Previews
A collection of Previews to past and future American Experience documentaries
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Coming to American Experience September 14 & 15 is the unprecedented look at the complex life and enduring legacy of one of America’s best-known storytellers – Walt Disney. This two-night, four-hour film reveals the makings of the man who would leave an indelible mark on our nation’s cultural history.
In April of 1975, the North Vietnamese Army was closing in on Saigon as South Vietnamese resistance was crumbling. With the clock ticking and the city under fire, 135,000 South Vietnamese managed to escape with help from a number of Americans who took matters into their own hands, engaging in unsanctioned and often makeshift operations in a desperate effort to save as many people as possible.
By the dawn of the 19th century tuberculosis had killed one in seven of all the people who had ever lived. The battle against the deadly bacteria had a profound and lasting impact on the US, shaping medical and scientific pursuits, social habits, economic development, western expansion, and government policy.
In the summer of 1910, hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history, and it assured the future of the still-new United States Forest Service.
Thomas Edison achieved glory as the genius behind such revolutionary inventions as sound recording, motion pictures, and electric light. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in history, "The Wizard of Menlo Park" was also intensely competitive and was often neglectful in his private life.
As the civil rights movement grew in the 1960s, the long-dormant Ku Klux Klan reemerged with a vengeance. North Carolina, long seen as the most progressive southern state, saw a boom in Klan membership under the leadership of Grand Dragon Bob Jones. In just three years, the North Carolina Klan grew to some 10,000 members, helping give the state a new nickname: "Klansville, USA."
Robert Ripley mesmerized the nation with his blend of homespun Americana, colorful exotica and freakish oddities. His “Believe It or Not!” franchise grew into an entertainment empire, expanding from newspapers to every form of “new media” in the 20th century: radio, film and, ultimately, television.
For 12 days in September 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev traveled the United States from coast to coast, creating a media circus as hundreds of reporters followed his every move. Americans were fascinated by the communist leader and the trip served to ease Cold War tensions -- if only for a short time.
What is it like to be cut off from your faith and your family? The Amish: Shunned follows seven people who have chosen to leave their closed and tightly-knit communities for the outside world, knowing they can never return. Each has paid deeply for their decision. Estranged from loved ones, these former Amish find themselves struggling to make their way in modern America.
1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’sgrassroots conservatism, between support or opposition to the civil rights movement, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values.
In the early 20th century, the average American medicine cabinet was a would-be poisoner's treasure chest, with radioactive radium, thallium, and morphine included in everyday products. In New York City in the 1920s, medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler, turned forensic chemistry into a formidable science and set the standards for the rest of the country.
Over 10 memorable weeks in 1964 known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers from around the country joined organizers and local African Americans in a historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in what was one of the nation’s most viciously racist, segregated states.
