The NAACP and Its Architects

American Experience

History Series / 14 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 E2

53m

Trailer | The Busing Battleground

1m 53s

The Busing Battleground viscerally captures the class tensions and racial violence that ensued when Black and white students in Boston were bused for the first time between neighborhoods to comply with a federal desegregation order.

The Tea on Drag

4m 44s

Through award-winning shows like "RuPaul's Drag Race," drag has re-emerged into American pop culture consciousness. But where does the act come from? How long has it been around? And how is drag different from other kinds of gender nonconforming expression?

Trailer | Casa Susanna

2m 10s

In the 1950s and ’60s, an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge at a house in the Catskills region of New York. Known as Casa Susanna, the house provided a safe place to express their true selves.

Trailer | The Sun Queen

1m 29s

Scientist Mária Telkes dedicated her career to harnessing the power of the sun. Though undercut and thwarted by her male colleagues, she persevered to design the first successfully solar-heated house in 1948 and held more than 20 patents.

The Dover Sun House

3m 39s

In 1948, the Nemethy family moved into a curious new solar powered house in Dover, Massachusetts. The Dover Sun House, as it came to be known, was designed by physicist Mária Telkes, and it was the first modern house to be heated by nothing but the sun. This short video details the Nemethy experience of living there while also explaining the thermal heating system used to heat the home.

Teaser | The Movement and the "Madman"

30s

Discover the story of the 1969 showdown between President Nixon and the antiwar movement. Told through firsthand accounts, the film reveals how movement leaders mobilized disparate groups to create two massive protests that changed history.

Trailer | Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History

1m 15s

Monopoly is America’s favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. But behind the myth of the game’s creation is an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing.

The Woman Behind Monopoly

4m 44s

Monopoly might be America's favorite board game, but it has a surprising secret. The true inventor may be a woman you've never heard of: Lizzie Magie. In this episode of "What the History?!" we present the inside scoop of Monopoly's origins.

Zora Neale Hurston, In Her Own Words

1m 44s

In 1936, the anthropologist and noted Harlem Renaissance figure Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Jamaica to learn the customs and traditions of its free Black population. Her experience there highlights one of the many ways she was ahead of her time.

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