American Experience

1624 - 1865
1866 - 1900
1901 - 1925
1926 - 1945
1946 - TODAY

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CHRONOLOGICAL: 1901 - 1925:

1901 | 1911 | 1918 | 1922

The Great War -- 1918 (1918)
(no website available)
The bloodiest war of the century.

All lingering 19th-century notions of the romance of battle were replaced by the terrible reality of 20th-century mechanized warfare. At Verdun, the French lost 300,000 men; at the Somme, the English lost one million. Against this setting, America reluctantly sent its boys to fight. The wrenching and heroic accounts of U.S. soldiers and nurses who served in the closing battles of the bloodiest war of the century.

Influenza 1918 (1918)
The worst epidemic in American history.

In September of 1918, soldiers at an army base near Boston suddenly began to die. The cause of death was identified as influenza, but it was unlike any strain ever seen. As the killer virus spread across the country, hospitals overfilled, death carts roamed the streets and helpless city officials dug mass graves. It was the worst epidemic in American history, killing over 600,000 -- until it disappeared as mysteriously as it had begun.

George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire (1919-1998)
He preached segregation now, segregation forever -- then he asked to be forgiven.

Four times governor of Alabama, four times a candidate for president, he was feared as a racist demagogue and admired as a politician who spoke his mind. A lightning rod for controversy, Wallace both reflected and provoked tensions in American society over more than four decades. This film traces the rise of the firebrand politician from his roots in rural Alabama to the assassination attempt that suddenly transformed him.

Demon Rum (1920-1933)
(no website available)
Prohibition's effect on Detroit, Michigan, the first major city to "go dry."

Prohibition's effect on Detroit, Michigan, the first major American city to "go dry," where smuggling liquor across the Canadian border became the second largest indusry in town. A humorous, wild tale related by residents who lived through this national experiment which lasted from 1920 to 1933.

Hoover Dam (1920-1935)
One of the greatest engineering works in history.

Rising more than 700 feet above the raging waters of the Colorado River, it was called one of the greatest engineering works in history. Hoover Dam, built during the Great Depression, drew men desperate for work to a remote and rugged canyon near Las Vegas. There they struggled against heat, choking dust and perilous heights to build a colossus of concrete that brought electricity and water to millions and transformed the American Southwest.

FDR (1920-1945)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt restored hope to a country that had lost it, led the nation during the greatest war in history and championed the common man.
(Watch the program online on The Presidents Web site.)

His radio "Fireside Chats" went into millions of living rooms; his picture hung on the walls of homes and businesses; his wife was the most admired woman in America. Franklin Delano Roosevelt restored hope to a country that had lost it, led the nation during the greatest war in history and championed the common man. Yet there was nothing common about his aristocratic beginnings, and his exuberant personality disguised a painful private world.

The Kennedys (1920-1980)
A saga of ambition, wealth, family loyalty and personal tragedy, the Kennedy story is unlike any other.
(More about John F. Kennedy on The Presidents Web site)

No family has had such a powerful hold on the American imagination. A saga of ambition, wealth, family loyalty and personal tragedy, the Kennedy story is unlike any other. From Joseph Kennedy's rise on Wall Street and frustrations in politics, through John Kennedy's march to the presidency -- orchestrated by his father -- to Edward Kennedy's withdrawal from the 1980 presidential race following the scandal of Chappaquiddick, the family has left a legacy that continues to influence politics today.

Goin' Back To T-Town (1921-1955)
(no website available)
In a nostalgic celebration of old fashioned neighborhood life, the black residents of Tulsa relive their community's remarkable rise and tragic decline.

In Tulsa,the community of Greenwood was a place where blacks had some measure of financial, social and political independence. Burned to the ground in 1921 by angry whites, Greenwood was rebuilt and boasted the largest concentration of black businesses in the country. In a nostalgic celebration of old fashioned neighborhood life, the black residents of "T-Town" relive their community's remarkable rise and ultimate decline.

Miss America (1921-2001)
Miss America, the country's oldest beauty contest, is an Atlantic City seaside tradition that has become a battle ground and a barometer for the changing position of women in society.

Tracking the country's oldest beauty contest -- from its inception in 1921 as a local seaside pageant to its heyday as one of the country's most popular events -- Miss America paints a vivid picture of an institution that has come to reveal much about a changing nation. The pageant is about commercialism and sexual politics, about big business and small towns. But beyond the symbolism lies a human story -- at once moving, inspiring, infuriating, funny and poignant. Using intimate interviews with former contestants, and fabulous behind-the-scenes footage and photographs, the film reveals why some women took part in the fledgling event and why others briefly shut it -- how the pageant became a battle ground and a barometer for the changing position of women in society.

The Murder of Emmett Till (1921-2003)
Chicago teen Emmett Till's brutal murder in 1955 mobilized the civil rights movement.

In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head.Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till's death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

CHRONOLOGICAL: 1901 - 1925:

1901 | 1911 | 1918 | 1922