The NAACP and Its Architects

American Experience

History Series / 15 Seasons

American Experience, TV's most-watched history series, brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

Watch Latest: S37 E1

1h 52m / TV-14

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas

1m 33s

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas advocated for conservation and joined the movement to make the Everglades a national park. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass and forever redefined the region as essential not only to wildlife, but to people.

The Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928

1m 30s

In the summer of 1928, heavy rainfall raised Lake Okeechobee’s water level three feet above normal. That fall, a hurricane smashed the coast of Florida, and the impact flooded Lake Okeechobee. The inland flood obliterated 21 miles of the 47-mile earthen and an estimated 2,500 people died in Southern Florida, most of them migrant farm workers.

Hamilton Disston: Pioneering Everglades Developer

1m 15s

In 1881, Hamilton Disston, a wealthy enterpreneur cut a deal to purchase four million acres of Everglades, hoping to drain the land for selling and promised to drain an additional 12 million acres. But the wet season reclaimed the lands and six years later, the state commission declared his efforts a failure.

Harry Houdini's Impulse to Escape

1m 38s

At age 33, Houdini began performing dangerous water escapes outdoors to promote his vaudeville shows around the country. His encore to escape not only appealed to thousands of spectators, but also brought people from foreign countries to escape from poverty and injustice.

Genetic Screening: Controlling Heredity

11m 12s

With every new advance in prenatal genetic screening, the ability to prevent suffering has also sparked difficult questions about what should count as “a disease” versus “a difference,” and whether we’re in danger of wiping out certain segments of the population. These fears arise, in part, because just 100 years ago, that’s exactly what a powerful movement—the eugenics movement—tried to do.

Thomas Hunt Morgan

1m 19s

Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American biologist and zoologist. He joined the board of the Eugenics Record Office when it was founded in 1904. But after a decade of crossing thousands of mutant fruit flies, Morgan made a startling discovery — that eugenics had no business informing American laws, and Morgan left the Eugenics Record Office.

The Eugenics Crusade: Trailer

30s

The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely — and largely unknown — campaign to breed a “better” American race, tracing the rise of the movement that turned the fledgling science of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control. Populated by figures both celebrated and obscure, The Eugenics Crusade is a revelatory portrait of an America at once strange and eerily familiar.

John Harvey Kellogg

1m 19s / TV-PG

John Harvey Kellogg was a doctor, nutritionist and businessman. Also a health reformer, he was obsessed with clean diet and exercise. For a time, he worked with leading eugenicist Charles Davenport to organize the Race Betterment Conference at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco.

P.G. Lowery and the Spread of African-American Music

2m 47s / TV-PG

P.G. Lowery grew up in a musical family. After training at the Boston Conservatory of Music, he joined the circus at the turn of the twentieth century. Lowery’s all-black band spread early African-American music wherever the circus performed.

The Circus: Episode 2 Trailer

30s

Revisit the heyday of this distinctly American form of entertainment when former rivals Barnum, Bailey and the Ringling Brothers joined forces to present the “greatest show on earth” in big cities and small towns across the country.

The Ringling Brothers

1m 14s

Sons of poor immigrants in the Midwest, the Ringling Brothers expanded within a decade from a small regional circus to a large traveling circus across the country, and ultimately bought Barnum and Bailey to become the largest circus in history.

Jumbo: The Elephant

1m 21s

P.T. Barnum buys Jumbo from the London Zoological Society and ships Jumbo to the U.S. The sale caused protests in England, but Jumbo becomes a sensation in America. Eventually after a few seasons with the Circus, Jumbo dies after being hit by an unscheduled freight train.

Charles Davenport

1m 25s

A proponent of Eugenics crusade, Charles Davenport believed that selective breeding could transform the human race. He founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910 and recommended widespread eugenics education, including immigration laws to keep out the "defectives" and forced sterilization of native born and immigrants.

Mable Stark: The Trainer

1m 23s

Trained as a nurse, Mable Stark's very first trip to the Circus transformed her life. She marries one of the foremost big cat trainer of the time and becomes one of the 20th century's most famous cat trainers.

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