American Experience Season 14 Episodes

Episode 1

New York: Part 6 - The City of Tomorrow

Sun, Sep 30, 2001114 mins

During the great depression life we see how terrible it was for the people of New York (including the children) who would dig through the garbage searching for any remnants of substance that could be digested. Tens of thousands of people were evicted from their homes as there was no work to pay rent. It was also the period when Germany invaded Poland and the USA entered into World War II. The storied 1939 World's Fair was underway which provided millions of tourists and New Yorkers their first glimpse of what cities and future sprawling suburbs could be with evolution of mass produced cars and new super highways could create. Two men who are credited for stopping the Tammany Hall men such as Mayor James J. Walker of stealing public city coffer spoils and their corruption were finally stopped by the New Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, who became the 99th Mayor of New York City for three terms from 1934 to 1945 as a Republican. The other key man of the 1930's New York was master builder Robert Moses, a public official responsible for his vision noted in the history of urban development in the United States. Surviving the Harlem riots, the Mayor Walker corruption scandal, and the great depression, public highways were built to accommodate the increasing mass produced vehicles and the suburban sprawl.

Episode 2

New York: Part 7 - The City and the World

Mon, Oct 1, 2001137 mins

City planner Robert Moses appears obsessed with his power and authority such that he publicly denounces through television interviews and newspaper editorials anyone who is opposed to what he calls inevitable progress. Moses is responsible for re-developing existing large city neighborhoods and when he is opposed he simply uses the threat of Federal intervention to proceed with his re-building. Whole neighborhoods are told to move out in the next 90 days, and then one woman community activist Jane Jacobs, fought tooth and nail to stop Moses latest major project, the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Jane Jacobs persistence has the public support as well as political support such that the Lower Manhattan Expressway project is cancelled, and it leads to the creation of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, ensuring the survival of New York's most architecturally important buildings and neighborhoods. It is also the time period of an influx of southern African-Americans moved north and Puerto Rican immigrants poured into the city. The banks went through with their previous threat(s) to cease extending any further loans to the city politicians. President Ronald Reagan reluctantly agreed to loan billions of dollars to the state of New York after economists warned him the alternative could lead to further financial ruins in other parts of the country.

Episode 3

War Letters

Sun, Nov 11, 200160 mins

A documentary based on the book "War Letters; Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars" by Andrew Carroll.

Episode 4

Woodrow Wilson: Episode One - A Passionate Man

Sun, Jan 6, 2002

Episode 5

Woodrow Wilson: Episode Two - The Redemption of the World

Sun, Jan 13, 2002

Episode 6

Mount Rushmore

Sun, Jan 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. Together they constitute one of the world's largest pieces of sculpture. The story of Mount Rushmore's creation is as bizarre and wonderful as the monument itself. It is the tale of a hyperactive, temperamental artist whose talent and determination propelled the project, even as his ego and obsession threatened to tear it apart. It is the story of hucksterism and hyperbole, of a massive public works project in the midst of an economic depression. And it is the story of dozens of ordinary Americans who suddenly found themselves suspended high on a cliff face with drills and hammers as a Danish sculptor they considered insane directed them in the creation what some would call a monstrosity, and others a masterpiece. On October 1, 1925, hundreds of citizens made their way up a rough mountain pass, heading for a remote peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota called Mount Rushmore. Just weeks before, the men of Keystone, South Dakota, had cut a three-mile long path through a heavy forest with nothing but picks, shovels and horse-drawn scrapers. In the meantime, local women had worked around the clock stitching five 30-foot flags, cooking, and generally beautifying the grounds. The locals had bent themselves to these tasks all so an odd little artist named Gutzon Borglun could announce to the world his plan to carve 160-foot likenesses of George Washington, Thomas Jefeferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt onto the mountain face. The story of Mount Rushmore's creation is as bizarre and wonderful as the monument itself. It is the tale of a hyperactive, temperamental artist whose talent and determination propelled the project, even as his ego and obsession threatened to tear it apart. It is the story of hucksterism and hyperbole, of a massive public works project in the midst of an economic depression. And it is the story of dozens of ordinary Americans who suddenly found themselves suspended high on a cliff face with drills and hammers as a Danish American sculptor they considered insane directed them in the creation of what some would call a monstrosity, and others a masterpiece. Gutzon Borglum was a loud-mouth and a big-head - a sculptor with undisputed skill, but little genius for artistic invention and with a knack of calling attention to himself. Highly critical of his fellow artists, he once claimed that most of the nation's public monuments were worthless and should be dynamited. American art was supposed to be "big," he would say. "There isn't a monument in this country as big as a snuff box." His proposed colossal monument on the face of Mount Rushmore would certainly be "big" - it would be one of the largest sculptures in the world. From October 1925, when Borglum announced the project, until July 1939. when the final head was unveiled, Mount Rushmore was his obsession. He started the project without any money and with little support. One newspaper columnist wrote, "Thank God it is in South Dakota where no one will ever see it." Work stopped repeatedly because money ran out. And the men hired to carve the rock were miners, not sculptors, men hired for their skills with jackhammer and dynamite. Borglum complained bitterly about them. "I must have men who know how to carve mountains," he would say, which as one local writer points out, "was kind of stupid because nobody ever had." In all, it took 14 years to complete Mount Rushmore. The men removed half a million tons of granite, blasting and carving as much as 120 feet into the cliff. George Washington's face is 60 feet long, his nose 20, and his eyes are 11 feet wide. Lincoln's mole is 16 inches across. The carving cost $989,999.32. Perhaps the most startling fact is that Borglum and the South Dakotans were able to convince the federal government to foot $836,000 of that bill. And the monument now receives nearly 2 million visitors each year.

Episode 7

Miss America

Sun, Jan 27, 200290 mins

Episode 8

Zoot Suit Riots

Sun, Feb 10, 200253 mins

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.

Episode 9

Monkey Trial

Sun, Feb 17, 200290 mins

In 1925 a Tennessee high school teacher is arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. A momentous trial ensues, pitting fundamentalist preaching against freedom of thought and speech.

Episode 10

Public Enemy Number 1

Sun, Feb 24, 2002

Episode 11

Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film

Sun, Apr 21, 2002100 mins

Few 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.

Episode 12

A Brilliant Madness

Sun, Apr 28, 2002

Episode 13

Ulysses S. Grant (Part 1)

Sun, May 5, 2002220 mins

Episode 14

Ulysses S. Grant: Part 2

Sun, May 12, 2002

Episode 101

Lady Bird

Sun, Dec 16, 200160 mins

Lady Bird Johnson spent 39 years serving, honoring, and protecting one of the biggest galoots Texas has ever produced. Now she's lived nearly 29 years without him, making her the dean of America's presidential widows.