Episode
American Experience: Hard Hat Riot
Overview
Hard Hat Riot tells the story of a struggling metropolis, a flailing president, a divided people, and a bloody juncture when the nation violently diverged ― culminating in a new political and cultural landscape that radically redefined American politics and foreshadowed the future.
Details
- Series
- American Experience
- Season
- Season 37
- Episode
- Episode 5
- Air date
- 2025-09-30
- Runtime
- 81 min
Episode context
Hard Hat Riot is Episode 5 in Season 37 of American Experience. It aired on 2025-09-30. The runtime is 81 min.
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Episode 4: Clearing the Air: The War on Smog
A chronicle of how Los Angeles' devastating smog problem in the 1940s and 50s led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Clean Air Act.
Episode 6: Kissinger (1): The Necessity of Power
The story of Henry Kissinger, the enigmatic powerbroker who served in the topmost echelons of U.S. diplomacy. Celebrated or reviled, his contradictions reflect those central to late 20th century U.S. foreign policy. With interviews from proteges and colleagues, Kissinger endeavors to understand his relentless drive for power, and how his policies shaped today’s world.
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Episode 1: Forgotten Hero: Walter White and The NAACP
While many consider the birth of the civil rights movement to be 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus, the stage had been set decades before by activists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some of the NAACP leaders are familiar, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall, but Walter White, head of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, has been all but forgotten. With his blond hair and blue eyes, Walter White looked white; he described himself as “an enigma, a Black man occupying a white body.” Like virtually all light-skinned African Americans of his day, White was descended from enslaved Black women and powerful white men. But he was Black — by law, identity, and conviction and spent his entire life fighting for Black civil rights. Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP traces the life of this neglected civil rights hero and seeks to explain his disappearance from our history.