American Experience: Season 20
Season 20 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of American Experience Season 19.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 20 Progress Shield
Oswald's Ghost
Jan 14, 2008 · 55 min
Few Americans then or now accept that a lone, inconsequential gunman could bring down a president and alter history. In that breach, a culture of conspiracy has arisen that points
The Lobotomist
Jan 21, 2008 · 55 min
In the 1940s Dr. Walter Freeman gained fame for perfecting the lobotomy, then hailed as a miracle cure for the severely mentally ill. But within a few years, lobotomy was labeled o
Eyes on the Prize (7 & 8): The Time Has Come/Two Societies
Feb 3, 2008 · 55 min
After a decade-long cry for justice, a new sound is heard in the civil rights movement: the insistent call for power. Malcolm X takes an eloquent nationalism to urban streets as a
Grand Central
Feb 4, 2008 · 55 min
A marvel of engineering, architecture, and vision, the story of the Beaux Arts structure on 42nd Street that forever changed midtown Manhattan.
Eyes on the Prize (9 & 10): Power!/The Promised Land
Feb 10, 2008 · 55 min
The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins election as the first black mayor of a major American city. The Bla
Eyes on the Prize (11 & 12): Ain't Gonna' Shuffle No More/A Nation of Law?
Feb 17, 2008 · 55 min
A call to pride and a renewed push for unity galvanize black America. World heavyweight champion Cassius Clay challenges America to accept him as Muhammad Ali, a minister of Islam
Eyes on the Prize (13 & 14): The Keys to the Kingdom/Back to the Movement
Feb 24, 2008 · 55 min
In the 1970s, antidiscrimination legal rights gained in past decades by the civil rights movement are put to the test. In Boston, some whites violently resist a federal court schoo
Kit Carson
Feb 18, 2008 · 55 min
An illiterate mountain man, Kit Carson was fluent in Spanish and five Indian languages; he twice married Native American women, yet led a brutal war against the Navajo. When the We
Buffalo Bill
Feb 25, 2008 · 55 min
In 1886, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show played to over one million people in New York City. It was one of the most elaborate shows on earth. There were cowboys and Indians, sharp sh
Minik: The Lost Eskimo
Mar 31, 2009 · 55 min
In 1897, renowned Arctic explorer Robert Peary returned to New York from his latest Greenland expedition. At the request of anthropologist Franz Boas, he brought with him five pola
Walt Whitman
Apr 14, 2008 · 55 min
This American Experience tells Whitman's life story, from his working class childhood in Long Island, to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn when he struggled to support
Roberto Clemente
Apr 21, 2008 · 55 min
Roberto Clemente is an in-depth look at an exceptional baseball player and committed humanitarian who challenged racial discrimination to become baseball’s first Latino superstar.
George H.W. Bush (1)
May 5, 2008 · 55 min
When George. H.W. Bush left the Oval Office in 1992, rejected after one tumultuous presidential term, his 30-year career in public service came to an abrupt and unexpected end. Des
George H.W. Bush (2)
May 6, 2008 · 55 min
George H.W. Bush presents the first in-depth assessment of the 41st president of the United States, drawing upon unparalleled access to figures in Bush's private and public life, t