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.

52m 54s

Chapter 1 | The Blinding of Isaac Woodard

10m 31s

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind.

Judge Julius Waties Waring

1m 7s

Julius Waties Waring presided over the trial of a white police chief who brutally beat and blinded Black soldier Isaac Woodard in 1946. He became an unexpected civil rights champion with rulings on several pivotal cases in the 1940s.

Extended Trailer | Blinding of Isaac Woodard

2m

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind.

Trailer | Blinding of Isaac Woodard | American Experience

30s

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind.

The Voice of Marian Anderson

1m 9s

In 1925, 28-year-old Marian Anderson won a New York Philharmonic competition that drew national attention. But most signing opportunities in the U.S. remained closed to Anderson because she was Black.

Extended Trailer | Voice of Freedom | American Experience

1m 40s

Hailed as a voice that “comes around once in a hundred years” by maestros in Europe and widely celebrated by both white and black audiences at home, Marian Anderson's fame hadn’t been enough to spare her from the indignities and outright violence of racism and segregation.

Walter F. White

1m 18s

In 1930, Walter White took over as executive secretary of the NAACP. When the Daughters of the American Revolution barred Marian Anderson from singing at Constitution Hall. White had an inspiration that transcended the whole debate: a free, outdoor concert on the Lincoln Memorial steps.

Chapter 1 | Voice of Freedom

9m 18s

On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stepped up to a microphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Inscribed on the walls of the monument behind her were the words “all men are created equal.”

Trailer | Goin’ Back to T-Town | American Experience

30s

The story of Greenwood, an extraordinary Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that prospered during the 1920s and 30s despite rampant and hostile segregation. Torn apart in 1921 by one of the worst racially-motivated massacres in the nation’s history, the neighborhood rose from the ashes.

Extended Trailer | The Codebreaker | American Experience

1m 25s

The Codebreaker reveals the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst whose painstaking work to decode thousands of messages for the U.S. government would send infamous gangsters to prison in the 1920s and bring down a massive, near-invisible Nazi spy ring in WWII.

Elizebeth Friedman: Cryptanalyst Pioneer

1m 6s

Elizebeth Smith Friedman was an American codebreaker from Indiana. During Prohibition, her decrypts and testimony brought down international drug rings and liquor smugglers. Friedman’s codebreaking in WWII enabled the US to win the “Battle of the Atlantic” and smash Nazi spy rings.

Trailer | The Codebreaker | American Experience

30s

The story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst whose painstaking work to decode thousands of messages for the U.S. government would send infamous gangsters to prison in the 1920s and bring down a massive, near-invisible Nazi spy ring in WWII.

William Friedman: Cryptologist

1m 14s

William F. Friedman married Elizebeth Friedman in 1917 and the two began a life of codebreaking for the U.S. Government. During WWI, they invented new methods of codebreaking and laid the foundation for modern cryptology.

Mississippi Justice

13m 49s

On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman—were brutally executed by the Ku Klux Klan on a secluded dirt road in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Now a new short film from American Experience tells the story of the murder plot, carried out by the Klan and enabled by police collusion and a Mississippi state spy agency.

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