American Experience - Season 16

Episodes

New York: The Center of the World

Filmmaker Ric Burns adds a poignant postscript to his series "New York: A Documentary Film" with this chronicle of the World Trade Center's rise and fall. Burns recounts Sept. 11 wrenchingly, but he devotes more than half the film to the Center's rise. This isn't a pretty story: It's one of economic, political, architectural and engineering labyrinths. The result was a critical and commercial flop, though historian Kenneth Jackson says: "It's more important to history now that it's gone."

Sep 8, 2003

Season 16Episode 260 min

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War: Revolution

Part one focuses on people and events from 1865-68.

Jan 12, 2004

Season 16Episode 360 min

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War: Retreat

Part two follows several blacks and whites in the south between 1867 and 1877.

Jan 13, 2004

Season 16Episode 460 min

Citizen King

On a steamy afternoon in August 1963, a thirty-four-year-old minister gave a speech that enthralled a crowd of more than two hundred thousand people gathered at Washington's Lincoln Memorial and millions more across the country who watched on television. With passion and precision, he proclaimed his vision of a nation free of racism, declaring, "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

What came to be known as the "I Have A Dream" speech was a high point in the public career of Martin Luther King, Jr. But it was also a turning point in his personal life, as he embarked on a controversial, often lonely struggle to redefine and redirect the movement he had helped lead. The quest would not end until his untimely death five years later.

Jan 19, 2004

Season 16Episode 560 min

Remember the Alamo

"Remember the Alamo" recalls the contributions of Tejanos (Hispanic Texans) to the struggle for Texan independence. It profiles Tejano leader Jose Antonio Navarro (1795-1871), an ally of Stephen F. Austin in the effort to build up the Texas economy by luring American settlers (cotton planters particularly) in the 1820s. Navarro was also a spearhead of the revolt against Mexican general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna in 1836.

Feb 2, 2004

Season 16Episode 660 min

Tupperware!

"Modern dishes for modern living" (and they "burped," no less), sold by women at "home parties." This slice of 1950s Americana is recalled in "Tupperware!" "The era and the product were made for each other," says one of the Tupperware "ladies" who are interviewed throughout the hour. Husbands are interviewed too because Tupperware was oftentimes a family affair, with the men working behind the scenes. The man in charge: Earl Tupper, who invented the sealable plastic containers. But a woman, Brownie Wise, developed Tupperware's phenomenally successful marketing plan. What gives "Tupperware!" its bite is the fact that Tupper and Wise didn't get along.

Feb 9, 2004

Season 16Episode 760 min

Emma Goldman

For nearly half a century, Russian emigrant Emma Goldman was the most controversial woman in America, taunting the mainstream with her fervent attacks on government, big business, and war. To the tabloids, she was "Red Emma, queen of the anarchists," but many admired Goldman for her defense of labor rights, women's emancipation, birth control, and free speech.

Apr 12, 2004

Season 16Episode 860 min

Patriots Day

"Patriots Day" follows Revolutionary War re-enactors as they prepare to re-fire those shots heard 'round the world on April 19, 1775, in Lexington and Concord. Filmmaker Marian Marzynski's style is low key and at times whimsical (real redcoats didn't use cell phones), but the "living historians" are serious. Says one: "It is important to understand the passion of what took place here."

Apr 19, 2004

Season 16Episode 960 min

Golden Gate Bridge

Recalling the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, a "graceful leap over an unprecedented space," as narrator David Ogden Stiers calls it. The Golden Gate presented its engineers with a "magnificent" challenge of wind, fog and colliding currents, and they succeeded so magnificently that historian Kevin Starr, the State Librarian of California, likens it to "Hamlet" or a Beethoven symphony. This hour blends technology and poetry smoothly, as does the bridge. It is, sums up Starr, "a fusion of perfections."

May 3, 2004

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