'With his series 'The American Revolution,' director Ken Burns warns against the tendency to judge the heroes of the past through the lens of the present'

K

en Burns began working on his documentary a year before the end of Barack Obama's presidency, in December 2015. 10 years later, his work – a masterful six-episode series dedicated to the American War of Independence (1775 – 1783) – has aired at a radically different moment. No longer is the United States celebrating a multiracial nation moving toward that "more perfect union" promised by the Founding Fathers; instead, minorities are being pushed to the margins of the national narrative. As the country prepares to celebrate, in the summer of 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, divisions over the nation's identity only continue to deepen.

The six episodes of the series The American Revolution, directed by Burns with Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, were broadcast between November 16 and 21 on PBS, the public broadcast station accused by Congressional Republicans of pro-Democrat bias, to the point that they cut its funding in July. Burns, who has chronicled American wars for 35 years – from the Civil War (1861 – 1865) to Vietnam (1964 – 1975) – went on a promotional tour through 32 cities and gave countless interviews. He sought to defuse accusations of "wokeness" and avoided mentioning the president's name. His ambition: unity.