The BEST episodes of American Experience season 15

#1 - 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.

#2 - Chicago: City of the Century (2): The Revolution Has Begun

Season 15 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/14/2003

#3 - Chicago: City of the Century (3): Battle for Chicago

Season 15 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/15/2003

#4 - 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.

#5 - 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.

#6 - Chicago: City of the Century (1): Mudhole to Metropolis

Season 15 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/13/2003

#7 - 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.

#8 - Jimmy Carter (2): Hostage

Season 15 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/12/2002

#9 - 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.

#10 - 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.

#11 - 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.

#12 - 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.

#13 - 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.