KEN BURNS: This is New York City's Central Park in September 1932. The country is three years into the Great Depression. Five thousand banks have failed. Millions are out of work. Tens of thousands of people are living in Hoovervilles—makeshift villages like this one named after the president Americans have come to blame for their trouble. 

I want to tell you a story about an election, about a moment when the impact of a major economic disaster upset the American political order, realigned political allegiances, and redefined our expectations of government responsibility. I want to tell you a story about a nation in crisis and what came next. 

The Grand Old Party had dominated the American political landscape throughout the 1920s. In 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover won the general election 444 electoral votes to Democrat Al Smith's 87. At his inauguration, he heralded a new day. But a disaster was looming on the horizon. Herbert Hoover, a humanitarian hero who had built his reputation on administering disaster relief during World War I, was not prepared for the Great Depression. 

In 1932, Americans voted overwhelmingly to oust Hoover and elect New York State Governor Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). For many the election was a referendum on the misery they experienced in the Depression. The shift in the electoral map represented an American people who were re-evaluating the role of government in their lives. Notably absent from FDR's 1932 victory were the majority of African American voters who remained loyal to the party of Lincoln. 

The change after Roosevelt took office was dramatic. Democrats became the majority party of the nation and FDR immediately began to enact his "New Deal" for the American people. His program showed Americans that we, the government and the people, were in this together. 

In the first hundred days of FDR's administration, the federal government that had been a mostly passive observer of the people's problems had become an active force in trying to solve them. However, as the election of 1936 approached, America was still in the midst of the Great Depression. People were still struggling and this time FDR would be judged on his own performance.

ROOSEVELT: … their power. Governments can err. Presidents do make mistakes. But the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

KEN BURNS: FDR, unlike Hoover, found a way to speak, not just to his party, but to connect beyond it. He preached humanity first and on the campaign trail spoke out against the selfishness of Wall Street and what he called "organized money." Roosevelt would win the election with 60.8 percent of the popular vote, the largest percentage anyone had ever achieved. It was a landslide, a stunning victory, perhaps most of all, because of what it revealed about how the United States and our political allegiances had shifted. 

African Americans across the country chose to cut ties with the Republican Party. They voted overwhelmingly for FDR. The notion that Western farmers and big-city industrial workers, immigrants and African Americans and the "Solid South" could all be served by the same party defied expectations. But FDR's Roosevelt Coalition did just that. FDR's presidency would form the foundation of the modern Democratic Party and serve as the beginning of a new era of American politics. 

Today, it can seem as though we're locked into a binary grid, red states will always be red, blue states will always be blue, and there are just a few swing states that make a difference. It can make people feel like their vote doesn't matter, that nothing will ever change. But history tells us these things do change. These maps represent a story about an American people who cannot be defined by something as simple as a color or a label. We are continually evolving. And often moments of crisis create opportunity, not just for leaders to transcend party lines, but also for the American people to re-evaluate what they really want and who they want to serve them.