History Video Collection: American Experience

Radicals. Agitators. Troublemakers. Liberators. Called many names, the abolitionists tore the nation apart in order to create a more perfect union. Men and women, black and white, Northerners and Southerners, poor and wealthy, these passionate anti-slavery activists fought body and soul in the most important civil rights crusade in American history."

Weaves the lives of Abraham and Mary Lincoln; Abraham, the dirt-farmer's son turned Great Emancipator, and Mary, the emotionally fragile daughter of wealthy Southern slave-owners. Together, they ascended to the pinnacle of power at a crucial time in the nation's history. Abraham Lincoln's legacy reshaped the nation while the tragedy of his death left Mary reclusive and forgotten.

A troubling picture of the U.S. during a time beset by anti-Semitism and a government that, due to complex social and political factors, delayed action and suppressed information and blocked efforts that could have saved hundreds of thousands of people from the Holocaust. Focuses on the case of Kurt Klein, who attempted to battle the bureaucratic stonewall as he tried to get his Jewish family out of Germany.

Portrait of a great artist and ardent environmentalist-for whom life and art, photography and wilderness, creativity and communication, love and expression, were inextricably connected.

On January 25, 1890, the world waited for a young reporter named Nellie Bly to arrive back home. For 72 days, newspaper readers followed her progress in one of the most highly publicized journeys of all times.

Thousands of Allied soldiers faced death on the Bataan peninsula in 1941 and only 500 prisoners in the Cabanatuan prison camp lived to be rescued. With testimony from both captive and liberator their valiant struggle is remembered.

The last German counteroffensive of World War II was the single biggest & bloodiest battle in U.S. military history. In sub-zero temperatures & blinding snow, American soldiers were overrun by an enemy with unsuspected reserves of well armed men and heavy weaponry. When it was over, 80,000 Americans were killed or wounded; German casualties were said to be twice that. Packed with footage from newsreels and German and American archives, this documentary is a compelling chronicle of war that captures both the action on the front lines & d the strategy behind the scenes.

Looks at the lives and careers of Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst, and how Hearst tried to suppress the 1941 film Citizen Kane and destroy Welles.

Traces Franklin's life from humble beginnings to fame as a scientist, founding father, and America's first diplomat to France.

In May 1942, thousands of American soldiers began one of the biggest and most difficult construction projects ever undertaken. This program tells how they battled to push a 1,520-mile road across one of the world's harshest landscapes.

Explores the atmosphere surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Insight into factors contributing to events is provided through interviews with writers, politicians, anti-war activists and historians.

This story begins on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 when a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism. It comes to a bloody end almost five years later on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. In the years since those events unfolded, the man at the center, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has become a mythic figure, a minister whose oratory is etched into the minds of millions of Americans, a civil rights activist whose words and image are more hotly contested, negotiated and sold than almost anyone else's in American history.

An account of the United States' war with Spain beginning in 1898 which eventually led to U.S. control of Cuba and the Philippines, and later resulted in the independence of those two countries. Explains the United States' experiment in imperialism, which it later decided against. Tells the story of the war from all perspectives, not just the American side.

Portrays Detroit, Michigan before, during and after Prohibition. Includes segments about Henry Ford's influence and recollections of Detroitians.

Chronicles the tale of the pioneer group that set out for California in the spring of 1846 and ended in disaster in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains the following winter. Also available via a streaming database.

On the morning of July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton was fatally wounded in a duel by Aaron Burr in the culminating act of a political war that had lasted for more than a decade. The rivals' final encounter in Weehauken ruined Burr's career and changed the fate of a nation.

The history of Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb and his subsequent battle with George Westinghouse over the type of electric current to be used are covered, The launching of the Edison General Electric Company is also discussed.

For more than thirty years, Eleanor Roosevelt was America's most powerful woman. Drawing on interviews with her closest relatives, friends, and biographers, as well as rare home movie footage, the film reveals the hidden dimensions of one of the century's most influential women.

Vols. 1-3 tell the story of America's civil rights years from 1954 to 1965; vols. 4-7 examine the new America from 1966 to 1985, from community power to the human alienation of urban poverty.

The definitive story of the Civil Rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations are felt today.

In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River went on a rampage from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, inundating hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving a million homeless. In Greenville, Mississippi, efforts to contain the river pitted the majority black population against an aristocratic plantation family, the Percys-- and the Percys against themselves.

The Cuban dictator is profiled through interviews with relatives, loyalists, and enemies in Cuba and abroad.

This documentary captures the anticipation that the bout between African American heavyweight Joe Louis and his German opponent Max Schmeling generated, the events leading up to it, the impact Louis's victory had on Blacks and its significance for Jews.

In the midst of World War II, the call went out: women with flight experience were needed to fly for the military. All over the country, young women postponed their weddings, put their educations on hold, and quit their jobs to respond, becoming Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs. Led by Jacqueline Cochran, America's foremost female aviator, more than 1,000 women were trained to ferry aircraft, test planes, instruct male pilots, and even tow targets for anti-aircraft artillery practice.

George Washington, was a social climber, land-hungry Virginia surveyor, and military officer who often blamed others for his own errors. He gradually built a reputation as a gentleman by educating himself in the classics and sciences, entering politics, and marrying one of the wealthiest women in Virginia.

Descendants of legendary Native American leader Geronimo tell the story of a half-century of war, displacement, confinement, and finally resistance that ended with the decimation of the Chiricahua Apaches and the loss of their traditional homeland in the Southwest. Geronimo is revealed as a shrewd leader, formidable fighter, and poetic shaman--dedicated to a crusade to keep his ancestral land, repeatedly defying and eluding federal authorities. This title is also available through a streaming database.

Explores the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Tells the personal stories of a handful of the prospectors who, in January 1898, traveled to the Klondike in search of easy wealth, but instead came upon conmen, thieves and avalanches.

In the early 1900s, San Francisco stood as a proud and flourishing symbol of America's recent conquest of the once-wild West. But on April 19, 1906, the city would experience an awesome reminder of the uncontrollable forces lying dormant just beneath the splendors of its cosmopolitan surface.

This is the story behind the laying of the transatlantic cable. The physical challenges to laying the cable were enormous. The project would require the production of a 2,000 mile long cable that would have to be laid three miles beneath the Atlantic.

A documentary that focuses on the end of World War I through personal accounts, letters and diaries of soldiers.

Born in 1838, Queen Lili'uokalani was a talented composer who took the throne after her brother's death in 1891. Working in secret, she created a new constitution to restore to native Hawaiians power that had been usurped by American sugar plantation owners. Undermined by the US government, Liliuokalani lost her throne in a takeover by the US Marines.

Dramatic story of how a ragtag army of workers re-routed the mighty Colorado and erected the 700 foot high dam. More than 100 workers died building the marvel that forever transformed the West.

Without sophisticated forecasting tools, the East Coast was taken by surprise as a hurricane ripped into the New England coast with a fury that set off seismographs in Alaska. People found themselves, virtually without warning, in the midst of the most devastating storm ever recorded in North America. The "Florida Cyclone" killed some 600 people, destroyed 8,000 homes, and wrecked 6,000 boats.

In September 1918, soldiers stationed near Boston suddenly began to die. Doctors found the victims' lungs filled with a strange blue fluid. They identified the cause as influenza, but it was unlike any strain ever seen, and medical science proved powerless against it. In desperation, people turned to folk remedies, while frantic officials closed all public places and everyone was required to wear masks. But the virus was unstoppable, relentless, devastatingly lethal. By the time the epidemic ran its course, over 600,000 people were dead, more than all U.S. combat deaths of the 20th century.

Tells the story of the attempt to assimilate American Indians into white culture by educating them at special schools such as the Carlisle School for Indians. Founded by Richard Henry Pratt, this school and others like it attempted to wipe out all remnants of Indian culture, and, as a result, created a generation of Indians confused about their identities.

With the discovery of gold in California in 1849, fortune hunters poured into the western United States so fast that California was added to the union as a state in 1850. But the rich and expansive territory of California was a whole continent away from the existing seat of government and industry in the United States.

On December 2, 1859, a tall, gaunt, fifty-nine-year-old man was executed in Virginia before 1500 armed guards. Just a month earlier, few had heard of John Brown, a red-faced, thread-bare, scare-crow of a man with wild reddish brown hair whose sky-blue eyes held a look that bespoke madness, who one terrible night in Kansas committed cold-blooded murder as he embarked on a violent crusade to end slavery.

Rumors and fears that the Conemaugh Lake Reservoir had reached its summit and the South Fork Dam might burst were widespread for many years. By Friday, May 31, 1889, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, it had been raining for a week. Finally at 3:10 pm the center of the dam gave way. Considered the worst flood disaster in the nation's history - 2,209 persons were killed, a countless number of bodies were never found. The film is based on the accounts of those who survived.

Veterans share their stories of the "Forgotten War", reminding the viewer of the human and social costs the Korean War had on the U.S. Interviewees include Senators John Glenn and John S. Warner, baseball player Ted Williams, musician Willie Nelson, former Secretary of State James Baker, Rep. Charles Rangel, Lt. Col. Charles B. "Brad" Smith, Gen. Raymond Davis.

Examines the Battle of Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand, from the perspective of the Lakota, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Crow who lived on the Great Plains and from that of the white settlers who pushed west across the continent.

Explores the complex and often controversial life of Charles Lindbergh through contemporary photographs and films, interviews with family members, and quotations from his writings.

No soldier in modern history has been more admired or more reviled than Douglas MacArthur. A thorough portrait of a complex, imposing and fascinating general.

The story of political philosopher and visionary, Malcolm X, as told through the memories of people who had close personal and working relationships with him.

Uses a wealth of archival film, photographs and documents to uncover the story of this Jamaican immigrant who between 1916 and 1921 built the largest black mass movement in world history. Also features interviews with people who witnessed the Garvey movement first hand.

Mary Pickford created a totally new way of acting that entranced audiences and left them spell-bound. She was also a creative producer and shrewd businessperson who played a pivotal role in shaping the first new media of the twentieth century. This powerful and moving production uses footage, stills, original audio interviews with Pickford and clips from her movies to tell a story that is full of joy and power, of loneliness and despair.

Chronicles the formation and battlefield heroics of the first all-black Union regiment, the Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry. Highlights of this documentary include archival daguerreotypes, tintypes, lithographs, and commentary by various historians.

In the early 20th century, the U.S. Navy dominated Hawaii. Most Americans thought of the islands as a Pacific paradise, but in 1931, a dark incident shattered the tranquil veneer of the islands and exposed growing racial tensions. The wife of a Navy liutenant accused 5 local men of rape. One man was killed. In the trial that followed, celebrity attorney Clarence Darrow offered an impassioned defense on behalf of the husband, calling the murder an "honor killing."

Recounts the story of race movies produced for Afro-Americans from 1910 through 1950 and the role played by Oscar Micheaux, the leading Afro-American producer and director. These movies were designed for Afro-Americans, were frequently shown at midnight, and presented Afro-Americans in a positive light. Features interviews with Afro-American actors, actresses, and historians.

Tells the story of two women, 200 years apart, linked together by the massive yet cryptic diary one of them left behind. The life and world of Martha Ballard, a frontier midwife in Maine, is reconstructed through her diary. She lived through the economic boom and bust, and political and social turmoil of the decades following the American Revolution.

Using home movies owned by the sculptor's family, long-forgotten archival footage and still photographs, and beautiful original photography, Mount Rushmore tells a story that is as bizarre and wonderful as the monument itself.

Explores how the Sears catalogue, giving readers a sense of urban life and a vision of middle class splendors, reflected the changes of the time and became a symbol for the national ambitions and dreams of a sprawling country. Contains biographical information on Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck.

The shameful, sadistic murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a black boy who whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi grocery store in 1955, was a powerful catalyst for the civil rights movement. Although Till's killers were apprehended, they were quickly acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury and proceeded to sell their story to a journalist, providing grisly details of the murder. Three months after Till's body was recovered, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

Recounts the 1906 murder of Stanford White, New York City's leading architect, by Harry K. Thaw, eccentric heir to a Pittsburgh railroad fortune, over Evelyn Nesbit, Thaw's wife. Thaw's trial touched off an extended debate over widespread acceptance of a double standard--one for rich Americans and another for everyone else.

This series chronicles the history of New York City from its beginnings in 1609 as a Dutch trading post, through the depression, onto the turbulent years of change in the following decades after WWII, to its present day status as one of the most important and influential cities in the world. The final episode was created in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Tells the story of how the longest, most sophisticated electric subway in the world was built.

Documents the 72-year struggle for women's suffrage which culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. It illuminates the alliances, infighting, betrayals and defeats that paved the way for victory in the battle for women's right to vote. Historical footage is enhanced with vocal performances, and interviews with historians provide the viewer with both current and historical perspectives. This video is also available electronically.

Examines the efforts of the Children's Aid Society in New York, organized by minister Charles Loring Brace, which from 1853 to 1929 sent over 100,000 unwanted and orphaned children from the city to homes in rural America.

This DVD brings America's wartime experience, on the battlefield and at home, vividly and intimately to life. The series combines original color film footage with compelling passages from diaries and letters written by people who were part of an unforgettable period of history.

American Experience presents The Presidents: ten 20th century biographies that offer an intimate and compelling look at the men who have defined and re-defined the modern presidency, and who led the country through some of the most turbulent and consequential moment in our history.

Featuring newly discovered archival sources from Russia, civil defense films, and recently declassified military footage, "Race for the Superbomb" tells the story of a world at the brink of destruction.

Witness the life of passionate biologist and environmentalist, Rachel Carson, and how she exposed the effects of the unregulated use of pesticides and herbicides by the federal government, and sparked a revolution in environmental policy. This title is also available electronically.

The story of the tumultuous years after the Civil War during which America grappled with how to rebuild itself, how to successfully bring the South back into the Union and at the same time, how former slaves could be brought into the life of the country.

In the early 1830s Texas was about to explode. Although under Mexican rule, the region was home to more than 20,000 U.S. settlers agitated by what they saw as restrictive Mexican policies. Mexican officials, concerned with illegal trading and immigration in Texas, were prepared to fight hard to keep the province under their control. Caught in the middle were the area's 4,000 Mexican Texans or Tejanos who were forced to choose a side. The conflict pitted brother against brother and devastated the community. This film shows the Tejano gamble for a more prosperous future in an independent Texas proved tragic.

Explores the role of American journalists in the pivotal conflicts of the 20th century--and beyond. From San Juan Hill to the beaches of Normandy, from the jungles of Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, tells the stories of the reporters who witnessed and wrote the news from the battlefield. Features profiles of such distinguished historical figures as Richard Harding Davis, Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle, Robert Capa, Martha Gellhorn and Homer Bigart as well as conversations with some of the most influential correspondents of our time.

A documentary film that interviews American pilots who became prisoners of war in Vietnam and shows footage of the prison camps and captured prisoners.

RFK, a new biography of Robert Kennedy ... takes as its theme lines from Aeschylus that Kennedy could recite from memory: "He who learns must suffer." RFK is a tragedy in two acts. In part one: The garish sun, Robert Kennedy devotes himself to his glamorous brother John, suppressing his own ambitions for the sake of the Kennedy name. In part two: The awful grace of God, after an assassin's bullet takes his brother's life, RFK is bereft, not only of a brother he loved, but a role that had given meaning to his life. Plunged into unremitting pain and grief, he struggles to find his own voice.

Follows Andrew Carnegie's life from his impoverished origins in Scotland, through his business career, when he was on the cutting edge of the industrial revolution in telegraphy, railroads, and steel. He then went on to become a philanthropist of unusual fervor.

With unprecedented access to the family and its archives, this film explores the paradoxical lives of this fabled American dynasty using revealing home movies, archival footage and photographs, and interviews with eight Rockefellers, their colleagues and friends, it paints a vivid portrait of four generations of the family.

Recounts the story of the underground railroad through narratives of escaped slaves. Includes interviews with descendants of slaves and slave holders, who describe the personal danger and terrible risk involved in each slave's departure.

The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The case included a frameup, an all-white jury, rushed trials, an attempted lynching, and an angry mob; it is frequently given as an example of an overall miscarriage of justice. Also available electronically.

This revealing and poignant film by Ken Burns portrays 200 years of Shaker life in America, guided by the recollections of the three surviving members of the faith, along with a wealth of archival material from over 40 collections. Explore every aspect of this strange and noble sect that produced some of the greatest architecture and furniture in American history. This is also available electronically.

This documentary features revealing interviews with the prominent figures of the era including: Barbara Ehrenreich, Daniel Ellsberg, Jesse Jackson, Tom Hayden, Arlo Guthrie, Henry Kissinger, Norman Mailer, Robert McNamara, Ed Messe III and Bobby Seale.

The drought of 1931 brought financial and emotional ruin to thousands of families in the Southern Plains. Dust Bowl was America's worst ecological disaster.

The history of the telephone, including it's invention. Covers 39 years of use and tells how the telephone altered the way the world interacts.

Deals with rhythm and blues music performed by Black musicians during the 1940s and 1950s in small towns and rural areas of the American South, and their aspirations of performing in the Apollo Theater.

The documentary also takes a straightforward look at life for people who are part of the cultural-linguistic group who use American Sign Language and often define themselves as "Deaf" with a capital and cultural "D" and deaf people who, for a variety of reasons, do not identify with the Deaf cultural community. The history often shows that intersections between deaf and Deaf people are many and that oppression and discrimination are common experiences.

Documentary about Theodore Roosevelt. Explores the influence of Roosevelt's childhood, his rise to the U.S. Presidency, and the years after he left office.

On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah, a boisterous crowd gathered to witness the completion of one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th century: the building of the transcontinental railroad. The electrifying moment--the realization of a dream first pursued by a farsighted and determined engineer decades earlier--marked the culmination of six years of grueling work. It reveals both why the railroad was built and how it would shape the nation, while shedding light on the politics and culture of mid-nineteenth century America.

It argues that the 18th president was an honorable man, who tried to keep promises made to African Americans and who managed to keep the country together in the face of deep divisions.

In this provocative, thorough examination of the final months of World War II, American Experience looks at the escalation of bloodletting from the vantage point of both the Japanese and the Americans.

War letters tells the story of American wars from the viewpoint of the men and women in the front lines and those who waited at home.

The history of the western movement and the philosophy of manifest destiny -- how the American west was lost and won from the time of the gold rush until after the last Indian wars at Wounded Knee. The first program presents the opening decades of expansion, key technological advances, and the uprooting of the native people, through the Civil War period; the second examines the four-year period immediately following the Civil War to reveal the conflict between white invaders and Native Americans up to the completion of the transcontinental railroad; the third follows the sequence of events leading to the battle of the Little Big Horn; and the last program chronicles the oppression of Native American tribes, the rise of the Ghost Dance religion and the massacre at Wounded Knee. This is also available electronically.

The all-American story of two Midwestern boys who truly believed they could fly, Orville and Wilbur Wright. Discover little-known facts about these visionary brothers and their flying machines that changed the world.

Racial tensions between the Anglo and Mexican American communities in Los Angeles, California erupted into violence after the conviction of Henry "Hank" Leyvas and seventeen other Mexican American youths for the murder of José Díaz in what was perceived as an unfair trial in 1943.