The Monster Slayer

Photo by Joe Rosenthal (AP)

It is noted in other pages on this website that Dr. Burke was a strong civil rights advocate in his explanation of race in the Probe programs titled "Stranger in the Ray" and "The American Stranger" for which he received a Peabody Award nomination. The description of the latter show said:

Burke uses the story of Pima Indian Ira Hayes, one of the six marines to raise the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in WWII, to illustrate the U.S. government's treatment of Native Americans. He refers to an NBC program, "The American stranger," which had recently provoked widespread public outrage, and to a defensive response issued by the Department of the Interior. Burke says the program was accurate and cites examples of treaty-breaking on the part of the government, and of lawbreaking on the part of wealthy whites, whom he compares to the fictitious greedy rancher Elder Conklin, a character in a Frank Harris short story by the same name. He gives examples of Native American contributions to farming and medicine and says that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were inspired by the governmental structures of the Five United Indian Nations. Includes footage of the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, the Pima reservation, and Coolidge Dam

But the story of Dr. Burke's defense of Native North Americans, with whom he and his wife, Ruth, lived for several years, did not end there. In some of the most controversial shows during his Probe series he pursued this theme further--not an always popular issue in 1962. We have digitized the transcripts of the four part The Monster Slayer and present them for you in memory of Ira Hayes, one of the flag raisers on Mt. Surabachi, whose story again appears in this series.

The Monster Slayer Part I

The Monster Slayer Part II

The Monster Slayer Part III

The Monster Slayer Part IV