American Experience: Season 21
Season 21 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 20.
- 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 21 Progress Shield
The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Jan 26, 2009 · 55 min
A brilliant scientist, Oppenheimer was tasked with the development of the atomic bomb in the top-secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico during World War II.
The Polio Crusade
Feb 2, 2009 · 55 min
The story of the polio crusade pays tribute to a time when Americans banded together to conquer a terrible disease. The medical breakthrough saved countless lives and had a pervasi
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Feb 9, 2009 · 55 min
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Over the next twelve days, as a fractured nation mourned, the largest manhunt ever attempt
A Class Apart
Feb 23, 2009 · 55 min
From a small-town Texas murder emerged a landmark civil rights case. The little-known story of the Mexican American lawyers who took Hernandez v. Texas to the Supreme Court, challe
We Shall Remain (1): After the Mayflower
Apr 13, 2009 · 55 min
In March of 1621, in what is now southeastern Massachusetts, Massasoit, the leading sachem of the Wampanoag, sat down to negotiate with a ragged group of English colonists. Hungry,
We Shall Remain (2): Tecumseh's Vision
Apr 20, 2009 · 55 min
In the spring of 1805, Tenskwatawa (actor Billy Merasty, Cree First Nation), a Shawnee, fell into a trance so deep that those around him believed he had died. When he finally stirr
We Shall Remain (3): Trail of Tears
Apr 27, 2009 · 55 min
The Cherokee would call it Nu-No-Du-Na-Tlo-Hi-Lu, “The Trail Where They Cried.” On May 26, 1838, federal troops forced thousands of Cherokee from their homes in the Southeastern Un
We Shall Remain (4): Geronimo
May 4, 2009 · 55 min
In February of 1909, the indomitable Chiricahua Apache medicine man Geronimo lay on his deathbed. He summoned his nephew to his side, whispering, “I should never have surrendered.
We Shall Remain (5): Wounded Knee
May 11, 2009 · 55 min
On the night of February 27, 1973, fifty-four cars rolled, horns blaring, into a small hamlet on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Within hours, some 200 Oglala Lakota and America