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Zoot Suit Riots

Aired April 15, 2023 | 53 min

In June 1943 the murder of a young Mexican-American man ignited a firestorm in the City of the Angels. In no time at all, ethnic and racial tensions that had been building up over the years boiled over.
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Zoot Suit Riots (español)

Aired April 15, 2023 | 53 min

En junio de 1943 el asesinato de un joven mexicoamericano desató una tormenta en la ciudad de Los Ángeles. En un abrir y cerrar de ojos, las tensiones étnicas y raciales que se habían ido acumulando a lo largo de los años se desbordaron.

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Miss America

Aired January 27, 2002

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.

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Mount Rushmore

Aired January 20, 2002

High on a granite cliff in South Dakota's Black Hills tower the huge carved faces of four American presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

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Woodrow Wilson

Aired January 6, 2002

President Woodrow Wilson led America during World War I, created the Federal Reserve, and helped create the League of Nations. Part of the award-winning collection The Presidents.

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War Letters

Aired November 11, 2001

From the Revolutionary War to Operation Desert Storm - newly discovered letters read by celebrity actors tell of courage, longing, and sacrifice.

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Stephen Foster

Aired April 23, 2001

Stephen Foster was the first great American songwriter. His melodies are so much a part of American history and culture that most people think they're folk tunes. All in all he composed some 200 songs, including "Oh! Susanna" "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," and "Camptown Races." Though he virtually invented popular music as we recognize it today, Foster's personal life was tragic and contradiction-riddled. His marriage was largely unhappy, he never made much money from his work and he died at the age of 37 a nearly penniless alcoholic on the Bowery in New York.

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Fatal Flood

Aired August 22, 2023 | 53 min

In 1927, the Mississippi River flooded from New Orleans to Illinois, leaving a million people homeless and leading to a major black migration to the North.

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Fatal Flood (español)

Aired September 19, 2023 | 53 min

En 1927, la inundación del río Misisipi desde Nueva Orleans hasta Illinois dejó a 1 millón de personas sin hogar provocando una importante migración negra hacia el norte.

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Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

Aired April 2, 2001

In 1931, two white women made a shocking accusation: they had been raped by nine black teenagers on a train. The trial of the nine falsely accused teens would draw North and South into their sharpest conflict since the Civil War.

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Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided

Aired February 19, 2001 | 3 hrs 46 min

The six-part story of a frontiersman farmer and a wealthy Confederate slave-owner's daughter.

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Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind

Aired February 12, 2001

He was both a visionary and a manipulator, a brilliant orator and a pompous autocrat. In just ten years following his emigration to the United States as a laborer in 1917, Marcus Garvey rose to lead the largest black organization in history, was taken to prison in handcuffs, and was eventually deported. Marcus Garvey is the dramatic story of the rise and fall of an African American leader who influenced politics and culture around the world.

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