American Experience: Season 5
Season 5 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 4.
- 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 5 Progress Shield
The Kennedys (1): The Father, 1900-61
Sep 20, 1992 · 55 min
No family has had such a powerful hold on the American imagination. A saga of ambition, wealth, family loyalty and personal tragedy, the Kennedy story is unlike any other. From Jos
The Kennedys (2): The Sons, 1961-80
Sep 21, 1992 · 55 min
No family has had such a powerful hold on the American imagination. A saga of ambition, wealth, family loyalty and personal tragedy, the Kennedy story is unlike any other. From Jos
The Donner Party
Oct 28, 1992 · 55 min
Of all the 19th century pioneer stories, none exerts so powerful a hold on the American imagination as this, during the worst winter ever recorded in the High Sierras. In June, 184
Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II
Nov 4, 1992 · 55 min
An account of Black American soldiers in World War II who combated racism in the segregated military and on the home front. In April 1945, some Black American soldiers were among t
George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn't Be King
Nov 18, 1992 · 55 min
He was bumbling, yet ambitious. He volunteered to serve his country, but insisted on being reimbursed for expenses. He was the most famous general of the Revolution but a dismal ta
Last Stand at Little Big Horn
Nov 25, 1992 · 55 min
In 1876, when the U.S. Army planned its biggest Indian campaign yet against Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, General George Custer led the chase. Custer and his 210 men were surprised
If You Knew Sousa
Jan 11, 1993 · 55 min
John Phillip Sousa became America's favorite bandmaster, but band music wasn't Sousa's only passion. He was the first to bring the classics -- Verdi, Wagner, Puccini -- to a burgeo
Simple Justice
Jan 18, 1993 · 55 min
Thirty years after the Supreme Court's "separate but equal" ruling, lawyer Charles Hamilton took over Howard University's rundown, segregated law school with the idea of training a
Knute Rockne and His Fighting Irish
Feb 8, 1993 · 55 min
When he died in 1931 in a plane crash on his way to Hollywood to sign a film contract, the President called it a "national loss." The funeral was broadcast live on CBS Radio to Eur
Sit Down And Fight
Feb 1, 1993 · 55 min
In 1936, Walter Reuther led one of the bitterest, bloodiest battles ever fought in the history of the American labor movement. By sitting down and stopping the machinery of factory
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
Feb 15, 1993 · 55 min
She had been a biologist for the federal government when she first took note of the effects of the unregulated use of pesticides and herbicides, especially DDT. Magazines refused t
Goin' Back to T-Town
Mar 1, 1993 · 55 min
In Tulsa, the community of Greenwood was a place where blacks had some measure of financial, social and political independence. Burned to the ground in 1921 by angry whites, Greenw
Ishi: The Last Yahi Indian
Dec 2, 1992 · 55 min
When "Ishi," the last surviving member of a small Indian tribe, walked into the small California town of Oroville in 1911, he became a media curiosity and scientific "specimen." Th