On the night of February 27, 1973, American Indian Movement (AIM) and Oglala Lakota activists seized the hamlet of Wounded Knee, and police cordoned off the area. Demanding redress for grievances, the protesters captured the world's attention for 71 gripping days. With heavily armed federal troops tightening a cordon around the Indians, the event recalled the massacre at Wounded Knee almost a century earlier. In telling the story of this iconic moment,...

Douglass escapes slavery, eventually joining Garrison in the anti-slavery movement. Threatened with capture by his former owner, Douglass flees to England, returning to the U.S. in 1847. He launches his own anti-slavery paper. John Brown meets with Douglass, revealing his radical plan to raise an army, attack plantations and free the slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. A best-seller, and then wildly successful stage...

After taking control of the San Francisco Examiner in 1887, William Randolph Hearst was eager to try his luck in New York. Hearst bought the failing Journal in 1895 and turned it into a sensation. He earned the loyalty of the city’s population of newly arrived immigrants by railing against monopolistic businesses and championing the working class, using the medium to increase his influence.

This program, part two of the series, examines the mounting dispute over strategy and tactics. The suffragists, stung by a string of bitter state-level defeats in the fall of 1915, concentrated their energies on the passage of a federal amendment. One faction was determined to pursue a moderate course and work within the political system, while another deployed ever-more confrontational and controversial methods of protest.

In the early 20th century, researchers made a thrilling new claim: they could tell whether someone was lying by using a machine. Popularly known as the “lie detector,” the device was extolled as an infallible crime-fighting tool. Instead, the lie detector became an apparatus of fear and intimidation. The Lie Detector is a tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.

1964 is the year the Beatles come to America, Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers are murdered in Mississippi. It is the year when Berkeley students rise up in protest, African Americans fight back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater's conservative revolution takes over the Republican Party. Based in part on The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964 by Jon Margolis, 1964 follows some of the most influential...

American hero or violent outlaw? The story of Jesse James remains one of America's most cherished and wrong-headed myths. So the legend goes, he was a Western outlaw, but in reality, he never went west. He has been called America's own Robin Hood, yet he robbed both rich and poor, and was never seen to share his ill-gotten gains. Less heroic than brutal, James was a product of the American Civil War; a Confederate partisan of expansive ambition who...

In the 1950s and ’60s, an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge at a house in the Catskills region of New York. Known as Casa Susanna, the house provided a safe place to express their true selves. Told through the memories of those who visited, the film looks back at a secret world where the persecuted and frightened found freedom and acceptance.

Explore the life and career of one of the best-known and most influential Christian leaders of the 20th century. From humble beginnings on a North Carolina farm, Graham rose to prominence with a fiery preaching style and folksy charm. This film examines the preacher’s extraordinary influence on American politics and culture from 1949 to 1980, interweaving the voices of historians, scholars, witnesses, followers, friends, family, and Graham himself...

Inspired by Timothy Egan’s best-selling book, “The Big Burn” is the dramatic story of an unimaginable wildfire that swept across the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910. The fire devoured more than three million acres in 36 hours, confronting the fledgling U.S. Forest Service with a catastrophe that would define the agency and the nation’s fire policy for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. As America tries to manage its fire-prone...