American Experience: The Pilgrims

Filmmaker Ric Burns explores the converging forces, circumstances, personalities and events that propelled a group of English men and women west across the Atlantic in 1620. Stripping away myth and bringing them to life, The Pilgrims reveals individuals far different from those imagined in our national memory. With distinct and often riveting personal histories, passionate religious beliefs, and the will to survive - even through violent means - this Pilgrims narrative reveals the real history of our nation's beginnings. The challenges they faced in making new lives for themselves still resonate almost 400 years later: the tensions of faith and freedom in American society, the separation of Church and State, and cultural encounters resulting from immigration.