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Browse the entire American Experience series featuring over 200 films. Watch full films online, download teacher’s guides, go behind the scenes, and learn more about your favorite films.
Richard Byrd was hailed as the greatest American polar explorer after claiming to fly an airplane over both the north and south poles. In 1934 he became the first to experience winter in Antarctica's interior.
The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Earhart disappeared in 1937 while she was attempting to circumnavigate the world by airplane.
Politics, culture, race relations, and technology in a year of change, from Gibson Girls to immigrants, Booker T. Washington to W.E.B. Du Bois, striking coal miners to the Galveston hurricane, new inventions, and a presidential election.
P.T. Barnum -- huckster, con man, promoter, entertainer and founder of "The Greatest Show on Earth" which would become the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
President Theodore Roosevelt was caught in the middle of the first major battle for wilderness preservation, over the building of Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park.
A Utah farm boy, Philo T. Farnsworth, builds a prototype for a television, but is thwarted by movie studio executives wanting to control the technology.
The internationally famous carnival of delights in New York was the birthplace of the hot dog and the roller coaster, and offered everything from the bawdy to the surreal.
Prohibition's effect on Detroit, Michigan, the first major American city to "go dry," and the growth of the liquor smuggling industry.
The story of a Russian immigrant and anarchist who is said to have inspired the assassination of President William McKinley. "The most dangerous woman in America" was exiled in 1919.
A writer's childhood and the development of her photography and writing about the American South. Based on Welty's 1983 autobiography of the same name.
A great playwright's turbulent story: from childhood through the years of his Nobel Prize-winning career (including "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night") to his lonely, painful death.
In 1927, the Mississippi River flooded from New Orleans up to Illinois, leaving a million people homeless and leading to a major black migration to the North. A dramatic natural disaster story.
Nearly every American town has a baseball diamond. A wry philosophical essay on what makes baseball the great American pastime.
Of all the alphabet agencies of the New Deal, none captured the public's imagination like J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. G-Men were public heroes, doing battle with John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and other criminals.
The Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon Territory, the largest American gold rush, inspired a Charlie Chaplin film when 100,000 people made the treacherous journey in search of riches.
The first around-the-world air race was sponsored to prove that the airplane had a commercial future. Four pilots took off from Seattle and two returned 175 days later.
In 1900 Major Walter Reed proved that mosquitoes spread yellow fever. The discovery halted an outbreak during the construction of the Panama Canal, and led to the disease's eventual eradication.
Vivid memories of those trapped in the terrifying temblor of 1906 that killed thousands of Californians.
With over a million already dead, heroic American soldiers and nurses served in the closing battles of World War I. New mechanized weapons led to the bloodiest war of the 20th century.
The story of Liliu'okalani, the last queen and ruler of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii.
The world famous escape artist was an entrepreneur most famous for his underwater acts. He could escape from everything - except his own mortality.
After notorious revolutionary leader Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, General John Pershing and his 150,000 man cavalry set out to get Villa, dead or alive.
An African American civil rights leader, Ida B. Wells was born into slavery before becoming a journalist in Memphis. When three of her friends were hanged, Wells was radicalized.
John Philip Sousa was America's favorite bandmaster. His organization was the first to make money on tour, and he helped invent the small town marching band.
The worst epidemic in American history killed over 600,000 Americans during World War I. Nicknamed "Spanish influenza" it died out quickly the following winter.
The last surviving member of a California Indian tribe became a sensation in 1911, but the contact brought him terrible physical and psychological consequences.
Between 1890 and 1920, 12 million people emigrated from Europe arriving in New York Harbor and Ellis Island. It was one of the largest single human migrations in history.
America's most renowned football coach, Knute Rockne of Notre Dame, was a pivotal figure in the sudden rise of sports to a position of financial and commercial power in American culture.
The first man to fly across the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh was unprepared for the attention, particularly after his son was kidnapped. Strongly opposed to U.S. involvement in World War II, Lindbergh did support the war after Pearl Harbor.
The story of the Mexican American miners whose labor battles shaped the course of Arizona history. It was only in 1946 that a two-tier wage system for white and Mexican Americans was abolished.
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