The BEST episodes directed by Stanley Nelson
#1 - We Shall Remain (5): Wounded Knee
American Experience - Season 21 - Episode 9
Rebellious Lakota and allies take up arms in 1973 and force an examination of the failures of the reservation system in the United States.
Watch Now:Amazon#2 - Freedom Summer
American Experience - Season 26 - Episode 9
In the summer of 1964, more than 700 students join with organizers and local blacks to canvas for voter registration, create Freedom Schools and establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
Watch Now:Amazon#3 - The Murder of Emmett Till
American Experience - Season 15 - Episode 6
In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till's death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.
Watch Now:Amazon
#4 - The Black Panthers
Storyville - Season 2016 - Episode 6
The first feature-length documentary to explore the Black Panther party, its culture and political awakening for black people. Master documentarian Stanley Nelson weaves a treasure of rare archival footage with the voices of the people who were there - police, FBI informants, journalists, white supporters and detractors, and Black Panthers who remained loyal to the party and those who left it. An essential history, it is a vibrant chronicle of this pivotal movement that birthed a new revolutionary culture in America. Change was coming to America and the faultlines were no longer ignorable - cities were burning, Vietnam was exploding and disputes raged over equality and civil rights. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would, for a short time, put itself at the vanguard of a revolutionary culture that sought to drastically transform the system. This fascinating documentary tracks its rise and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails.
Watch Now:Amazon
#7 - Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
American Experience - Season 19 - Episode 14
The details behind the beginnings and end of Peoples Temple headed by Jim Jones, including the tragic suicides of many of its members in the jungles of Guyana.
#8 - Freedom Riders
American Experience - Season 23 - Episode 15
The story behind a courageous band of civil rights activists called Freedom Riders who in 1961 challenged segregation in the American South.
#9 - Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre
History Channel Documentaries - Season 2021 - Episode 3
31st May 1921 might not stick out in your mind as a date of historical importance, but that's through no fault of your own. In the most horrific example of racial violence in the history of America, the Tulsa Race Massacre was so heavily covered up and willingly written out of history that even 100 years later there are still questions that remain unanswered. On Monday 30th May 1921, a black teenager got into the only lift in the Drexel Building to visit the restroom on the top floor. The 19-year-old shoeshine, Dick Rowland, entered the lift with the white attendant - 17-year-old Sarah Page. Witnesses heard what they believed to be a woman's scream, and then saw Rowland exit the building with some haste. A witness saw Sarah in a state of distress and, assuming that she had been assaulted by Rowland, called the police. To this day we have no information about what happened in that elevator, but ideas have ranged from Rowland tripping and grabbing Page's arm or accidentally standing on her foot. So how did this brief encounter lead to a massacre?
#10 - Becoming Frederick Douglass
PBS Specials - Season 2022 - Episode 9
Discover how a man born into slavery became one of the most influential voices for democracy in American history. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson explores the role Douglass played in securing the right to freedom for African Americans.
#11 - Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom
PBS Specials - Season 2022 - Episode 8
Go beyond the legend and meet the inspiring woman who repeatedly risked her own life and freedom to liberate others from slavery. Born 200 years ago in Maryland, Harriet Tubman was a conductor of the Underground Railroad, a Civil War scout, nurse and spy, and one of the greatest freedom fighters in our nation’s history.