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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.
An 800-mile pipeline transports crude from the largest oil field in North America. Native Alaskans, oil company representatives, environmentalists, geologists, politicians, and others tell the story of its construction.
The story of a founding father who laid the groundwork for the nation's modern economy -- including the banking system and Wall Street. He was also a primary author of the Federalist Papers.
America's first superstar, Oakley was the main attraction of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She thrilled audiences with her sharpshooting, and fueled nostalgia for the American frontier West.
Just days after the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre. As a fractured nation mourned, a manhunt closed in on his assassin, the twenty-six-year-old actor, John Wilkes Booth.
After the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, British and American pilots delivered tons of food and fuel to the German city by airplane for nearly a year in the first battle of the Cold War.
When David Vetter died at age 12, he was already world famous - played by John Travolta in a TV movie. His unusual life, lived permanently inside a germ-free environment due to severe combined immunodeficiency, fueled medical ethics debates.
William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's legendary exploits helped create the myth of the American West that still endures today.
Following the attacks on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II, the US government feared an Alaskan invasion and constructed one of the biggest and most difficult homeland defense projects ever.
The influential musical pioneers from Appalachia whose recordings ("Wildwood Flower", "Keep on the Sunny Side") lifted spirits during the Great Depression. Their songs and style laid the foundations for American folk, country and bluegrass music.
An African American minister whose dream of ending racism galvanized millions of Americans in the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 but left an enduring legacy.
One of the most popular New Deal programs, the CCC put three million young men to work in camps across America during the height of the Great Depression.
From a small-town Texas murder emerged a landmark civil rights case. The little-known story of the Mexican American lawyers who took Hernandez v. Texas to the Supreme Court, challenging Jim Crow-style discrimination.
The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit on October 29th, ultimately leading to the Great Depression.
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 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.
This acclaimed 14-hour series covers all of the major events of the civil rights movement from 1954-1985, tracing African Americans' struggle for equality and justice.
Ten years after American troops arrived in South Vietnam, communists seized Saigon in an attack that brought the war to a startling conclusion. The final chapter in American Experience's 11-hour series, Vietnam.
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.
Cuba's Communist leader defied the odds, surviving his Soviet benefactors, the wrath of U.S. presidents, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and several assassination attempts.
Joe Louis became a symbol of African American equality and democracy. Max Schmeling represented Hitler's Aryan racial theories and fascism. The two boxers fought in 1938 -- on the eve of World War II.
A biography of the 41st U.S. president, from his service in World War II to his days in the Oval Office with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the race riots in Los Angeles and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Discovery of a precious metal inspired worldwide migration by Forty-Niners, the eager gold-seekers who settled the westernmost state and turned California into a land of opportunity and fierce competition.
San Francisco built one of the "Seven Wonders of the Modern World" during the Great Depression while battling wind, fog, ocean currents, and earthquake-prone land.
The dramatic story of the construction of New York City's Grand Central Terminal in 1913, lauded as the greatest railroad terminal in the world, with electrified train service under the city streets.
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.
The laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable - an underwater communications link between North America and Europe - is a remarkable story of mid-19th century ingenuity and perseverance.
The bizarre saga of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Patty Hearst's kidnapping, Hearst's conversion to her captors' cause, and the bank robberies and shootouts that followed.
In September 1970, militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked five commercial airplanes, giving birth to a new era of terrorism.
During the Great Depression, Americans built the Hoover Dam, overcoming technical challenges to erect one of the greatest engineering works in history.
Meet the Confederate guerrilla who helped invent his own myth after the Civil War as a Western Robin Hood. In reality, Jesse James was a brutal thief and murderer.
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