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American Experience Season 33 Episodes
Season 33 Episode Guide
9 Episodes 2021 - 2021
Episode 1
The Codebreaker
Mon, Jan 11, 202153 mins
The amazing story of ground-breaking crypto analyst Elizebeth Smith Friedman, whose work in decoding the messages of organized crime and America's enemies in World War II was instrumental in their defeat and was classified and completely unknown until recently.
Episode 2
Voice of Freedom
Mon, Feb 15, 2021100 mins
On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stepped up to a microphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Inscribed on the walls of the monument behind her were the words "all men are created equal." Barred from performing in Constitution Hall because of her race, Anderson would sing for the American people in the open air. Hailed as a voice that "comes around once in a hundred years" by maestros in Europe and widely celebrated by both white and black audiences at home, her fame hadn't been enough to spare her from the indignities and outright violence of racism and segregation. Voice of Freedom interweaves Anderson's rich life story with this landmark moment in history, exploring fundamental questions about talent, race, fame, democracy and the American soul.
Episode 3
The Blinding of Isaac Woodard
Tue, Mar 30, 2021115 mins
The Blinding of Isaac Woodard: How a horrific incident of racial violence became a powerful catalyst for the civil rights movement. In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel's book "Unexampled Courage", the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jump-started the modern civil rights movement.
Episode 4
American OZ
Mon, Apr 19, 2021112 mins
L. Frank Baum spent much of his life trying to find his way to a career that he could sustain. He chose to ignore a comfortable career in his father's petroleum company. He chose to breed exotic chickens and publish a poultry trade journal and book. Next he tried the actor's life, even writing and producing the play "The Maid of Arran ". That too eventually died out. During this time he married Maud Gage, the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a famous women's suffrage and feminist activist. Until his brother and father died, he helped market Castorline Oil lubricants. After visiting relatives in Aberdeen, South Dakota, he decided to move there to open Baum's Bazaar. He stocked it with items that were too sophisticated for most frontier families. When drought brought economic hard times, his business failed. That is when he became the editor of a weekly newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Tensions between city residents and the Lakota Indians eventually pushed him back to Chicago where he sold crockery. Tired of being absent from his wife and four sons, he began writing. His first success was Mother Goose in Prose followed by Father Goose, His Story. The third book, based on witnessing the drought stricken plains in South Dakota, was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was a sensation and led to a popular musical that altered most of his story away. He briefly ran a film company in Hollywood, but that too did not prosper. He spent his last years writing one Oz book a year and tending his garden.
Episode 5
Billy Graham
Mon, May 17, 2021
Billy Graham explores the life and career of one of the best-known and most influential religious leaders of the 20th century. From modest beginnings on a North Carolina farm, Graham rose to prominence with a fiery preaching style, movie-star good looks and effortless charm. His early fundamentalist sermons harnessed the apocalyptic anxieties of a post-atomic world, exhorting audiences to adopt the only possible solution: devoting one's life to Christ. Graham became an international celebrity who built a media empire, preached to millions worldwide, and had the ear of tycoons, royalty and presidents. At age 99, he died a national icon, estimated to have preached in person to 210 million people. Billy Graham examines the evangelist's extraordinary influence on American politics and culture, interweaving the voices of historians, scholars, witnesses, family, and Graham himself, to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of a singular figure in the American experience.
Episode 6
Sandra Day O'Connor: The First
Mon, Sep 13, 2021115 mins
The life and career of Sandra Day O'Connor, from growing up on a cattle ranch in Arizona to her 25 years on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Episode 7
Citizen Hearst: Part 1
Mon, Sep 27, 2021111 mins
In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst's media empire included 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations and 13 magazines. Nearly one in four American families read a Hearst publication. His newspapers were so influential that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Winston Churchill all wrote for him. The first practitioner of what is now known as "synergy," Hearst used his media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power, then ran for office himself. After serving two terms in Congress, he came in second in the balloting for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904. Perhaps best known as the inspiration for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and his lavish castle in San Simeon, Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, having transformed the media's role in American life and politics. The two-part, four-hour film is based on historian David Nasaw's critically acclaimed biography, 'The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst.'
Episode 8
Citizen Hearst: Part 2
Tue, Sep 28, 2021113 mins
In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst's media empire included 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations and 13 magazines. Nearly one in four American families read a Hearst publication. His newspapers were so influential that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Winston Churchill all wrote for him. The first practitioner of what is now known as "synergy," Hearst used his media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power, then ran for office himself. After serving two terms in Congress, he came in second in the balloting for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904. Perhaps best known as the inspiration for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and his lavish castle in San Simeon, Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, having transformed the media's role in American life and politics. The two-part, four-hour film is based on historian David Nasaw's critically acclaimed biography, 'The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst.'
Episode 101
Goin' Back to T-Town
Mon, Feb 8, 202153 mins
Goin' Back to T-Town tells the story of Greenwood, an extraordinary Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that prospered during the 1920s and 30s despite rampant and hostile segregation. Torn apart in 1921 by one of the worst racially-motivated massacres in the nation's history, the neighborhood rose from the ashes, and by 1936 boasted the largest concentration of Black-owned businesses in the U.S., known as "Black Wall Street." Ironically, it could not survive the progressive policies of integration and urban renewal of the 1960s. Told through the memories of those who lived through the events, the film is a bittersweet celebration of small-town life and the resilience of a community's spirit.