American Experience Season 13 Episodes

Episode 1

The Rockefellers: Part 1

Mon, Oct 16, 2000210 mins

The controversial rise of John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil multinational, the largest and most powerful company in the world at the time.

Episode 2

The Rockefellers: Part 2

Mon, Oct 23, 2000210 mins

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.

Episode 3

Secrets of a Master Builder: The Story of James B. Eads

Mon, Oct 30, 2000

Episode 4

Return with Honor

Mon, Nov 13, 2000

Episode 5

Streamliners: America's Lost Trains

Mon, Feb 5, 2001

Episode 6

Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind

90 mins

A documentary on the life and times of Universal Negro Improvement Association founder Marcus Garvey utilizing archival footage, dramatic readings, interviews with his own sons, and eyewitness accounts of former UNIA members.

Episode 7

Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided Part 1 - Ambition

Mon, Feb 19, 2001360 mins

The 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. Mary sets her heart on the raw, socially awkward Lincoln, saying later: "He'll be President of the United States one day. If I had not thought so I never would have married him."

Episode 8

Abraham and Mary Lincoln, A House Divided Part 2 - We Are Elected

Mon, Feb 19, 200160 mins

The Lincoln marriage is both tempestuous and passionate: she has a temper; he suffers bouts of depression. But they share a powerful political ambition that sends Abraham to the House of Representatives and later, with the country splitting apart over slavery, sees him run for president. On election night, when the results finally come in, Abraham goes home and tells his wife, "Mary, Mary, we are elected!"

Episode 9

Abraham and Mary Lincoln, A House Divided Part 3 - Shattered

Tue, Feb 20, 200160 mins

When the Lincolns arrive in Washington in 1861, the country is breaking apart. The country's president-elect is unknown, untested and mistrusted. His wife, the daughter of a Southern slave owner, is suspected of being a Confederate sympathizer. As Abraham leads a confused and frightened people through the most terrible conflict in their history, disaster strikes his own home: Willie Lincoln - the child Mary says will be "the hope and stay" of her old age - dies.

Episode 10

Abraham and Mary Lincoln, a House Divided Part 4 - The Dearest of All Things

Tue, Feb 20, 200160 mins

Tormented 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. With the war going badly in the east, enlistments drying up and morale low, Abraham Lincoln takes a step that changes the country forever and, in doing so, he changes himself. On January 1, 1863, the 16th president issues the Emancipation Proclamation, liberating millions of Americans from bondage. The move turns the Civil War from a conflict over union into a struggle for freedom.

Episode 11

Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided Part 5 - This Frightful War

Wed, Feb 21, 200160 mins

As 1863 begins, it seems the Civil War will never end. One-hundred Union soldiers desert daily and hundreds more die of disease. Opposition to the war begins to spread. Some Northerners resent fighting to free black slaves; others are furious with Abraham Lincoln for the devastating Union casualties. Weighed down by the criticism, Abraham is desperately anxious. Mary Lincoln, worried about her husband, spends money compulsively, plunging herself into terrible debt.

Episode 12

Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided Part 6 - Blind with Weeping

Wed, Feb 21, 200160 mins

The last 16 months of war - the battle of Gettysburg, the Union victory that changed the conflict's course, and Abraham Lincoln's battlefield dedication that changed America's conception of itself. It follows Abraham's final political struggles and charts his differences with his wife: he remains dedicated to bringing the South back to the Union; she speaks privately of revenge. With the surrender at Appomattox and the Civil War finally over, the president tells Mary Lincoln they can find some happiness again. Just days later, he is shot to death. The brutal assassination exacts a terrible toll on a war-torn nation and the president's emotionally fragile wife.

Episode 13

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

Mon, Apr 2, 2001

Episode 14

Fatal Flood

Mon, Apr 16, 200160 mins

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.

Episode 15

Stephen Foster

Mon, Apr 23, 2001

Story of the first great American song writer, composer of "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," "Listen to the Flower People" and more.