Original subtitles

[narrator] Abandoned structures hold the secrets of America's past.

A besieged medical facility, where heroes fought back.

[Peter Deblieux] We had people breaking into cars and buildings, gunfire.

We had little inkling that it would turn into the disaster

that changed lives forever.

[narrator] A secretive religious community with a desire to entertain.

[Debbie Boyersmith] They didn't take any new converts,

so as people died off, the membership

gradually became smaller and smaller and smaller.

That was it was supposed to be.

[narrator] And an imposing ghost town,

which became an unlikely refuge.

[Emily Budd] These rural places, we don't really associate them

as having a clear history, but they really do.

They're just hidden or too taboo to discuss.

[narrator] Scattered across the United States are abandoned structures.

Forgotten ruins of the past.

Monuments to a bygone era.

Each shines a light on the story of this land and its people.

These are the secrets of hidden America.

In The Big Easy, a building famed for healing

saw incredible feats of bravery

during one of America's darkest hours.

[Deblieux] Coming back to this building is one part nostalgia,

one part mourning,

and a little bit of part PTSD.

To deliver care in an environment

that was dangerous and under supported,

yeah, that's heroic.

[narrator] In downtown New Orleans,

an Art Deco monolith casts a ghostly shadow.

This building is huge.

It's gotta be twenty stories high.

But the windows are dark and it looks lifeless.

[Dr. Greg Szulgit] When I look at the inside of this building,

the first thing I think is just zombie apocalypse.

It's clearly an institutional building,

and there are creepy, sort of, hints of medical stuff.

[Dr. Corina Kwami] One of the rooms appears to be an autopsy room.

It's a very Dr. Frankenstein vibe.

[narrator] Once, this represented a maverick's dream.

[Michael Fitts] The motto of this building was

"Where the unusual occurs and miracles happen."

[narrator] But when New Orleans found itself under siege,

it became a living nightmare.

I think that there is a fallacy that we all live under,

and that at a time of disaster,

the government is there to rescue us,

and that's just not the case.

[narrator] Located just three blocks away from the Superdome,

this is where Peter Deblieux trained.

[Deblieux] I know these corridors well.

It's where I spent twenty years of my career.

It's nostalgic and sad all rolled into one.

Tremendously fond memories here.

Friendships, patients.

[narrator] This building is part of a long tradition.

One that began just two decades

after this city was founded in 1718.

That time, New Orleans was just sparsely populated,

and it was a place full of malaria, infectious diseases,

and they were in desperate need of healthcare.

A wealthy ship builder answers the people's calls,

and he gives New Orleans the money it needs to build a hospital

that would offer free care to people who needed it.

[narrator] Over the following centuries,

socialist healthcare became ingrained

in the Big Easy's identity.

But during the Great Depression,

with money in short supply,

city officials looked to turn their back on this practice.

[Dr. Szulgit] Huey Long was the governor at the time,

and he was absolutely outraged by the idea

that people were gonna start paying for healthcare,

so he marched into a meeting,

supposedly grabbed the microphone,

and just said, "We're gonna make this happen."

[narrator] A tax raise funded a new million square foot

state-of-the-art socialist medical facility.

This is Charity Hospital.

[McRobbie] This hospital was the jewel of New Orleans.

It became so beloved by the local population

that it was given the nickname Big Charity.

[narrator] Yet, soon it became renowned

for far more than just free healthcare.

It was famously known as a place for superb training.

[Dr. Szulgit] The building had viewing galleries,

where operations would be watched by students.

It was important in training people

not just from around the entire United States, but from around the world.

[narrator] But no amount of training could prepare the staff

for what would happen on August 29th, 2005.

New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina.

This was a Category 5 hurricane.

An apocalyptic storm that wreaked havoc across the South.

Winds as high as 175 miles per hour.

[Deblieux] When Katrina struck,

its loud noises outside because of the wind,

the windows of my own office on the 13th floor crashed in.

It was nuts.

[narrator] The hurricane dumps over two trillion gallons of rain on Louisiana alone.

And 36 hours in,

an event four miles north of Big Charity

would bring the hospital to its knees.

[Dr. Szulgit] The levees broke,

and the water just cascaded down over the city.

80% was under water.

[narrator] In a matter of hours,

downtown New Orleans was flooded by over ten feet of water.

Charity Hospital was plunged into darkness.

[Dr. Kwami] All the major generators

for the hospital were in the basement, which were rendered useless.

There were some back-up generators that they had

for only critical life-saving purposes,

but anything else was just not available.

[narrator] The rising water would threaten more than just the power.

[Deblieux] Halfway down these steps right here was water.

And that's what caused us to have concern,

because we thought it was gonna make its way to this first floor,

where the emergency department existed.

So it was concerning. That's why we had to move the patients.

If you can imagine carrying patients, stretchers up the stairwell.

You know, the manpower required to do that,

to move patients up into a safer place.

[narrator] WIth large windows to maximize natural light,

a temporary emergency room was set up

in the second-floor auditorium.

[Deblieux] This is where it all went down.

Within a matter of four hours,

we quickly moved forty plus patients

and all the equipment to provide care for them up here.

Some of the things that we did in this room

were just nothing short of miraculous.

[narrator] After three days of working in cramped and crude conditions,

the staff and patients thought their ordeal might be over,

when helicopters were seen evacuating people

from nearby Tulane Hospital.

[Deblieux] We were able to solicit military half-track

to bring our sickest ICU patients

literally across the street, through four feet of water, to the helicopters.

[McRobbie] When they got there,

these critically ill patients weren't evacuated quickly.

Tulane pretty much had a list of who they needed to evacuate,

and they stuck to it.

Sadly, we lost patients on that roof.

[narrator] For the doctors and surviving patients still on the roof,

the hope of escape quickly degenerated into a nightmare.

[Dr. Szulgit] And at that point, the people looking after them

hear gunshots all around, and they just say,

"This is not gonna work."

And they actually take the people back to Charity.

[narrator] Seventy-two hours after Hurricane Katrina had decimated New Orleans

and caused catastrophic flooding,

the staff and patients of Charity Hospital

were stranded inside the building.

[Deblieux] We would hear spotty radio reports

that our hospital had been evacuated.

Can you imagine just how dispiriting it was

that someone out there thinks that you've been rescued.

So now there's no one coming for you.

The staff actually writes on sheets,

puts banners out the window saying "We're still here.

And the spirit of Charity lives on."

[Deblieux] It was a distressing time.

You have folks who had been in it

72 plus hours into 96, who had had it.

You were without a shower, toilets, adequate food.

And then you throw on top of that somebody who is sleep deprived,

hot, sweaty, distressed,

it's a tough ask. A real tough ask.

[narrator] Despite the desperation,

no one could predict what would happen next.

[Deblieux] One of our emergency department nurses was contacted by her father,

and said, "I'm gonna get a boat and I'm gonna come get you."

Motored his boat to the hospital door and said, "I came to pick up my baby."

And she says, you know, "Daddy, I love you,

and I would love to go with you,

but my duty is to these patients.

I, I can't leave."

[McRobbie] The father doesn't take no for an answer.

He thought, "If my daughter won't leave her patients,

I guess I'll just have to rescue them as well."

[narrator] On September 2nd,

over 100 hours after Katrina first struck,

something entirely unexpected began.

Rounded up by the nurse's father,

a motley fleet of volunteers started a nine-hour evacuation of Charity Hospital.

[Deblieux] I'm not proud of how long it took to evacuate people,

but it would not have happened without the volunteers.

It was an impossibility.

When I locked the doors and walked down this ramp

and closed the doors for this hospital,

I had no earthly idea that that would be the last time

those doors would be open for patient care at this site.

[narrator] For two decades, Big Charity has stood silent.

But now, another of New Orleans' institutions is bringing it back to life.

So, I'm President of Tulane University,

and we are a huge developer

in the revitalization and redevelopment of the Charity Hospital.

[narrator] Parts of the structure will be turned into

commercial spaces and condos.

But nearly half of it will stick to the building's tradition.

[Fitts] What we're doing is gonna make this the flagship space

for our school of public health.

We talk about the digital revolution in Silicon Valley.

We view this as the biomedical revolution,

and it will be right here.

[narrator] For a city still struggling with the aftermath of Katrina,

there is hope that the spirit of Big Charity will live on.

[Deblieux] Charity hospital is bigger than its name,

it's bigger than the structure

because it represents hope,

and it represents the best of us.

[narrator] On the coast of Lake Michigan lies a forgotten community

that brought a strange, new style to America's favorite pastime.

[Dr. Sascha Auerbach] We are in Benton Harbor.

Now, in the dead of winter, it's an extremely inhospitable place to be.

[narrator] Just off the main road

is a monument to a time almost forgotten.

[Dr. Kyle A. Thomas] You go down a long, wooded pathway

that leads to an open ravine,

where inside there are just derelict,

broken down pieces of old buildings.

[Katherine Alcock] You get strange glimpses of half-forgotten structures.

And you start to ask yourself, "What is this place?"

[Boyersmith] This place, it's got, kind of, a magical feel to it.

I spent a lot of my childhood coming here.

And I grew up knowing the people

and the kindness that they treated people with.

[narrator] But what happened to the community who built this place?

[Boyersmith] It's, kind of, a mystery to a lot of people.

People don't understand the religious aspect of it and what it was.

[narrator] On the edge of Benton Harbor, Michigan,

lies a collection of dilapidated buildings

and a rusting transport network.

[Dr. Thomas] Was this a train depot,

was there a train that ran through here?

And if so, why did it wind through the woods

in almost a directionless way?

[narrator] Despite being a mystery to most of the world,

locals like Debbie Boyersmith remember this place all too well.

[Boyersmith] I spent a lot of time here 'cause my family were members

from the inception, in 1903, up until 2017.

There was a member of my family

as a member of the House of David.

[narrator] These are the remnants of an amusement park

run by a community known as the House of David.

[Dr. Thomas] The House of David was started by Mary and Benjamin Purnell.

The Purnells believed that they were messengers from God,

sent to herald the coming of Judgment Day.

[Dr. Auerbach] But one day, a family tragedy put a halt to their preaching.

Their daughter perished in an explosion

in a fireworks factory in Ohio.

[Alcock] Strangely, the pair refused to go to the funeral,

believing that the living should not associate with the dead.

And it was due to these strange, unconventional beliefs

they were run out of town.

[narrator] The Purnells fled to Benton Harbor

and started to build a community here,

attracting followers with their unusual doctrine.

[Boyersmith] Their beliefs are very much following the beliefs of Jesus.

Being a vegetarian, you don't cut your hair, you don't cut your beard.

You know, you treat people kindly, non-judgmental.

[Dr. Auerbach] Because they believed that Judgment Day,

Armageddon was imminent,

the followers of the House of David didn't see procreation

as a responsible or necessary activity.

Therefore, they argued that all forms of sexual activity were immoral.

[narrator] Despite the House of David's disapproval of reproduction,

soon they had almost 1,000 members.

Many of those people initially came here to be entertained.

At one point, the House of David was known by everybody in the area.

And that's thanks largely to this place, Eden Springs Park.

[Boyersmith] More and more people came,

and so they purchased this property here.

Bought the trains.

And decided let's entertain 'em.

And it was a way to earn money to support the colony.

[Dr. Thomas] Eden Springs Park opened in 1908,

and it had a lot of great attractions for the day.

It had a fish pond, a giant dollhouse, and an auditorium,

where Benjamin Purnell put on Biblical plays.

At Eden Springs, there was even a small zoo.

It must have been quite an exciting place to visit.

[narrator] Despite the community's private nature,

they were extremely welcoming at Eden Springs Park.

[Boyersmith] It was the place to come back in the day.

Well, of course I loved riding the train in. [chuckles]

'Cause that was just always fun.

My aunt, she would always meet us at the depot with tickets and ice cream.

I remember the strawberry ice cream

had pieces of strawberry in it.

And to a kid, that was... That was the best.

[narrator] This park made the House of David well known in Benton Harbor.

But a very different form of entertainment

would make them famous across the nation.

[Boyersmith] One of the big draws of Eden Springs

or the House of David was the baseball field.

And right here was where the big stadium was.

[Dr. Thomas] It wasn't long before Benjamin Purnell realized

that because of the group's emphasis on celibacy,

many of the young men in the commune were looking for places

to put their energy and their efforts.

So, in 1914, he started a semi-professional baseball team.

[narrator] The House of David players

looked like no other baseball team in America.

[Boyersmith] My grandfather, Earl Boyersmith,

he joined the baseball team.

His hair reached down about this far.

[Alcock] At a time when sports stars

were usually very clean cut, well shaven,

the long hair and straggly beards of the House of David's team

really made something of an impact.

[narrator] Although they were very successful in the Minor Leagues,

that was not enough for some members of the team.

If you've seen the Harlem Globetrotters play with the basketball,

and they, kind of, do magic with it,

the House of David had a pepper game that they called it,

and there were three of them, and they did that with a baseball.

And they'd throw it up, and then it would be behind their back,

and then it'd be under their leg.

[narrator] The House of David's baseball team became so well known,

they started to attract some famous faces.

[Dr. Auerbach] Their team also played with

some of the greatest baseball players of the age.

Even the all-time, most famous slugger of them all, Babe Ruth,

put on a fake beard so he could play with the House of David team.

[narrator] But despite the ball team's success,

legal trouble put the future of Eden Springs Park at risk.

In the 1920s, the House of David

became embroiled in a scandal

from which it never really recovered.

[narrator] In just 20 years, David and Mary Purnell

had grown the House of David from a handful of members

to a community of almost 1,000.

But disgrace was just around the corner.

[Dr. Thomas] Some members of the commune

accused Benjamin Purnell of being a child molester

and operating a fraudulent enterprise under the guise of religion.

Benjamin Purnell was found guilty of fraud.

He died the very next month.

[narrator] After these revelations,

the community split and its membership dwindled.

By the 1970s, there were only a handful of members of the House of David left.

[Boyersmith] They just got to a point where they said, "That was it.

You know, we can't do this anymore."

When they did actually close the doors,

it was sad to see the life go out of it.

[narrator] Unable to keep up with the Park's maintenance,

the House of David closed Eden Springs in 1973.

Half a century later, a group of locals have come together

to breathe new life into the park.

My family helped build it the first time,

I can help, you know, restore it.

[Alcock] A group of volunteers have been restoring the gardens.

They've repaired the fountain

and even patched up some of the rides.

And, in fact, the trains have become

a popular local attraction again.

[Dr. Auerbach] The baseball diamond has been cleaned up and restored.

And it even hosts, kind of, recreation, vintage baseball games

in honor of the House of David team.

It was the place to come back in the day,

and I think a lot of people missed it.

It's good to see 'em coming back

and it's good to see it come alive again.

[narrator] In the hottest place on Earth

lies one of the most spectacular examples of America's attempts

to conquer the desert.

[Karl Olson] This is, basically, America's Rome.

I get up, and I look at this every morning,

and this wonderful place, and I'm free.

[Dr. Szulgit] This is on the edge of Death Valley, Nevada.

Now, it's called Death Valley for a reason.

Temperatures here can get up to 130 degrees.

At first glance, this looks like an empty wilderness.

A barren, hilly landscape.

[narrator] But closer inspection reveals signs of life.

[Rob Bell] These buildings were obviously made to last.

Somebody must have felt that this place was worth investing in.

[Olson] It wasn't the Wild West anymore.

People came here to make money.

[Bell] This is rather symbolic of early industrial America.

It came in, it was noisy and wildly successful for a time,

before being left to crumble.

[narrator] But from the ruins,

future settlers would take sanctuary.

[Budd] I think the story is really important

because it's still very much ignored.

They're just hidden or considered too taboo to discuss.

[narrator] Karl Olson keeps watch over this place as its only resident.

[Olson] People that came rushing in here,

they came down here in wheelbarrows,

they came down in wagons, they came in barrels and automobiles.

It was really booming.

People thought this was going to be the next capital of Nevada.

[narrator] This is the Bullfrog mountain range.

And its story began with a single prospecting hermit.

[Dr. Michele Mitchell] Frank Shorty Harris was a notorious prospector

in the Death Valley region.

And he made a living, or eked out a living, through prospecting.

[narrator] In the summer of 1904,

Shorty was out on one of his prospecting expeditions,

and something caught his attention

in the ground beneath his feet.

[Dr. Mitchell] He broke off a chunk and found it filled with gold.

The ore assayed to have a value of $700 a ton,

which is $23,000 a ton in today's money.

[narrator] Yet Shorty didn't seem to care about his fortune.

It's said that Shorty got drunk,

sold his claim for $500 and a mule,

and then just went back to his nomadic, desert ways.

[narrator] But this was not the end for gold mining in the area.

There's a gold rush in 1904 in Bullfrog,

and that just opens up several mines,

and brings in all of the stuff

that you would expect to support the mining industry.

[narrator] Many settlements began to spring up,

and one of those was this town, Rhyolite.

And at the center was the Cook Bank.

[Olson] The interior of the bank was unreal.

This was gonna be, like, the statement of the town.

There were marble on the floors,

there were marble on the counters.

You can see the vault in there,

where they kept the deposits.

The building next to the bank,

there was an ice cream parlor in there,

they sold clothing in there.

[narrator] The profits that were being made here

attracted the attention of Charles M. Schwab,

one of the nation's most prolific investors.

[Dr. Szulgit] He was also a bit of a gambler.

And in 1906, he decided to bet big on Rhyolite.

[narrator] Schwab's investment in the local mines

caused the town to explode.

[Olson] So this whole area around here,

there were approximately between 8,000 to 10,000 people.

[narrator] And all these people needed somewhere to live.

[Dr. Szulgit] Now, there's very little wood around as a building material,

and there have been disasters with fires in boom towns in the past,

so people had enough confidence in Rhyolite

that they just started building out of stone.

Building these sturdy, massive structures.

[Olson] They had swimming pools, they had restaurants.

The menus were unreal.

I mean, stuff you'd never think about.

Oysters.

I mean, it was unbelievable how modern this town was.

[narrator] Rhyolite almost resembled a 21st-century town,

even having its own train station.

This area, as it rose in elevation, this was called Knob Hill,

and that's where the elite lived.

The buildings are really quite striking, with verandas around them.

But once again, it was wood, and it's all gone.

[narrator] Within three short years, the gold was running out.

And in 1911, the mines were shut down.

But in the 1980s, Rhyolite faced an unexpected arrival.

There were threats that the KKK would show up

because they were a white man and a Black man.

It was definitely homophobic as well as racist.

[narrator] In the early 1900s,

Rhyolite had gone from a booming mining town to a ghost town.

Seven decades later, a very different group of pioneers

decided to try and make this a place to call home.

It's never been easy to be gay in America.

And during the 1980s, it would have been all the more difficult.

And during the '80s, we had the AIDS crisis,

and it generates a moral panic.

[narrator] Artist Emily Budd feels a personal connection with this town.

[Budd] At the height of the AIDS pandemic,

I was still pretty much a child.

But it was definitely still present in the '90s

during my whole coming out story.

I remember all the hysteria, the ignorance, the bigotry involved

and how society treated queer people.

[narrator] Two men intended to bring Rhyolite back from the dead.

[Dr. Mitchell] The plan was to build a paradise for gay men in the wilderness,

where they would be free from persecution and abuse.

They would name it Stonewall Park,

after the famous Stonewall bar and riots in New York City.

[Budd] The founders of Stonewall Park

were Fred Schoonmaker and his partner, Alfred Parkinson.

They were a couple, they were very deeply in love.

They had been together for, like, at least 13 years,

and they were tired of being closeted.

[narrator] The two Freds chose this ghost town as the perfect refuge.

[Dr. Szulgit] So, why choose this ghost town as a site?

Legally, it was still an incorporated city,

which meant that they could make their own laws,

decriminalizing homosexuality.

[narrator] The aim was for pioneers to live in a utopian community.

So when Fred and Alfred came to Rhyolite,

they actually stayed in this caboose right here.

It's left over from when Rhyolite was a mining town.

There's no water or electricity here.

[narrator] It seemed that wherever the couple moved to, suffering followed.

[Budd] From the very day they got here,

they had suffered a lot of protests and abuse.

People from the town of Beatty,

which is about six miles up the street,

uh, would come here and shoot at their windows with BB guns.

[narrator] Unfortunately, the dream of a place

where people could be themselves in peace never came to be.

[Dr. Szulgit] After a hateful campaign of fear mongering,

the two Freds decided that this was never gonna work next to these locals.

And they decided to look elsewhere in Nevada.

Fred Schoonmaker died of an AIDS-related heart attack

at the age of 44 in 1987.

[narrator] The dream for equality lives on,

but Rhyolite is now deadly quiet.

Today, most of the remaining buildings of Rhyolite

exist as a tourist curiosity.

But Emily Budd has ensured that the two Freds story is not forgotten.

[Budd] I wanted to memorialize Stonewall Park.

I thought it was really important

to have some sort of marker to their dream,

so I built a memorial, meant to be temporary.

It's fading, as the ghost town is before us.

It has a very small marker that's buried with it,

so that in the future it will tell anyone that finds it,

like, it's an artefact,

that there was a queer dream here.

In these rural places, we don't really associate them as being queer

or having a queer history, but they really do.

[narrator] In a city on the Massachusetts coast

lies an enigmatic building filled with stories

of America's entertainment past.

[Jim Meigs] Today, a lot of New Bedford's glory has faded somewhat.

As you come to the south side,

the first thing you see is an enormous highway

that's obliterated a lot of the neighborhood.

[Dr. Thomas] People drive up and down this highway all the time.

And when they do, they must think "What is this building?

What used to happen here?"

[Charles Hauck] It's a mystery.

You're always like, "What's inside there?"

So, when they closed it up,

it just became a time capsule to another period.

This would have been a really grand, grand entry.

Unfortunately, now it's bricked in with this rusty old door.

[narrator] Inside, the building slowly reveals its secrets.

[Dr. Thomas] It's hard to tell what this place must have been

because of the amount of stuff

that's just laying around everywhere.

[Meigs] Underneath the grime and debris, you can still see

that this was a very grand place in its day.

You've got beautiful mosaic floors,

grand staircase, elaborately painted walls.

[Victor Fonseca] When I came in this room, it brought back

a lot of good memories as being a kid.

I had my wedding here.

You know, we had dancers, everything.

So good, good memories.

But times change.

[narrator] This strange building owes its existence

to the rise and fall of one of America's most destructive industries.

[narrator] In industrial New Bedford lies a mystifying building,

containing a network of corridors and rooms.

It's clear that the auditorium was meant to be the star of the show.

[narrator] Charles Hauck was struck by the fated beauty of this building

and is part of a consortium who are attempting to preserve it.

[Hauck] I do historical restoration work,

and then just saw this as a challenge.

There were 24 theatres in the city.

This was the second biggest.

But they're all gone.

[narrator] This is the New Bedford Orpheum Theatre.

But thanks to this town's unique maritime past,

this place was built with entertainment as an afterthought.

New Bedford was the heart of the whaling industry,

and produced a lot of whale oil.

Because of that it was known as The City That Lit The World.

[Meigs] Whale oil was so valuable

that whale oil captains became rich

and New Bedford became for a time

arguably the wealthiest city in the world.

[narrator] The riches afforded by whaling

attracted immigrants from all over the globe.

It was probably the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the country.

There was Portuguese, there was Spanish, Cape Verdean, French.

[narrator] It was members of this French-Canadian community

who constructed this building.

[Hauck] This was the target area

for the French Sharpshooters Club.

They would come up here,

practice their shooting skills.

They had the moving targets,

sort of like what you'd see at an amusement park.

There's an elephant

and, like, a lion and a horse.

[narrator] Originally, this was the clubhouse

of the French Sharpshooters Club of New Bedford.

But to generate income,

they included a theatre in the design.

[Hauck] They leased the theatre out

to the Orpheum Amusement Company of Boston.

And it was a great place in the city

for people to be seen, wear their best.

[narrator] On April 15th, 1912,

the Orpheum opened and was an instant hit.

[Dr. Thomas] In the early part of the 20th century,

the major form of American entertainment was vaudeville.

These are variety acts, people doing magic, singing songs.

Some of the most popular vaudeville acts of the day

included the magician Harry Houdini

and the slapstick comedy trio the Marx Brothers.

[narrator] After the age of vaudeville ended,

the Orpheum began showing movies, news reels and live music.

It would stay popular with locals for decades,

including Victor Fonseca.

[Fonseca speaking]

[narrator] But by the 1960s,

a new construction project meant

the writing was on the wall for the Orpheum.

Over 2,000 buildings were torn down

to put the highway in, so which was a...

Probably some of the city's most historical,

oldest buildings were, were here.

[Fonseca speaking]

[narrator] The Orpheum Theatre was spared,

yet, its doors remain shut to the local community.

In the years since, it has been used for storage.

But the theatre has been linked

to the most troubled period in New Bedford's history.

[Hauck] There's a story of one of our members.

He walked into a Black Panthers meeting.

And they are like, "What are you doing here?"

And he's, "What are you doing here?"

[Meigs] The late '60s and early '70s

were a time of enormous frustration

and often violence in America's cities.

Riots tore through Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit.

[Dr. Kenya Davis-Hayes] People remember riots in big cities.

But in the late 1960s and early 1970s,

even small towns were not spared.

[narrator] The events in New Bedford

were just as dramatic as in bigger cities.

In 1970, after the police made

what many thought was a dubious arrest,

conflicts broke out between police

and people in the Black community.

[Fonseca speaking]

[narrator] Fortunately, the Orpheum was spared any damage,

but much of the city was burned.

[Meigs] As the violence escalated, a group of Black Panthers

set up what they called a headquarters

in a burned-out store front.

When these men and women were put on trial,

they would become known as the New Bedford 21.

[Davis-Hayes] The New Bedford 21 were charged with

conspiracy to commit murder, anarchy and inciting riots.

[narrator] Most charges against the New Bedford 21 were dropped

as the riots came to an end on July 31st, 1970.

The town of New Bedford has recovered since then,

but the Orpheum Theatre has not.

For over 50 years, the Orpheum has sat silent and empty.

[Dr. Thomas] This building was a portal for its community,

delivering news reels, transporting people to all over the world.

It was quite literally the way in which

that the New Bedford community connected with the wider world around them.

[narrator] But now, a local campaign hopes

to bring the theatre back to life.

[Hauck] I mean, it's a important part of the history of the city,

at a time when the city was really doing well.

[Fonseca speaking]