Sequoyah was devoted to enabling the Cherokee people to have the power that comes with a written language, a power held by the white man. Though he couldn't read or write in another language, Sequoyah invented an efficient language for the Cherokee.

White Americans offered Native Americans equality -- if they became more like them. Missionary organizations went into the Indian nations to teach Indians how to be anglo-Americans.

In the 1940s Dr. Walter Freeman gained fame for perfecting the lobotomy, then hailed as a miracle cure for the severely mentally ill. But within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barbaric mistakes of modern medicine.

This 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Hernandez v. Texas, was a major civil rights achievement, giving Mexican-Americans equal protection under U.S. law.

The 1954 Supreme Court had little awareness of what life was like for Mexican-Americans.

In the 1950s, Mexican-Americans took to the courts to get equality under the law, including the right to be tried by a jury of their peers.

In 1953, The lawyers in Hernandez v. Texas argued for their client as well as for themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans fought in the US military in World War II. They suffered casualties and received honors disproportionate to their numbers, but came home to the same segregated country they had left.

Racist attitudes against Mexican-Americans intensified in the 20th Century. Of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry, Mexican-Americans did not fit into iron-clad racial categories: black or white.

How and why did many Mexicans become US citizens in 1848?

In the 1950s life could be difficult for Latinos in the United States.

Watch a preview of The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Learn more about the filming of The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Before getting on the bus, Freedom Riders participated in CORE training sessions, which included a demonstration of nonviolence in volatile situations. Rev. James Lawson and Julian Bond discuss how nonviolence courted to violence in order to attract publicity for the cause.

Diane Nash and Charles Person discuss the difficulties for black people traveling in the segregated South.

Rioters turn violent against the Freedom Riders despite the presence of the media. The resulting photographs were "about as dramatic as anything I think anyone had ever seen coming out of the Civil Rights struggle," says Ray Arsenault. "The notion that just for the attempt to sit on the front of a bus, that you could risk your life, that people could try to burn you to death was incredible."

In a news report from Herb Kaplow, the reporter recounts his experience when covering a Freedom Ride. "The mob came out and went straight to the reporters, and started beating them and kicking them and throwing their cameras down, smashing them on the ground." After the reporters were forced away, the mob turned on the Freedom Riders.

Foreign newsreels contemplate the inequality between races in the United States.

Rabbi Dresser and Delore Boyd comment on the power of nonviolent methods. Boyd points out that the tenacity of white participants opened her eyes to the fact that white people were not all the same.

In his bid for the presidency, JFK had to tread carefully around the heart of the Democratic Party - the white voting south. John Patterson, Governor of Alabama from 1959 to 1963, speaks about his endorsement of Kennedy for president.