American History

In October 1947, screenwriter Gordon Kahn was one of those subpoenaed to appear before the House on Un-American Activities Committee which was investigating `communist subversion' of the film industry.

Tells the story of Joe Hill (1879-1915), a Swedish immigrant to America who became a songwriter, cartoonist and labor organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and whose 1915 execution by the state of Utah for a crime he probably did not commit transformed him into a martyr for the labor movement and an international folk hero.

Examines the history of American intervention in the Philippines following the Spanish American War. A silent movie format with lively ragtime piano music is combined with a dramatically understated narration and excerpts from `newsreels' of the period to reveal the nature of American attitudes toward Third World peoples and cultures.

In 1889, amidst the slums of Chicago's Near West Side, pioneer social worker Jane Addams (1860-1935) opened Hull House to aid the poor, largely immigrant residents of the neighborhood.

The topics include: Sandinistas oust Somoza in Nicaragua; Thatcher elected Prime Minister; Three Mile Island; the Shah flees and Khomeini returns to Iran; palimony; Idi Amin overthrown; Skylab falls; Chinese invasion of Vietnam.

The topics include: Proposition 13; Nazis march in Skokie; Aldo Moro kidnapping; Vietnamese boat people; Jonestown suicides; Rev. Sun Myung Moon; hot tubs; Panama Canal; Bakke case; disco music; Camp David.

The topics include: Sadat and Begin peace talks; Carter inauguration; solar energy; Gary Gilmore execution; punk rock; Son of Sam murders; Elvis dies; NYC blackout; Sylvester Stallone in Rocky; Bert Lance resigns.

The topics include: American Bicentennial; Jimmy Carter elected; Viking spacecraft lands on Mars; mud wrestling; Israeli raid on Entebbe; post-Mao party purge in China; Idi Amin; Legionnaire’s disease; Howard Hughes dies.

The topics include: Saigon falls; Margaret Thatcher elected; Ford assassination attempts; Saturday Night Live; Patty Hearst arrested; UN equates Zionism with racism; Jimmy Hoffa disappears; primal scream therapy; Franco dies.

The topics include: Nixon resigns; gay rights demonstration in NYC; Boston anti-busing demonstrations; sex discrimination; Arctic pipeline; truckers’ strike; streaking; Ford pardons Nixon; Fanne Fox scandal.

The topics include: Watergate grand jury proceedings; Agnew resigns; Wounded Knee; military coup in Chile; U.S. out of Vietnam; Yom Kippur War; gas crisis; the Partridge Family; hang gliding; mass murders; LBJ dies.

The topics include: Nixon wins in landslide; Olympics terror; SALT talks; George Wallace shot; skyjackings; Betty Friedan; Howard Hughes biography hoax; Bobby Fischer and chess as spectator sport; Angela Davis; J. Edgar Hoover dies.

The topics include: Pentagon Papers; Attica prison revolt; Lt. Calley and the My Lai massacre; Bangladesh; unisex hair and clothes; deaths of Khrushchev and Louis Armstrong; DNA; Apollo missions; D.B. Cooper.

The topics include: Kent State killings; Chicago 7 Trial; ERA; Cambodian invasion; mercury pollution; Muhammad Ali; water beds and hot pants; Solzhenitzyn; Bernadette Devlin; tragedy at Chappaquiddick; Sesame Street; civil war in Biafra.

U.S. POWs in Vietnam; John Lennon and Yoko Ono; Stokely Carmichael; Woodstock music festival; Chinese Red Guards; Apollo 11 and first man on the moon; birth control pills; Easy Rider; Vietnam Moratorium; Nixon's world tour.

Worldwide student protests; assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies; Eugene McCarthy's anti-war campaign; LBJ out of race; Tet Offensive; assassination of Robert Kennedy; Nixon elected President.

Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco; three U.S. astronauts die; March on the Pentagon; Six Day War in Mideast; Greek Junta seizes power; LBJ and Kosygin meet; Pan American Games; urban revolt in Detroit; Che Guevara killed in Bolivia.

Mass murderers Richard Speck and the Boston Strangler; Ralph Nader and auto safety; grape boycott in California; Cultural Revolution in China; credit card boom; Beatles banned in the South; George Wallace.

Walks in space; Vietnam War; Timothy Leary and drug culture; assassination of Malcolm X; Salvador Dali and happenings; Watts riot; deaths of Albert Schweitzer and Winston Churchill; Pope Paul VI at UN.

The Beatles invade the U.S.; Khrushchev overthrown; LBJ in the White House; Martin Luther King, Jr. Receives Nobel Prize; Cassius Clay; Marshall McLuhan; China becomes nuclear power; Civil Rights workers killed in Mississippi.