Gold Star Mothers: Pilgrimage of Remembrance
For 6,000 women whose sons or husbands were lost in World War I and buried in foreign graves, a pilgrimage to see their loved one's final resting place brought a measure of comfort. In the 1930s, when mothers had heroic stature in the eyes of the nation, the government took thousands of them on trips across the ocean to visit cemeteries in Europe.    This one-hour documentary, produced by WILL-TV, tells the story of the emotional Gold Star journeys that, for many women, involved their first travel outside their own communities. The program also describes how mothers wielded political power to get Congress to approve the Gold Star pilgrimages, and how the segregation of African American women on the trips contributed to the decision of many black voters to leave the Republican Party.  The documentary also follows some of today's Gold Star Mothers, who lost sons in Vietnam, as they make modern-day pilgrimages to see where their loved ones died.