Iowa Public Television

Freedom Summer volunteers set up temporary, free schools for black children and other community members in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. The ages of attendees in the schools ranged from young children to older adults. The schools taught academic skills as well as voter literacy, confidence, political organization, and other topics the students might not encounter in traditional school settings. In this video segment from Iowans Return to Freedom Summer, Marvin Gatch, Marcia Moore, Patti Miller, Lenray Gandy, and Richard Beymer describe their experiences with Freedom Schools in rural Mississippi during the summer of 1964.

A news correspondent tells the story of how an illness may have kept him alive in Vietnam. He was scheduled to accompany soldiers on a combat mission and his illness kept him from going on the deadly trip. This segment from Iowa Public Television's Iowans Remember Vietnam documentary includes archival footage and and a first-person account of experiences during the war. 

In January 1968, communist forces launched the largest offensive of the Vietnam War. Starting on the Vietnamese New Year known as Tet, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces attacked more than 100 South Vietnamese cities, catching South Vietnamese and United States forces totally by surprise. Although the Tet Offensive was considered a military failure for the communists, the scope of the conflict led the United States military, public and political leaders to rethink continued support for the war. This segment from Iowa Public Television's Iowans Remember Vietnam includes archival footage and interviews with Iowa veteran Paul Dwyer. Dwyer describes his role as a radio operator during the war, and explains his experiences during the Tet Offensive.

Following the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, a group of Iowa Democratic party operatives moved to restructure the process of selecting local delegates for the national convention. They chose to start this new delegate selection process early in 1972, making Iowa the first-in-the-nation. This segment from Iowa Public Television’s Caucus Iowa: Journey to the Presidency documentary includes archival footage and contemporary interviews with politicians, campaign staff and journalists of the era.