The Future of America's Past

At Virginia’s Fort Monroe, Ed explores a remarkable place: the spot where slavery began in British North America, and the site where it began to unravel during the Civil War. From one of the newest National Park Service sites to a historically-minded brewery and more, Ed learns from a diverse cast of people engaging visitors with defining moments in our national past.

On March 25, 1911, New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burst into flames, and 146 workers — nearly all young women, many of them teenage immigrants — perished. Ed visits the building and learns how public outcry inspired workplace safety laws that revolutionized industrial work nationwide. Descendants and activists show him how that work reverberates today.

Texas has long been a place of contentious borders and cross-cultural exchange. Six national flags have flown over Texas since the 1500s, starting with European contests for the land that followed 10,000 years of Native American history there. From Spanish missions, to a French shipwreck, to a former sugarcane plantation, Ed visits to ask: How did Texas become Texas?

Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. military and the FBI arrested more than 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry. Taken to desert camps and confined for months or years, many of these Americans lost their homes and businesses. Ed visits the largest of these camps, now a National Park Service site — and meet those keeping memory alive.