, where families would take in the orphans.
- For more than thirty years, Eleanor Roosevelt was America's most powerful woman. Millions adored her, but her FBI file was thicker than a stack of phone books. She spoke out fearlessly for civil rights, and the KKK put a price on her head. She helped Franklin D. Roosevelt rise to power and was one of his most valuable political assets, but the media satirized her as an ugly busybody. Drawing on interviews with her closest relatives, friends, and biographers, as well as rare home movie footage, the film reveals the hidden dimensions of one of the century's most influential women. She was born to wealth and power but orphaned at the age of 10. Her private life was marked by tragedy, infidelity, and a never-ending search for intimacy. Yet she persevered, fighting tirelessly for social justice for all and taking a lead role in the United Nations landmark Declaration of Human Rights.
- The great influenza pandemic of 1918 - the worst epidemic ever seen in the United States.
- Documentary on the boxing match between American Joe Louis and German Max Schmeling, which captured the world's attention on June 22, 1938.
- A documentary about the Battle of Ong Thanh and the protest at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the Vietnam War.
- In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River went on a rampage from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana, inundating hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving a million people homeless. In Greenville, Mississippi, efforts to contain the river pitted the majority black population against an aristocratic white plantation family, the Percys. It also pitted the Percys against themselves. This is a dramatic true story of greed, power and race during one of America's greatest natural disasters.
- 1987– 2h7.8 (52)TV Episode
- 1987– 1h 54mTV-PG7.8 (55)TV EpisodeEpisode five tells the African-American experience and the birth of the new media industries.
- In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst's media empire included 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations and 13 magazines. Nearly one in four American families read a Hearst publication. His newspapers were so influential that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Winston Churchill all wrote for him. The first practitioner of what is now known as "synergy," Hearst used his media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power, then ran for office himself. After serving two terms in Congress, he came in second in the balloting for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904. Perhaps best known as the inspiration for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and his lavish castle in San Simeon, Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, having transformed the media's role in American life and politics. The two-part, four-hour film is based on historian David Nasaw's critically acclaimed biography, 'The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst.'
- 1987– 1h 18mTV-PG7.8 (116)TV EpisodeIn February of 1909, the indomitable Chiricahua Apache warrior and war shaman Geronimo lay on his deathbed. He summoned his nephew to his side, whispering, "I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive." It was an admission of regret from a man whose insistent pursuit of military resistance in the face of overwhelming odds confounded not only his Mexican and American enemies, but many of his fellow Apaches as well. Born around 1820, Geronimo grew into a leading warrior and healer. But after his tribe was relocated to an Arizona reservation in 1872, he became a focus of the fury of terrified white settlers, and of the growing tensions that divided Apaches struggling to survive under almost unendurable pressures. To angry whites, Geronimo became the archfiend, perpetrator of unspeakable savage cruelties. To his supporters, he remained the embodiment of proud resistance, the upholder of the old Chiricahua ways. To other Apaches, especially those who had come to see the white man's path as the only viable road, Geronimo was a stubborn troublemaker, unbalanced by his unquenchable thirst for vengeance, whose actions needlessly brought the enemy's wrath down on his own people. At a time when surrender to the reservation and acceptance of the white man's civilization seemed to be the Indians' only realistic options, Geronimo and his tiny band of Chiricahuas fought on. The final holdouts, they became the last Native American fighting force to capitulate formally to the government of the United States.
- Solidarity thrived in Poland; Soviets faced military pressure in Afghanistan, but Congress cut funding for Nicaragua. In 1986 Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev, but missile reduction talks failed over SDI research. The Iran-Contra scandal broke. Gorbachev signed a missile reduction treaty. Reagan visited Moscow in 1988, but his dream of ending the Soviet Union came after retirement in 1989. Soon after, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. This is the third of four parts.
- 1987–7.8 (47)TV Episode
- Goin' Back to T-Town tells the story of Greenwood, an extraordinary Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that prospered during the 1920s and 30s despite rampant and hostile segregation. Torn apart in 1921 by one of the worst racially-motivated massacres in the nation's history, the neighborhood rose from the ashes, and by 1936 boasted the largest concentration of Black-owned businesses in the U.S., known as "Black Wall Street." Ironically, it could not survive the progressive policies of integration and urban renewal of the 1960s. Told through the memories of those who lived through the events, the film is a bittersweet celebration of small-town life and the resilience of a community's spirit.
- This film tells the story of an assassin, James Earl Ray, his target, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the seething, turbulent forces in American society that led these two men to their violent and tragic collision in Memphis in April 1968.
- Lyrical and meditative, The Amish answers many questions Americans have about this insistently insular religious community, whose intense faith and adherence to five hundred year-old traditions have by turns captivated and repelled, awed and irritated, inspired and confused for more than a century. With unprecedented access to the Amish built on patience and hard-won trust, the film is the first to deeply penetrate and explore this profoundly attention-averse group. In doing so, it paints an extraordinarily intimate portrait of contemporary Amish faith and life. It questions why and how the Amish, an insistently closed and communal culture, have thrived within one of the most open, individualistic societies on earth.
- Clinton wins the 1996 election in a landslide, pulling off one of the greatest turnarounds in political history. But events have been set in motion that will soon divide the country and nearly destroy Clinton's presidency.
- Revisit the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, through stories of those whose ordeal riveted the world.
- When Grand Coulee Dam was being built during the depths of the Great Depression, everything about it--generators, powerhouses, pumps--was the biggest in the world. Grand Coulee was more than a dam; it was a proclamation: America could still do great things. The mile-long behemoth was the largest hydroelectric power-producing facility in the world when it was completed in March 1941--just in time to power the nation's defense plants and the atomic reactors for the Manhattan Project.
- SILICON VALLEY tells the story of the pioneering scientists who transformed rural Santa Clara County into the hub of technological ingenuity we now know as Silicon Valley.
- The story of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group active across the US in the 1930's.
- The Cancer Detectives tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the coalition of people who fought tirelessly to save women from cervical cancer-which was once the number one cancer killer of women.
- U.S. Air Force pilots and scientists lay the groundwork for the U.S. space program through project "Man High".
- The Battle of Chosin Reservoir, a crucial battle in the Korean War.
- A profile of scientist and writer Rachel L. Carson (1907-64), whose 1962 book "Silent Spring" helped launch the modern environmental movement.
- Documentary about the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Features interviews with Welles' and Hearst's co-workers also as a relative complete bio of Hearst.
- A docudrama adaptation of Ulrich's Pulitzer-winning book, which was based on thousands of entries in the journal of Martha Ballard, a Maine midwife, in the late 1700's and early 1800's. The movie intercuts between reenactments of Ballard doing her Maine midwifery and related tasks, and Ulrich in her eight years of research on her book; in the end, clear comparisons are made between the work of the two women.
- History of the American and Soviet development of the H-bomb.
- Richard M. Nixon was one of American history's most powerful figures. Recalling events etched in U.S. memory, this three-hour program explores a fateful mix of strength and weakness that made him president, and then brought him down. Events revealing Nixon's distinctive signature in American politics, from a meteoric rise to Congress to the presidency and the morass of Watergate, unfold in three parts: The Quest, Triumph, and The Fall. This is the second of three parts.
- Survivors recall the hurricane that devastated Rhode Island and New York's Long Island.
- The controversial rise of John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil multinational, the largest and most powerful company in the world at the time.
- 1987– 1h 51mTV-PG7.7 (142)TV EpisodeThis biography presents a complex and revealing portrait of one of America's most influential scientists.
- He was a farmer, a businessman, an unknown politician who suddenly found himself president. Of all the men who had held the highest office, Harry Truman was the least prepared, but would prove to be a surprise. Acclaimed filmmaker David Grubin recounts his struggles and success as an army captain and marriage to his lifelong sweetheart, Bess. When he landed the vice presidency in 1944 he had no idea that his world was about to change forever. This is the second of two parts.
- Two antiwar protests in the fall of 1969 cause President Richard Nixon to cancel his "madman" plans for a massive escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam.
- From PBS and American Experience - On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower.
- The 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York's Greenwich Village resulted in legislation ensuring the most comprehensive workplace safety laws in the U.S.
- Hour 1 follows their bumpy road to the 1992 presidential victory, an amazing triumph over repeated scandals and setbacks. Although they have won the presidency, the Clintons have not yet won the country. In their moment of triumph, the first couple has no way of imagining the turmoil that lies ahead.
- The battle between pro-slavery and free-soil contingents rises to fever pitch.
- HENRY FORD paints a fascinating portrait of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century.
- Amazing biography and introspective on the boy, the man, the husband, the father, the entrepreneur and the businessman as well as the inventor and his genius.
- 1987– 1h 30m7.6 (54)TV EpisodePart one focuses on people and events from 1865-68.
- From his humble beginnings as an immigrant, to his infamous death, the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton is explored.
- This documentary surveys the rise and fall of the notorious Communist-hunting Republican senator from Wisconsin, who helped spread a climate of suspicion and fear in early 1950s America.
- This program tells the gripping tale of medical intervention gone awry.
- Biography and political career of George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States.
- 1987– 1h 30mTV-PG7.6 (106)TV Episode
- A profile of the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma - once a flourishing but segregated community.
- The chronicle, which features home movies, and photos, includes patriarch Joseph Kennedy's business and political dealings, his 1960 presidential election and the tragic 1968 campaign, as well as Edward M. Kennedy's failed 1980 bid.
- 1987– 1h 55mTV-PG7.6 (118)TV EpisodeThe bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1900 and the hunt to identify its source leads to a spate of violent anti-Asian sentiment.
- 1987– 55m7.6 (137)TV EpisodeIn 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished an enormous engineering feat: knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States by building tunnels under New York City's Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and, eventually, to New England. The tunnels terminated in what was one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station. Designed by renowned architect Charles McKim, and inspired by the Roman baths of Caracalla, Pennsylvania Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world. But just 53 years after the station's opening, the unthinkable happened. What was supposed to herald and represent the American Empire was slated to be destroyed. The financially strapped Pennsylvania Railroad announced it would tear down what had once been its crowning jewel to build Madison Square Garden. It took three years to dismantle Alexander Cassatt's monumental station. In the wake of the destruction, New York City established the Landmarks Preservation Commission, sparing Grand Central Terminal a similar fate.
- The Wall Street bombing occurred at 12:01 pm on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of Manhattan, NYC. The blast killed 30 people immediately and another eight died later of wounds sustained in the blast.
- It starts with a live radio broadcast from the Bikini Atoll a few days before it is annihilated by a nuclear test. Shows great footage from these times and tells the story of the US Navy Sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout. One interviewed sailor suffered grotesquely swollen limbs and he is shown being interviewed with enormous left arm and hand.
- 1987–7.5 (71)TV EpisodeAs the campaign to force Jews out of Germany ramps up, the American government blocks efforts to help rescue many of these displaced persons, and Americans' antisemitism only seems to get worse.
- 1987–7.5 (29)TV EpisodeThe story of Emeline Bachelder, an early 19th-century New Englander who married a younger man - only to discover that he was the son she had give up when she was fourteen.
- This one hour documentary examines the life of the famed Sharp Shooter and Wild West performer, Annie Oakley from her birth in mid nineteenth century rural Pennsylvania to her death in 1926. Many myths are overturned and the program also features a little known trial when Annie Oakley had to sue The Hearst Newspaper chain all throughout the country for libel when they reported the activities of someone who was impersonating the famed sharpshooter and besmirching her reputation.
- The story of the Apollo 8 mission to the moon.
- Jimmy Carter ran for president on a wave of post-Watergate disaffection with Washington politics. But inexperience, inflation, recession, and the Iran hostage crisis, derailed his presidency dramatically. His crowning achievement, the Camp David Accords, created a framework for Middle East peace, inspiring his life since. The film traces his ascent from Plains, Georgia, to the Oval Office and explores the role of religion in his career. This is the first of two parts.
- Thousands of young people flock to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in the summer of 1967.
- Roberto Clemente is an in-depth look at an exceptional baseball player and committed humanitarian who challenged racial discrimination to become baseball's first Latino superstar. Featuring interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning authors David Maraniss and George F. Will; Clemente's wife Vera; Baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda; and former teammates, the documentary presents an intimate and revealing portrait of a man whose passion and grace made him a legend.
- Biography and political career of George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States.
- In 1951 in the town of Edna, Texas, a field hand named Pedro Hernandez murdered his employer after exchanging words at a gritty cantina. From this seemingly unremarkable small-town murder emerged a landmark civil rights case that would forever change the lives and legal standing of tens of millions of Americans. A team of unknown Mexican American lawyers took the case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court, where they successfully challenged Jim Crow-style discrimination against Mexican Americans. In his law office in San Antonio, a well-known attorney named Gus Garcia listened to the desperate pleas of Pedro Hernandezs mother, who traveled more than one-hundred-and-fifty miles to ask him to defend her son. Garcia quickly realized that there was more to this case than murder; the real concern was not Hernandezs guilt, but whether he could receive a fair trial with an all-Anglo jury deciding his fate. Garcia assembled a team of courageous attorneys who argued on behalf of Hernandez from his first trial at the Jackson County Courthouse in Texas all the way to Washington, DC. It would be the first time a Mexican American appeared before the Supreme Court. The Hernandez lawyers decided on a daring but risky legal strategy, arguing that Mexican Americans were a class apart and did not neatly fit into a legal structure that recognized only black and white Americans. As legal skirmishes unfolded, the lawyers emerged as brilliant, dedicated, humorous, and at times, terribly flawed men.
- The life of author L. Frank Baum, creator of the classic novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," which has inspired films, books and musicals.
- The life and career of Sandra Day O'Connor, from growing up on a cattle ranch in Arizona to her 25 years on the U.S. Supreme Court.
- American Experience celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Founded by Roosevelt during the Great Depression, the CCC put over 3 million men to work improving the countries infrastructure and national parks.
- A profile of Ulysses S. Grant, chronicling how he rose from obscurity to become a Civil War hero who earned the admiration of the Northern public while, in the South, his hard-nosed tactics led him to be labeled a butcher.
- Flood in the Desert tells the dramatic story of the March 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam and its aftermath, which was the second deadliest disaster in California history. The resulting flood killed over 400 people, destroyed millions of dollars of property, and washed away the reputation of one of the most celebrated men in Southern California, William Mulholland. A self-taught engineer, Mulholland had ensured Los Angeles' remarkable growth by building a cement aqueduct that piped water from the Owens Valley across the Mojave Desert and into the arid city, 233 miles away. He had good intentions, but the bursting of his St. Francis Dam, the city's largest single reservoir, was a colossal engineering and human failure.
- Follow General George Armstrong Custer from his memorable, wild charge at Gettysburg to his lonely, untimely death on the windswept Plains of the West. On June 26, 1876, Custer, a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage ordered his soldiers to drive back a large army of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. By day's end, Custer and nearly a third of his army were dead.
- On April 2, 1936, when the 22-year-old son of a sharecropper entered the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, he was barely able to control his anger in the face of Nazi racism. But instead of letting himself be distracted, the young athlete channeled his raw emotions into one of the most remarkable achievements in athletic history: four gold medals in two days.
- Scientist Mária Telkes dedicated her career to harnessing the power of the sun. Though undercut and thwarted by her male colleagues, she persevered to design the first successfully solar-heated house in 1948 and held more than 20 patents.
- Recounts the founding (1620) and early years of the Plymouth Colony in the 17th century. Includes the real story of the "First Thanksgiving".
- Tuberculosis is the deadliest killer in human history, responsible for one in four deaths for almost two centuries. While it shaped medical pursuits, social habits, economic development and public policy, TB and its impact are poorly understood.
- Shortly before dawn on August 21, 1992, six heavily armed U.S. marshals made their way up to the isolated mountaintop home of Randy Weaver, his wife Vicki and their three children on Ruby Ridge in Northern Idaho. Charged with selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns to an undercover agent, Weaver had failed to appear in court and law enforcement was tasked with bringing him in. For months, the Weavers had been holed up on their property with a cache of firearms, including automatic weapons. When the federal agents doing surveillance on the property killed the barking dog of the family, a firefight broke out. The standoff that mesmerized the nation would leave Weaver injured, his wife and son dead, and some convinced that the federal government was out of control. Drawing upon eyewitness accounts, including interviews with Weaver's daughter, Sara Weaver, and federal agents involved in the confrontation, Ruby Ridge is a riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.
- The history of the Florida Everglades and the efforts to reclaim, control and preserve the vast area once viewed as a wasteland.
- A documentary covering the R&B (rhythm and blues) field from the 1940s to the early 1950s. Included is footage of performances by major R&B singers of the time, and interviews with singers, producers and others involved in the field.
- The NAACP and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall build a Supreme Court case against the policy of segregation.
- 1987– 1h 28mUnrated7.4 (183)TV EpisodeStruggling to keep the family farm in the family.
- In 1931 the rains stopped and the "black blizzards" began. Powerful dust storms carrying millions of tons of stinging, blinding black dirt swept across the Southern Plains--the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, western Kansas, and the eastern portions of Colorado and New Mexico. Topsoil that had taken a thousand years per inch to build suddenly blew away in only minutes. One journalist traveling through the devastated region dubbed it the "Dust Bowl." This American Experience film presents the remarkable story of the determined people who clung to their homes and way of life, enduring drought, dust, disease--even death--for nearly a decade. Less well-known than those who sought refuge in California, typified by the Joad family in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," the Dust Bowlers who stayed overcame an almost unbelievable series of calamities and disasters.
- This is about the origins of Tupperware in Massachusetts.
- Documentary examining the impact and continuing influence of 'Alfred Kinsey''s groundbreaking research on human sexuality.
- The building of the railroad between Sacramento, California and Omaha, Nebraska.
- The spread of Prohibition from Henry Ford's Detroit factories nationwide
- A profile of historian Angie Debo and her exposure of the governmental conspiracy to steal mineral-rich lands from their tribal owners.
- 1987– 1h 30m7.4 (44)TV EpisodePart two follows several blacks and whites in the south between 1867 and 1877.
- Faced with growing public odium and frequent lawsuits, the Rockefeller family is forced to change with the times as John D. Rockefeller's son and his descendants seek to rebrand the family name by focusing on philanthropy and politics.
- Examines the stock market crash of 1929 with interviews from descendants of several Wall Street insiders.
- 1987– 53mTV-147.4 (75)TV EpisodePlant breeder Norman Borlaug solves India's famine problem and leads a "Green Revolution" of agriculture programs around the world, saving 1 billion lives and winning a 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
- 1987–7.4 (28)TV Episode
- The last member of a diminished Native American tribe from California makes himself known at the beginning of the 20th century.
- Dolley Madison lived through the two wars that established the U.S., was friends with the first 12 Presidents, and watched America evolve from a struggling young republic to the first modern democracy in the world.
- Wyatt Earp has been portrayed in countless movies and television shows but these popular fictions belie the complexities and flaws of a man whose life is a lens on politics, justice and economic opportunity on the American frontier. He was a caricature of the Western lawman, and after his death in 1929, distressed Americans transformed him into a folk hero: a central figure in how the west was won, a man who took control of his own destiny.
- From PBS and American Experience - Using scientific accounts, diaries, photographs and letters, this film reveals how poor planning, personality clashes, questionable decisions and pure bad luck conspired to turn a noble scientific mission into a human tragedy.
- The American Experience looks at Hebert Hoover's American Relief Administration and its efforts to distribute food during the Great Russian Famine of 1921.
- Court-mandated social integration unleashes racial unrest throughout Boston in the 1970s as Black and White students are bussed together.
- The 1959 tour of the U.S. by the Soviet Premier Khrushchev.
- Tells the story of the role played by American tycoon and physicist Alfred Lee Loomis and a team of British scientists at Loomis's home laboratory outside New York City in countervailing Nazi advances in nuclear fission during World War II.
- As national wealth expands in the U.S. disparities among the nation's population spark debates that continue to rage in modern day America.
- The worst nuclear-power-plant accident in U.S. history.
- 1987– 1h 40m7.3 (84)TV EpisodeFew American artists have reached a wider audience, or enjoyed more widespread popularity in their own lifetime, than Ansel Adams. None has had more profound an impact on how Americans grasp the majesty of their continent, or done more to transform how people think and feel about the meaning of the natural world. A visionary photographer, a pioneer in photographic technique and a crusader for the environment, Adams would take part in an extraordinary revolution: in photography, and ways of seeing what he called "the continuous beauty of the things that are." His greatest photographs would seek to capture "the instant of revelation -- of timelessness" amidst the evanescence of the natural world. Ansel Adams is the intimate portrait of a great artist and ardent environmentalist -- for whom life and art, photography and wilderness, creativity and communication, love and expression, were inextricably connected. ANSEL ADAMS, a ninety-minute documentary film written and directed by Ric Burns, and broadcast on national public television in April 2002, provides an elegant, moving and lyrical portrait of this most eloquent and quintessentially American of photographers.
- 1987– 1h 29mUnrated7.3 (461)TV Episode75MetascoreA documentary on the curious American domestic terrorist group, infamous for the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst.
- The story of Father Charles Coughlin who, during the Depression, used the radio to protest against what he saw as society's ills.
- On January 8, 1902, a commuter train traveling through a tunnel in New York City's Grand Central Depot ran into another train, killing 17 people. An engineer's innovative response to the crisis gave birth to one of America's greatest establishments: Grand Central Terminal.
- A profile of former president Jimmy Carter. In 1980, after one term, he lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, receiving 41 percent of the popular vote. In the following years, however, he forged a new legacy as a respected statesman and humanitarian. The documentary charts his ascent during the turbulent 1970s; explores the role of his wife Rosalynn as his confidant and adviser; and details his successful post-presidency years.
- Follow George H.W. Bush from his childhood into war as a combat pilot in the U.S. Navy. Later, the Bushes moved to the oil fields of Texas where he became a Republican leader, the party that he would lead - and struggle with - as President.
- The story of the US civil rights movement and its music. Freedom music evolved from slave chants and black church. It helped people sing words they couldn't say. It was crucial helping protesters as they faced down aggression with dignity.
- On April 28, 1881, just days from being hanged for murder, 21-year-old Henry McCarty, alias Billy the Kid, outfoxed his jailors and electrified the nation with the last in a long line of daring escapes.
- 1987– 57mTV-PG7.3 (175)TV EpisodeThe historical account of outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, whose turn of the last century exploits made headlines, led them to be pursued by Pinkerton detectives hired by the railroads, and inspired a hit 1969 film.
- 1987– 52m7.3 (150)TV EpisodeMonopoly is America's favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. But behind the myth of the game's creation is an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing.
- Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow embark on a two-year crime spree during the Great Depression and become known as the most famous criminal couple in U.S. history.
- The trial of wealthy college students Leopold and Loeb, who murder a 14-year-old boy in 1924, sets off a national firestorm about morality and capital punishment.
- The story of how a team of underdog American rowers became gold medalists in the 1936 Olympics.
- 1987– 1h 30m7.2 (28)TV EpisodeLife story of the controversial African-American leader Marcus Garvey.
- A documentary recounting the development of the birth control pill.
- In 1875, Captain Richard Pratt ordered 72 Indian warriors suspected who had fought white colonists to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. Once there, Pratt began an experiment which involved teaching Indians to read and write, making them learn English and forcing them to be Christians, barring Native languages and religions, and putting even children as young as five in uniforms and drilling them like soldiers. "Kill the Indian and the save the man," was Pratt's brutal motto. A film about cultural genocide that Richard Pratt began to forcibly assimilate Native Americans into white culture with the creation of the Carlilse School for Indians in 1879. Pratt's school, and others like it, claimed noble intentions. The death toll was high from physical abuse and disease. Similar efforts in Australis and Canada are considered genocide, leading to investigations and official government apologies. These forced assimilation efforts lasted well into the 1930s, when they were abandoned as destructive and worsening poverty, unemployment, and suicide rates.
- The story of America's high-altitude U-2 spy plane.
- 1987–7.2 (47)TV Episode
- The true story of the legendary outlaw Jesse James.
- The story behind the mail order tome that brought merchandise (or dreams of it) within reach of Americans far and wide.
- Jimmy Carter ran for president on a wave of post-Watergate disaffection with Washington politics. But inexperience, inflation, recession, and the Iran hostage crisis, derailed his presidency dramatically. His crowning achievement, the Camp David Accords, created a framework for Middle East peace, inspiring his life since. The film traces his ascent from Plains, Georgia, to the Oval Office and explores the role of religion in his career. This is the second of two parts.
- Documentary on the life of civil rights advocate Powell, including his career as a Harlem minister and a US Congressman.
- On September 1, 1939 the first day of World War II in Europe President Franklin D. Roosevelt appealed to the warring nations to under no circumstances undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations. Just six years later, British and American Allied forces had carried out a bombing campaign of unprecedented might over Germany s cities, claiming the lives of nearly half a million civilians. The Bombing of Germany examines the defining moments of the offensive that led the U.S. across a moral divide. Weaving together interviews with WWII pilots and historians, and stunning archival footage of the bombing and its aftermath, this AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film is a haunting reminder of the dilemma imposed by war's civilian casualties.
- From PBS and American Experience - In the summer of 1868, paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh boarded a Union Pacific train for a sightseeing excursion through the heart of the newly opened American West. While most passengers simply saw magnificent landscapes, Marsh soon realized he was traveling through the greatest dinosaur burial ground of all time.
- 1987– 2hTV-PG7.2 (44)TV EpisodeA look at attempts to desegregate schools in Leland, Mississippi.
- An account of Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama broadcast that inadvertently started a mass panic.
- Robert Ripley - an odd everyman whose uncommon interests in oddities and odd facts catapulted him unexpectedly into public renown and lasting fame.
- From PBS - Inspired by Timothy Egan's best-selling book, The Big Burn is the dramatic story of an unimaginable wildfire that swept across the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910. The fire devoured more than three million acres in 36 hours, confronting the fledgling U.S. Forest Service with a catastrophe that would define the agency and the nation's fire policy for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. As America tries to manage its fire-prone landscapes in the 21st century, The Big Burn provides a cautionary tale of heroism and sacrifice, arrogance and greed, hubris and, ultimately, humility, in the face of nature's frightening power.
- Look back at what happened in New York City the night the lights went out in summer 1977, plunging seven million people into darkness.
- U.S. citizen William Morgan rises to power in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution.
- Engineers overcome challenges to construct America's first subway system in Boston.
- The U.S. Navy's SEALAB, a pressurized underwater habitat complete with science labs and living quarters for divers, helps advance deep sea diving and rescue.
- Biography of U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur. Part one looks at his early life and service in World War I.
- A documentary chronicling the events surrounding the murder of famed architect Stanford White by millionaire Harry Thaw over the affections of showgirl Evelyn Nesbitt in New York in 1906.
- On August 1, 1942, a 22-year-old Mexican American man was stabbed to death at a party. To white Los Angelenos, the murder was just more proof that Mexican American crime was spiraling out of control. The police fanned out across LA, netting 600 young Mexican American suspects. Almost all those taken into custody were wearing the distinctive uniform of their generation: zoot-suits. The tragic murder and the injustice of the trial that followed, coupled with sensational news coverage of both, fanned the flames of the racial hostility that was already running rife in the city. Within months of the verdict, Los Angeles was in the grip of some of the worst violence in its history.
- 1987– 55mTV-PG7.1 (99)TV EpisodeRussian immigrant Emma Goldman verbally attacked the U.S. government, big business and World War I before becoming expatriated in 1919.
- Follows the construction of the New York City subway system in the early 1900s.
- The telephone was first introduced at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 and was an instant success. Although first rented only to "persons of good breeding" and seen as an expensive luxury for doctors and businessmen, the telephone soon transformed American life. Trees gave way to telephone poles as operators known as "hello girls" began to connect a sprawling continent.
- America's love affair with the quiz show is dealt a blow when it's revealed that the games are fixed.