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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.
A civil rights leader in Harlem before entering politics, Powell was one of the most charismatic black leaders of the 20th century. He served as a New York congressman during the Fifties and Sixties.
After the stock market crashed in 1929, thousands suffered unemployment and poverty in the Great Depression. The most desperate year, 1932, brought World War I veterans' Bonus March, the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the New Deal.
Bascom Lamar Lunsford and his campaign to preserve mountain music and dance.
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.
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.
The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit on October 29th, ultimately leading to the Great Depression.
Prohibition's effect on Detroit, Michigan, the first major American city to "go dry," and the growth of the liquor smuggling industry.
A year in the life of Wyoming cowboys and the ranching families of the American West.
Three years before the Gold Rush, 87 pioneers took a shortcut westward to California, only to get caught in the snows of the Sierra Nevada. The emigrants' fateful journey culminated in death and cannibalism.
The African American jazz composer and bandleader performed regularly at Harlem's Cotton Club, and thrived from the Depression through World War II, leaving a legacy in music.
The young CBS reporter changed his pacifist ideals after reporting on the rise of fascism in Europe during World War II. Based on Sevareid's 1946 book of the same name.
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.
The personal journey of three generations of a Japanese American family, including their stint in internment camps during World War II.
Before World War II, San Francisco's Chinatown was closed to outsiders, but second generation Chinese Americans defied cultural tradition to pursue their passion for American music and dance.
Nearly every American town has a baseball diamond. A wry philosophical essay on what makes baseball the great American pastime.
French settlers in Louisiana merged with African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and others to create Cajun and Zydeco musical traditions.
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.
Before he became the first U.S. president, service to the colonies would profoundly change George Washington. The man who came to symbolize the American Revolution scorned attempts to participate in any system but democracy.
The Native American leader fought against U.S. expansion onto Apache tribal land. The story of a tragic collision of two civilizations.
A nostalgic and humorous look at how old world Chicago lives side by side with the new.
In a nostalgic celebration of old fashioned neighborhood life, the black residents of Tulsa relive their community's remarkable rise and tragic decline.
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.
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.
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.
Schools taught Native Americans to imitate white men in a liberal "civilizing" mission in 1875. A story of cultural genocide - a humanist experiment gone bad.
In 1936 Angie Debo uncovered a widespread conspiracy and the U.S. government's theft of Native Americans' oil rich lands in Indian Territories of Oklahoma.
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