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American Experience Films

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 Alaska Pipeline

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.

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Alexander Hamilton

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.

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Annie Oakley

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.

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The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

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.

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The Berlin Airlift

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.

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The Boy in the Bubble

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.

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Buffalo Bill

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's legendary exploits helped create the myth of the American West that still endures today.

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Building the Alaska Highway

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.

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The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken

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.

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Citizen King

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.

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The Civilian Conservation Corps

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.

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A Class Apart

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.

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The Crash of 1929

The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit on October 29th, ultimately leading to the Great Depression.

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Emma Goldman

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.

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Eugene O'Neill

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.

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Eyes on the Prize

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.

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