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African Americans History Immigrants United States Imperialism United States History Imperialism United States History Industries United States History Industries United States History Labor United States History Labor United States History Race discrimination United States Economic conditionsSummary: The Declaration of Independence stated 'all men are created equal,' but the nation’s slaves were a glaring exception. The colonial slave trade and brutal life for African-Americans on Southern plantations spark the abolition movement and the Underground Railroad. This episode explores the role of Frederick Douglass, and then looks at the impact of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on the westward...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
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Summary: Get set for an adventure that marked a new era in America! Filmmaker Ken Burns presents the hilarious 1903 saga of the first transcontinental automobile trip. On a visionary whim and a
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
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Summary: This episode of American Stories by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns presents the history of one of our greatest icons. For over a century, she has stood on Liberty Island, a gift from France created by sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi. Torch eternally aloft, Lady Liberty has been the symbol of hope for generations of immigrants. Interviews with ordinary Americans reveal the statue’s great...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1985
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Summary: The nation seethes with racial conflict as immigrants increasingly become targets of prejudice, and as settlers and soldiers massacre Western Indians and force them onto reservations. As European freedom-seekers continue to pour into America through Ellis Island, the Supreme Court finally rules that non-citizens are due equal protection under the law.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
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Summary: Danger has always surrounded the coal miner's profession, but in the early years of the Colorado coal fields, it was almost as risky for a worker to stay above ground and face the wrath of the company as it was to toil in the tunnels below. This Bill Moyers program presents the memories of the people who worked those mines, freeing the rocks, metals, and minerals on which much of 20th-century...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: On Angel Island, the history is written on the walls. From 1910 until 1943, Chinese immigrants to America passed through Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, the Ellis Island of the West. Unlike other groups, the Chinese were legally discriminated against under an 1882 law called the Chinese Exclusion Act. This program looks at how two women-one an artist, the other a documentary filmmaker-are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: While Progressive leaders showed their distrust of power in their dealings with large corporations at home, they still grasped the growing need for an aggressive national stance in world relations. This program covers the opening of Japan, the acquisition of Alaska and Hawaii, the Open Door Policy in China, the Spanish-American War, and the Boxer Rebellion. The doctrinal struggle between...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: A progenitor of the National Geographic Society, John Wesley Powell was a naturalist, a rough-and-ready explorer, and a visionary in his understanding of the uncharted Colorado River. This program illustrates Powell's historic passage through the Grand Canyon in 1869, when the 35-year-old set out with eight companions from Green River, Wyoming, into the unknown. The film describes how, at...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The great immigration from Europe ended in the 1920s. Today these descendants of the immigrants are trying to rediscover their heritage. How do they now view the Old World? And how do they view America's future?
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: As with many historic American figures of the 19th century, Sojourner Truth's story is incomplete and somewhat mythical, a fact compounded by her having been born a slave. This detailed program traces the lifelong odyssey of a woman who literally walked out of bondage, changed her name in 1843, and traveled the country as an abolitionist and women's rights advocate. Along the way she would meet...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The new immigration laws of 1965 were a turning point for the Chinese in America and allowed a new wave of immigrants to enter the country. Chinese American life has flourished in the years since. Narrated by Bill Moyers, this program presents intimate portraits of the new Chinese Americans who face a struggle common to so many immigrants: to reconcile some losses of their old culture in order...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Polish immigrants were the driving force behind Chicago's remarkable industrial growth. But they never achieved political cohesiveness, and while a million Poles now live in Chicago, their political power is not commensurate with the number of votes they cast.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The British had it the easiest of all. As long ago as the settlement in Jamestown, they came not to escape poverty but to find prosperity. As a group, they found it the easiest to reap the material rewards of an expanding America.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Martin Sheen-impersonating the voice of author Dashiell Hammett-narrates this compelling docudrama on immigrant labor and anti-war politics in 1917. As a young employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Hammett spied for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company in Butte, Montana, during the height of labor struggles there. Using a wealth of archival footage, first-rate dramatizations, interviews...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This poignant collage features members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux living on and off the Pine Ridge reservation who present their unself-pitying yet pointed observations on Lakota history and modern-day Lakota life. Their creation myth and their attitudes toward Mother Earth and the concept of time contribute insights into their worldview, while footage of a major powwow and a tepee-raising...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: During the presidencies of Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, America was witness to so many political, corporate, and social reforms that the period came to be known as the Progressive Era. This program provides an excellent overview of the times, underscoring the importance of women's suffrage, the Square Deal, the temperance movement, and other signal initiatives. In...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The U.S. Constitution is the world's oldest written charter of government in continuous effect. Much of the success of this document can be attributed to the way the Constitution has changed to meet the needs of the American people. The framers of the Constitution wisely anticipated the need to make changes to the Constitution as the world itself changed. Between 1787, when the Constitution was...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Theodore Roosevelt-cowboy, soldier, explorer, hunter, historian, reformer, naturalist, and last but not least, President of the United States. He led America exuberantly into the 1900s, but for all his unswerving patriotism and over-brimming confidence, his tenure as Chief Executive was as laden with complexity as the new century itself. In this program, Bill Moyers joins Roosevelt biographer...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In the early 1880s, abetted by the Chinese Exclusion Act, a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment swept across America. This program examines the exclusion years through the stories of Chinese Americans and their families who were kept apart by both ancient custom and U.S. law. These immigrants were trapped between countries, at home neither in the U.S. nor in China. The law of the land, which...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In the early 20th century, blacks moved north in hope of a better life with little more than a prayer and the shirts on their backs. In this program, poet Maya Angelou, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, and a host of other African-Americans recount the story of the migration, of separated families, and of the hardships, prejudice, and struggle for acceptance in the North that resulted in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: On November 29, 1864, Col. John Chivington and 800 troops of the First Colorado Cavalry attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camp-massacring women, children, and the elderly. This program introduces the Sand Creek atrocity to viewers in a way that written texts and dramatizations cannot. It consists of oral histories passed down from firsthand accounts through the generations and movingly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Around 1850, the vast fertile lands of the Midwest attracted nearly a million farmers from Norway, where land was scarce and often unfit to farm. Their life as pioneers was hard, but their descendants have prospered.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: In 20 years, four million Italians entered the U.S. While all immigrant groups were disdained by those who had come even a generation before, Italians suffered especially. Many became poorly-paid laborers, but many others made good.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The newly unveiled Statue of Liberty is a symbol of all that is best in America, inspiring a time of reform and compassion. Mother Jones brings the child labor issue to the forefront of the nation's consciousness, and Jane Addams, America's first social worker, creates Hull House. Ida Tarbell exposes the abuses of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002