WLRN brings you programs that explore more than a century of history and culture.
Makers: Women Who Make America (8:00 PM)
MAKERS: Women Who Make America tells the remarkable story of the most sweeping social revolution in American history, as women have asserted their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy. The second part of the series looks at American women’s increasing participation in war, from Vietnam to the present. We talk to women like Linda Bray, who became the first woman to lead troops into battle in the invasion of Panama, and Valerie Plame Wilson, whose career was sabotaged when she was outed by the Bush administration as a high level spy.
African Americans: A More Perfect Union (9:00 PM)
In part six, the series examines the long road to civil rights, when the deep contradictions in American society finally became unsustainable. By 1968, the Civil Rights movement had achieved stunning victories, in the courts and in the Congress. But would African Americans finally be allowed to achieve genuine racial equality? Host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. looks at the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rise of the Black Panthers and Black Power movement. The decline of cities that African Americans had settled in since the Great Migration, the growth of a black middle class, the vicious beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles and the ascent of Barack Obama from Illinois senator to the presidency of the United States.
