American Experience

Season 37

8 episodes · Feb 21, 2025

Season Videos

Trailer · American Experience: The Great War: Transformed

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  • Forgotten Hero: Walter White and The NAACP
    S37E1

    Forgotten Hero: Walter White and The NAACP

    Feb 24, 2025113m

    While many consider the birth of the civil rights movement to be 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus, the stage had been set decades before by activists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some of the NAACP leaders are familiar, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall, but Walter White, head of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, has been all but forgotten. With his blond hair and blue eyes, Walter White looked white; he described himself as “an enigma, a Black man occupying a white body.” Like virtually all light-skinned African Americans of his day, White was descended from enslaved Black women and powerful white men. But he was Black — by law, identity, and conviction and spent his entire life fighting for Black civil rights. Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP traces the life of this neglected civil rights hero and seeks to explain his disappearance from our history.

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  • Change, Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act
    S37E2

    Change, Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act

    Mar 24, 202553m

    The emotional and dramatic story of the decades-long push for equality and accessibility that culminated in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. A story of courage and perseverance, the film highlights the determined people who literally put their bodies on the line to achieve their goal and change the lives of all Americans.

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  • Mr. Polaroid
    S37E3

    Mr. Polaroid

    Mar 31, 202552m

    Before the iPhone, the Polaroid camera let people instantly chronicle their lives. Along with instant photo mania, its company culture became the model for Silicon Valley. Mr. Polaroid is the story of Edwin Land, the man behind the camera.

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  • Clearing the Air: The War on Smog
    S37E4

    Clearing the Air: The War on Smog

    Aug 26, 202553m

    A chronicle of how Los Angeles' devastating smog problem in the 1940s and 50s led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Clean Air Act.

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  • Hard Hat Riot
    S37E5

    Hard Hat Riot

    Sep 30, 202581m

    Hard Hat Riot tells the story of a struggling metropolis, a flailing president, a divided people, and a bloody juncture when the nation violently diverged ― culminating in a new political and cultural landscape that radically redefined American politics and foreshadowed the future.

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  • Kissinger (1): The Necessity of Power
    S37E6

    Kissinger (1): The Necessity of Power

    Oct 27, 202583m

    The story of Henry Kissinger, the enigmatic powerbroker who served in the topmost echelons of U.S. diplomacy. Celebrated or reviled, his contradictions reflect those central to late 20th century U.S. foreign policy. With interviews from proteges and colleagues, Kissinger endeavors to understand his relentless drive for power, and how his policies shaped today’s world.

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  • Kissinger (2): The Opportunist
    S37E7

    Kissinger (2): The Opportunist

    Oct 28, 202583m

    Discover how Henry Kissinger's anti-Communist zeal would shape U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam, China, Chile, and the Soviet Union in the second half of the 20th century, through the voices of historians and colleagues.

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  • Bombshell
    S37E8

    Bombshell

    Jan 6, 202683m

    The efforts of a group of intrepid reporters to let the world know the truth about the bombings of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

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