UNC-TV Joins the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE The 1930s
Explores Politics, Culture & America’s Response to an Economic Depression

American Experience returns to The 1930s through programs probing that tumultuous decade’s unprecedented economic crisis, high unemployment and environmental catastrophe. The 1930s explores themes that seem straight from today's headlines as history hits home with pertinent parallels into private investing, government oversight, balances between environmental conservation and economic expansion and hopes hinged on heroes. The series examines:

• FDR's New Deal experiments on the all-new episode Civilian Conservation Corps
• A spectacular and transformative engineering project in Hoover Dam
• The impact of the plains’ catastrophic drought in Surviving the Dust Bowl
• How an unlikely hero gave downtrodden Americans hope in Seabiscuit

Click here to visit the official American Experience The 1930s website.

In a special partnership, UNC-TV and the North Carolina Museum of History presented the enlightening exhibit “In Search of a New Deal; Images of North Carolina 1935-1941.” Additionally, viewers could see local perspectives on the ‘30s from UNC-TV's flagship public affairs series, North Carolina Now, including the following:

Black Mountain College
Christine Rogers brings us the history of Black Mountain College in Western North Carolina. It was an institution created in 1933 that planned no curriculum, yet students developed into world-class painters, dancers and designers.

Interview: Dr. William Leuchtenburg
Professor of History Emeritus, UNC Chapel Hill & Presidential Historian
Mitchell Lewis talks with Dr. Leuchtenburg about his latest book, "Herbert Hoover: 1929-1933."

1930's Exhibit
Derek Long takes a look at a pictorial exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History called "In Search of a New Deal: Images of North Carolina, 1935-1941."

Return of a Mill House
David Hains and Michael McGinnis brings us a tour of a mill house in the Gaston County town of Belmont that has been renovated to preserve the history of North Carolina's textile industry.