The BEST episodes of American Experience season 15
Every episode of American Experience season 15, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of American Experience season 15!
Presents an absorbing look at the personalities, events and resources that have had a profound impact on the shaping of America's past and present.
#1 - Jimmy Carter (1): Jimmy Who?
Season 15 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/11/2002
The story of the Georgia governor who won the presidency and the numerous challenges that plagued his administration.
#2 - Jimmy Carter (2): Hostage
Season 15 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/12/2002
This episode primarily focuses on the defining crisis of Carter's presidency: the Iran Hostage Crisis. It explores how this event, combined with domestic economic issues, derailed his re-election bid, while also touching upon his significant post-presidency humanitarian work.
#3 - Partners of the Heart
Season 15 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/10/2003
A tale of the partnership between a white doctor and a young African-American in pioneering cardiac surgical procedures during the World War II era.
#4 - Seabiscuit
Season 15 - Episode 11 - Aired 4/21/2003
He was boxy, with stumpy legs that wouldn't completely straighten, a short straggly tail and an ungainly gait, but though he didn't look the part, Seabiscuit was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history. In the 1930s, when Americans longed to escape the grim realities of Depression-era life, four men turned Seabiscuit into a national hero. They were his fabulously wealthy owner Charles Howard, his famously silent and stubborn trainer Tom Smith, and the two hard-bitten, gifted jockeys who rode him to glory. By following the paths that brought these four together and in telling the story of Seabiscuit's unlikely career, this film illuminates the precarious economic conditions that defined America in the 1930s and explores the fascinating behind-the-scenes world of thoroughbred racing.
#5 - Bataan Rescue
Season 15 - Episode 12 - Aired 7/7/2003
The daring rescue by US Army Rangers of American POWs captured on Bataan as World War II came to a close.
#6 - Chicago: City of the Century (2): The Revolution Has Begun
Season 15 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/14/2003
This is the second episode in a three-part documentary about Chicago's history and focuses on the intense tensions between labor and capital that marked the city in the late 1870s and 1880s.
#7 - Chicago: City of the Century (3): Battle for Chicago
Season 15 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/15/2003
This is the final episode in the three-part series, concluding the story of 19th-century Chicago by exploring the city's Progressive Era reforms, class conflicts, and the 1893 World's Fair.
#8 - The Murder of Emmett Till
Season 15 - Episode 6 - Aired 1/20/2003
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.
#9 - Murder at Harvard
Season 15 - Episode 13 - Aired 7/14/2003
A modern re-creation of the possible events behind the sensational murder of Dr. George Parkman in 1849 Boston.
#10 - Chicago: City of the Century (1): Mudhole to Metropolis
Season 15 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/13/2003
The first episode of a three-part documentary about Chicago's history, and chronicles the city's explosive growth in the 19th century from a remote, swampy outpost into a major American metropolis.
#11 - Transcontinental Railroad
Season 15 - Episode 7 - Aired 1/27/2003
The combination of ambition, money, and power that led to the completion of the famous railway that spanned America's west.
#12 - The Pill
Season 15 - Episode 9 - Aired 2/24/2003
The discoveries that led to the birth control pill and its subsequent impact on American women.
#13 - Daughter from Danang
Season 15 - Episode 10 - Aired 4/7/2003
The story of the daughter of a Vietnamese woman and an American naval officer as she grows up in the United States.