Episode guide

American Experience: Season 2

16 episodes · first aired Oct 2, 1989

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1 The Great Air Race of 1924 Oct 3, 1989 · 55m The first around-the-world air race, sponsored by the Army Air Service to prove that the airplane had a commercial future, was the ultimate test of man and machine. Four pilots took off in…
2 Demon Rum Oct 10, 1989 · 55m Prohibition's effect on Detroit, Michigan, the first major American city to "go dry," where smuggling liquor across the Canadian border became the second largest indusry in town. A…
3 A Family Gathering Oct 17, 1989 · 55m Lise Yasui explores three generations of her Japanese-American family - from their immigration to Oregon in the early 1900s through their imprisonment in internment camps during World War…
4 The Great War: 1918 Oct 24, 1989 · 55m All lingering 19th-century notions of the romance of battle were replaced by the terrible reality of 20th-century mechanized warfare. At Verdun, the French lost 300,000 men; at the Somme…
5 Wildcatter: A Story of Texas Oil Oct 31, 1989 · 55m The tale of mavericks whose risk-taking, sweat and dreams changed an American industry. Starting with Spindletop, the first Texas gusher in 1902, rare archival film and interviews with…
6 Forever Baseball Nov 7, 1989 · 55m There is hardly a city, town or village without a baseball diamond. More than a game, baseball is a tradition, rite of passage, an enduring passion, a code for understanding the culture. A…
7 Mr. Sears' Catalogue Nov 14, 1989 · 55m They started selling watches. Then Richard Sears and Alva Curtis Roebuck started a revolution -- a "wish book" that made life on the farm a little easier and put consumer goods within…
8 Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven Nov 21, 1989 · 55m A stunning film portrait of Yosemite National Park. The film's narration is taken from using the 1851 diary of the first expedition of soldiers into the sacred valley home of the…
9 Adam Clayton Powell Nov 28, 1989 · 55m Affluent, handsome, light-skinned and blond, he could pass for white. But his message about "economics and jobs" would make him one of the most charismatic black leaders in the 20th…
10 Journey to America Dec 5, 1989 · 55m A tribute to the twelve million people who emigrated to the U.S. between 1890 and 1920. A recapturing of the journey through Europe to seaport towns, to the arrival in New York Harbor, and…
11 Ballad of a Mountain Man Dec 12, 1989 · 55m Bascom Lamar Lunsford was a pioneer folklorist who in the 1920s began a campaign to preserve mountain music and dance. He dignified what was known as "hillbilly music." Knocking on doors…
12 Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice Dec 19, 1989 · 55m Born into slavery, she became a journalist and newspaper owner in Memphis, and was radicalized following the lynching of three friends. Her crusade against lynching led to death threats…
13 Orphans of the Storm Dec 26, 1989 · 55m In the summer of 1940, as the German Luftwaffe began its assault on England, 10,000 British children were sent on a perilous sea voyage to safe havens in the United States. There, they…
14 Forbidden City, USA Jan 2, 1990 · 55m Before WWII, San Francisco's Chinatown was a separate world, closed to outsiders, ruled by rigid homeland customs. But in the 1930s, second generation Chinese Americans defied cultural…
15 Battle for Wilderness Jan 9, 1990 · 55m The first major battle for wilderness preservation erupted over the building of Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park in 1906. On the one side were the purists who argued that…
16 Roots of Resistance: The Story of the Underground Railroad Jan 16, 1990 · 55m Men and women, black and white, risked their lives to carve an elaborate network of escape routes out of slavery in the mid 1800s -- trails and backroads, safehouses, river crossings and…