American Experience | Official Site

Sandra Day O'Connor: The First | Trailer

Sandra Day O'Connor: The First, Trailer

Discover the story of the Supreme Court’s first female justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.

Citizen Hearst | Article

William Randolph Hearst and McCarthyism

Hearst was a major force behind the anticommunist crusade that was underway for years before McCarthy arrived on the scene.

Space Men | Chapter

Space Men: Chapter 1

Watch the opening scene of Space Men.

Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World | Image Gallery

Whaling in America

The whaling industry was immortalized through maps, paintings, and photographs. Browse a gallery of images.

The Eugenics Crusade | Trailer

The Eugenics Crusade: Trailer

Uncover the shocking history of the early 20th-century campaign to breed a “better” American race.

Sister Aimee | Article

The Pentecostal Faith

Interview excerpts from Professor Anthea Butler and Professor Matthew A. Sutton.

The Mine Wars | Trailer

The Mine Wars: Trailer

In the early 1900s, a struggle over working conditions of coal miners led to the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and turned parts of West Virginia into a war zone.

Film

Meet the titans and barons of the glittering late 19th century, whose materialistic extravagance contrasted harshly with the poverty of the struggling workers who challenged them. The vast disparities between them sparked debates still raging today.

Film

The Telephone

The telephone was first introduced at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 and was an instant success. Although first rented only to "persons of good breeding" and seen as an expensive luxury for doctors and businessmen, the telephone soon transformed American life. Trees gave way to telephone poles as operators known as "hello girls" began to connect a sprawling continent.

The Mine Wars | Clip

Racial and Ethnic Boundaries in the Coal Mines

In the coal mines and coal towns of West Virginia, African Americans worked and lived alongside European immigrants and native Appalachians.

Film

Truman

An unknown politician from Missouri who suddenly found himself president, Harry Truman was the least prepared of all the men who had held the highest office, but he would prove to be a surprise — the unlikely rise of a gritty American original.

Eugene O'Neill | Article

Filmmaker Interview: Ric Burns

Here he talks about his work on the life of playwright Eugene O'Neill.

Freedom Riders | Article

Jim Crow Laws

The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South.

Film

The American Vice President

What happens when the president is unable to serve? Explore the dramatic period between 1963 and 1976, when a grief-stricken, then scandal-stricken America was forced to define the role of the vice president and the process of succession.

Film

The Greely Expedition

In 1881, 25 men led by Adolphus Greely set sail from Newfoundland to Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data from a vast area of the world’s surface that had been described as a "sheer blank." Three years later, only six survivors returned, with a daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism.