Episode List: American Playhouse (1980-1994)

Flag Purdy, a "man of many principles" must learn the hard lesson of compromisation in order to keep his wife and children. The "final straw" comes when Flag's wife and children bring a Christmas tree into his house. Flag's principles will not allow such extravagances, and he destroys the tree. The next morning Flag's wife, Ada, and the children are gone...

This is based on a true story. Solomon Northrop is a black man in the mid 19th century before slavery was abolished. He's a born freeman who works as a carpenter and is also a part time musician. One day he is approached by some men who want him to play for them. However, that is not their intention; they have kidnapped him and sold him into slavery. Now he has to endure the hardships that he has been spared because of his status as a freeman.

James Baldwin's literary gem is adapted for the screen in this spellbinding film about three generations of an African-American family struggling to find footing in America, a place that's both a land of opportunity and difficulty. Tracing the lineage's move from the South to the heart of Harlem, the film tells the story of a boy yearning for the love of a distant stepfather. Stars Paul Winfield, Alfre Woodard, Ruby Dee and Ving Rhames. (Netflix)

On a hot day in Texas in the the 1890s, a stranger shows up at the small dairy farm of Royal and Ellie Thompson. He asks for work and is hired. He's a taciturn, English-speaking Swede from North Dakota; he's competent, strong, and good at farming and dairying. The years pass, the farm flourishes. Then one day a second stranger, also from North Dakota, Homer Hatch, arrives and lives are changed in ways no-one could have imagined.

Drama based on the true story of Charlotte Forten, a young black woman who became an integral part of President Lincoln's "great experiment." During the Civil War, Southern troops were forced off the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia, which left 8,000 slaves as free. Miss Forten's mission was to journey south to Sea Island and lead those slaves in the transition from slavery to freedom, where she sought to give newly freed black children a decent education and chance for a better life

In 1915 Chicago, 21-year-old Myra Harper sets her sights on the wealthy and reserved Knowleton Whitney to get him to marry her. All goes well, but later when Myra gets to meet his wacky parents, it turns out to be much harder for Myra than simply landing the man of her dreams.

In post-war Germany, a young black war-orphan discovers the only other black he has ever seen, an American soldier, and dubs him "papa."