On June 11, 1963 President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation on Civil Rights.  That spring, civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama had been met with violence by police.  And on June 10th, the federal government ordered the Alabama National Guard to protect two African American students attempting to enroll at the University of Alabama.  In his Oval Office address, President Kennedy called on Americans to address a "moral crisis" "and to support congressional action against segregation and discrimination."

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Last June, as the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in approached, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library released interviews with key staff charged with investigating whether there were grounds to impeach President Nixon. These interviews were conducted by the former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Timothy Naftali. We hear from Jeffrey Banchero, who was a research assistant for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee during their impeachment inquiry. Mr. Banchero talks about transcribing tapes of the president’s private conversations, working with special counsel John Doar, and the reactions of congressmen as they listened to the secret tapes. Mr. Doar admonished his staff not to talk about the proceedings – a warning they heeded for four decades.

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In this program from our 1999 "American Presidents: Life Portraits" series we focused on Benjamin Harrison's life and career. Historians discussed his two marriages, his military service, his election, and the importance of Indiana in late nineteenth century politics. Executive Director of Harrison's home in Indianapolis, Phyllis Geeslin, talked about the estate and the collections in it. 

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C-SPAN’s Local Content Vehicles take American History TV on the road. Throughout the weekend of June 1-3 we feature the history of Palm Springs, California.

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Author Patricia Sullivan talks about Robert Kennedy and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. She chronicles his early encounters with racism and the evolution of his politics and principles.  Robert Kennedy served as U.S. Attorney General during his brother’s administration, and in the U.S. Senate from 1965 to 1968, when he was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. This event took place at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

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Jeffrey Engel – director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas – discusses President George H.W. Bush’s motivations behind his enthusiastic push for German reunification in 1990.  Southern Methodist University hosted this event.

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In the third of a three-part series, American History TV visits San Francisco and follows historian Charlie Chin as he takes a group of college student on a walking tour of Chinatown. He describes the 1906 earthquake, the development of businesses in Chinatown, and how the area is still an entry point for new immigrants from China.

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Goucher College professor Jean Baker teaches a class on the Civil Right Movement, from Rosa Parks refusal to move to the back of the bus in 1955, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. The class also engages in a discussion on a book of oral histories by journalist Howell Raines titled, “My Soul is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South.” Goucher College is in Baltimore, Maryland. This class is an hour and 15 minutes. 

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Wilborn Hampton was a recent college graduate and the youngest UPI reporter in the Dallas bureau at the time of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Mr. Hampton describes his experience as a young journalist fifty years ago in a conversation with Stephen Fagin, a curator at the 6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. It’s part of the museum’s “Living History” series on the Kennedy assassination.

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Author Harold Holzer examines Civil War artifacts featured in his book, "The Civil War in 50 Objects,” drawn from the New-York Historical Society’s collection. He’s joined by Columbia University history professor Eric Foner -- who wrote the introduction for the book -- in a discussion on the collection’s history and themes. Objects include Confederate flags, Grant’s handwritten terms of surrender at Appomattox, and framed leaves from Abraham Lincoln's funeral bier. The New-York Historical Society hosted this event. It’s just under an hour.  

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