Season 6
24 episodes · Dec 14, 1987
Season Videos
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- S6E1
Apartheid Part I: 1652-1948
Dec 14, 1987Many white South Africans claim that the entire country is theirs by right. No black man, they say, occupied South Africa before the first tiny Dutch settlement in 1652. Part 1 refutes this claim and traces the country’s colonial history, the emergence early in the 20th century of the African National Congress, the rise to power of Afrikaner nationalists, and the formal policy of apartheid.
- S6E2
Apartheid Part 2: 1948-1963
Dec 14, 1987Part 2 details the new policy which included classifying all South Africans by race, removing blacks from cities where many had lived for generations, and establishing separate and unequal schooling for blacks. Frontline focuses on the increasing black resistance in the 1950s and the rise of resistance leader Nelson Mandela.
- S6E3
Apartheid Part 3: 1963-1977
Dec 15, 1987Independent homelands' for blacks was the centerpiece of Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd's vision of apartheid. Part 3 focuses on how the white government found African leaders to collaborate with them in a plan to make foreigners of black South African citizens by deporting them to independent homelands in rural areas of the country. The program looks at the increased resistance to the homeland policy as seen through the first nationwide attack by young black South Africans in the Soweto ghetto in 1976.
- S6E4
Apartheid Part 4: 1978-1986
Dec 15, 1987When PW Botha became prime minister of South Africa two years after the Soweto uprising in 1976, he realized that apartheid must ‘adapt or die.’ Part 4 explores the reforms undertaken by Botha to maintain white supremacy, changes that have deeply divided Afrikaners and have provoked explosive reactions from many blacks.
- S6E5
Apartheid Part 5: 1987
Dec 16, 1987Part 5 looks at an unprecedented meeting in the struggle for South Africa’s future. Two years before the release of Nelson Mandela, dissident white Afrikaners met with black leaders from the outlawed African National Congress in Dakar, Senagal, to discuss strategies for change in South Africa, presaging the reforms that would come later.
- S6E6
Praise the Lord
Jan 26, 1988Frontline traces the rise and fall of television evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker and investigates why government agencies failed to vigorously investigate charges of corruption in the Bakker empire.
- S6E7
Operation Urgent Fury
Feb 2, 1988Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh investigates one of Ronald Reagan’s greatest truimphs-the rescue of American students during the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Hersh’s reporting reveals an inept US military operation and questions whether the students needed rescuing at all.
- S6E8
The Man Who Shot John Lennon
Feb 9, 1988Frontline goes inside the mind of Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980. Newly acquired records paint the chilling portrait of a celebrity stalker who meticulously planned the murder, believing it would make him famous.
- S6E9
Your Flight is Cancelled
Feb 16, 1988Since deregulation, America's airline industry has become a nightmare of delays, cancellations, and near misses. This film probes the air traffic dilemma inside America's busiest airport -- in the control tower and behind the ticket counter.
- S6E10
Shakedown in Santa Fe
Feb 23, 1988Eight years after one of the most violent prison uprisings in US history, Frontline returns to the penitentiary in New Mexico to probe the contininuing struggle between the inmates and the guards, the wardens and the reformers, for control of one of our most dangerous prisons.
- S6E11
Let My Daughter Die
Mar 1, 1988Joe and Joyce Cruzan want doctors to remove their severely brain damaged daughter from the life-support system that keeps her alive. Nearly two years before it became the US Supreme Court’s first right-to-die case, Frontline explored the complex legal and moral issues of this Missouri couple’s battle to allow their daughter to die.
- S6E12
Back in the USSR
Mar 29, 1988In 1968, American journalist Jerry Schecter, accompanied by his wife and five young children, moved to Moscow on assignment for Time magazine. In 1987, Frontline returned with the Schecter family to the Soviet Union as they renewed old friendships and explored Russia under glasnost.
- S6E13
Poison and the Pentagon
Apr 5, 1988The military is America’s largest producer of toxic waste. Frontline reporter Joe Rosenbloom investigates the Pentagon’s poor record of cleaning up its pollution that contaminates the ground water in communities across the country.
- S6E14
To a Safer Place
Apr 12, 1988When Shirley Turcotte was a child, she was sexually abused by her father. After years of therapy she takes a remarkable journey back into her past-confronting her mother and other adults who failed to protect her, reuniting with her brothers and sister who were also brutally abused, and trying to make peace with the horror story that was her childhood.
- S6E15
Murder on the Rio San Juan
Apr 19, 1988Frontline investigates the unsolved 1984 terrorist bombing at a press conference held by contra leader Eden Pastora. Eight people, including an American reporter, died that night on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. This report dissects the motives of possible conspirators and follows the trail of the man suspected of planting the bomb.
- S6E16
American Game, Japanese Rules
Apr 26, 1988Can America succeed in Japan? Frontline paints an intimate portrait of Americans living and working in Japan-baseball players, businessmen, and an American bride-all confronting a society that looks Western, but operates by a very different set of rules.
- S6E17
Racism 101
May 10, 1988Frontline explores the disturbing increase in racial incidents and violence on America’s college campuses. The attitudes of black and white students reveal increasing tensions at some of the country’s best universities where years after the civil rights struggle, full integration is still only a dream.
- S6E18
Guns, Drugs, and the CIA
May 17, 1988An accountant for the Medellin drug cartel explains how he was asked by the CIA to provide funding to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.
- S6E20
The Choice
Oct 24, 1988Frontline examines in-depth the background, character, qualifications, and beliefs of the Republican and Democratic candidates, George Bush and Michael Dukakis.