Ken Burns produced another excellent documentary series for PBS with his seven-part biography of the Roosevelt family which helped mold the government of the modern United States in the first half of the 20th century.
The series, "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History", was not without its flaws — the series focused more on the personal lives of Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (as the title implies), rather than the political environment they were operating in. I would have liked to see more on Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting efforts — and perhaps a nod to the Populist movement’s promotion of that issue in the 1890s — and organized labor’s role in helping to elect Franklin D. Roosevelt and support his New Deal, particularly passage of the National Labor Relations Act, which helped labor finally organize industries and provide the foundation for the middle class. The series also gave short shrift to the Four Freedoms (freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear) that FDR articulated in his 1941 as the foundation of our democracy, and the Economic Bill of Rights that FDR proposed in his 1944.
“These were social-democratic initiatives that, as polls showed, an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted to carry out at war’s end, but that were determinedly blocked by conservatives, southern reactionaries, and corporate bosses,” Harvey J. Kaye, professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wrote at TheDailyBeast.com (9/14).
“After nearly 40 years of concerted class war from above against the memory and legacy of the progressive Age of Roosevelt, we sorely need a history that would serve to remind us how, from the ’30s through the ’60s, Americans carried out an historic revolution that created the first-ever Middle Class nation and help us remember that we might do the same,” Kaye said.
