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American Experience
Lincoln Announces Freedom
On September 22nd, 1862, Lincoln promised to sign an Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day. "All persons," Lincoln wrote, "held as slaves within any State in rebellion shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." But abolitionists were unsure whether he would keep his promise.
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Part Two examines the mounting dispute over strategies and reveals the pervasive racism.

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The Gilded Age: Full Film

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The Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement.

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The 1968 My Lai massacre and its subsequent cover-up.

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In the 1950's a Polio outbreak swept the U.S., devastating communities nationwide.

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The man behind the atomic bomb is put on trial for suspected communist ties in 1954.

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The final months of WWII from the vantage points of both the Japanese and the Americans.