Iconic America

The Golden Gate bridge is an engineering marvel that symbolizes America’s can-do spirit. Can America continue to execute bold and ambitious infrastructure projects in the 21st century?

"We, as Americans, have the power, and the ability, and the talent to create marvels in this world and the ingenuity to do it. So, I think about, what's the Golden Gate Bridge of the future? What new technology or new ways of seeing, or doing, or being can help us advance from one place to the next?"

- Katherine Toy, Deputy Secretary for Access at California Natural Resources Agency.

From its unprecedented length (for a suspension bridge), to enormous geological and financial hurdles, the plan to construct the Golden Gate Bridge was met with scores of naysayers.

Historically, freeway development in the U.S. was often made without adequate consideration of the social and environmental consequences on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities. This has caused systemic inequalities in BIPOC communities and contributed to significant and long-lasting negative impacts including displacement, economic disinvestment and health disparities.

"It's a very scary thing to live in a space that is whispering to you, 'You don't belong. You're not authorized.' There are forces that will roughly remind you of what you can and can't do."

U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith discusses the possible psychological toll on Black people living in the shadow of a Confederate monument like Stone Mountain.

This clip takes a look at The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the pivotal role that they played in memorializing Confederate soldiers. This organization, originally comprising female relatives of Civil War soldiers who fought for The South, was instrumental in propagandizing the war and reframing its origins by coining phrases such as “The War of Northern aggression.”

“In order to believe that the Confederacy and these Confederates were noble, you have to have this myth of victimization of white Southerners that they are the real victims during the Civil War... And any effort to redeem them ought to be considered heroic.”
– History Professor Hasan Jeffries explaining how attempts to reframe the causes of the Civil War gained traction in The South.

“I don’t see the carving being removed… I don’t see pleasing everybody because you’re not going to please everybody. I’d rather be agitating on the inside than be on the outside looking in."

- Rev. Abraham Mosely, Chairman of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, discusses plans for the future that he hopes will alleviate some of the controversy surrounding the Confederate monument.

Gloria Brown tells David Rubenstein about the hope and disappointment she experienced in the immediate aftermath of desegregation.

Should Confederate leaders remain on places like Stone Mountain, or should they be erased? As Confederate statues are torn down across the country and the nation wrestles with its past, David Rubenstein looks at the origin, the impact and the future of Stone Mountain Georgia's problematic monument to the Civil War.

The effect of DDT, a pesticide widely used in the mid-20th century, on the Bald Eagle population in the northeastern United States was devastating. When eagles consumed prey contaminated with DDT, the pesticide accumulated in their bodies over time. As a result, the eagles experienced thinning eggshells, making them more prone to breakage during incubation.

The story of how the American Bald Eagle soared to its vaunted perch in American iconography, a symbol not only of patriotism but also of environmental activism and Native American traditions.