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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.
The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Earhart disappeared in 1937 while she was attempting to circumnavigate the world by airplane.
Following the Great Depression, anti-Semitism was on the rise in America. The US government's response to the Holocaust was slow and fueled by complex social and political factors.
After achieving fame for an exposeé on New York City's mental facility on Blackwell's Island, intrepid journalist Nelly Bly went on a journey around the world breaking the record of Julius Verne's fictional character.
Towards the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler tried his final gamble, a massive surprise assault across the Allied front in Belgium and Luxembourg, in the single biggest and bloodiest battle American soldiers ever fought.
Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst fought to suppress a film by boy genius director Orson Welles (of War of the Worlds fame). A brutal, fictionalized portrait of Hearst, the movie would eventually be acknowledged as one of cinema's masterpieces.
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.
Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the 1968 Democratic National Convention saw a clash of political visions on the convention floor and violence outside between police and protesters on the streets of Chicago.
On June 6, 1944, Operation Overlord went into effect. Allied troops invaded Normandy, fighting to free Europe from Nazi occupation and end World War II.
For 21 years, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley ruled the city, building the Sears Tower and O'Hare Airport. He was mayor during Chicago's tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Inventor Thomas Edison built the first practical light bulb and revolutionized the world. "The Wizard of Menlo Park" is also credited with the first record player and movie camera, among hundreds of other innovations.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt restored hope after the Great Depression and led the nation during World War II. Part of the award-winning The Presidents collection.
The Freedom Summer of 1964 saw whites and blacks coming together in a nonviolent army to register African American voters, create schools and bring national attention to the struggle for racial equality.
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 story of Liliu'okalani, the last queen and ruler of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii.
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.
Before radar had been invented, the worst hurricane to hit America devastated the East Coast and killed over 600 people in a terrible natural disaster.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a decorated general, a skillful politician, a tough Cold War adversary and one of America's least understood presidents. Part of the award-winning Presidents collection.
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.
Malcolm X, a man who both terrified and inspired, expressed the anger and struggle of black people for freedom in the 1960s. Who killed Malcolm X and why remains a mystery.
The little-known story of a black independent film industry that produced nearly 500 feature films for African American audiences, dealing with issues such as crime, racism and lynching.
Martha Ballard was a midwife and mother in Maine following the American Revolution. From her diary, see 18th-century America through a woman's eyes.
Carl Fisher created Miami Beach from a narrow spit of Florida swampland. Brilliant marketing made him a fortune until a devastating hurricane and the stock market crash of 1929 wiped him out.
When Harry Thaw murdered Stanford White over showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, the sensational story had everything: money, power, class, love, rage, lust, and revenge against the backdrop of New York City.
The New York City Subway was the largest public works project in history. Engineered by William Barclay Parsons, the 21-mile four-track route was completed in four years.
The women's suffrage movement endured infighting, alliances, and betrayals, and won the right to vote when the 19th Amendment passed in 1920.
Between 1854 and 1929 more than 100,000 abused or orphaned children were sent by train to the Midwest to begin new lives in foster families.
The life of the president who saw America as a "shining city on a hill" and himself as its heroic defender. Favoring deregulation and lower taxes, Reagan experienced wide popularity and controversy as well. Part of the award-winning The Presidents collection.
A look at the poor Scottish emigrant boy who built a fortune in telegraphy, railroads and steel, and then began systematically to give it all away.
The evocative stories of teenage hoboes crisscrossing America on trains during the Great Depression.
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