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African Americans History Indians of North America History Political activists United States Reconstruction (U.S.history, 1865-1877) Social structure United States History 1945-1953 United States History 1953-1961 United States History 1961-1969 United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 World War, 1939-1945Filter By Series
PBS American ExperienceSummary: From the day that 14-year-old Ansel Adams first saw the transcendent beauty of the Yosemite Valley, his life was, in his words, "colored and modulated by the great earth-gesture of the Sierra.” Few American photographers have reached a wider audience than Adams, and none has had more impact on how Americans grasp the majesty of their continent. Ansel Adams, from the PBS American Experience...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
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Summary: He has survived U.S. hostility, an invasion, several CIA assassination attempts and an economic embargo. His face, with its trademark beard, has become an iconic image worldwide, yet the man himself remains an enigma to all but a few. Fidel Castro, from the PBS American Experience collection, attempts to answer a singular question—what really happened in Cuba under the rule of Fidel Castro?...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: On the morning of January 8, 1902, a southbound commuter train traveling through a smoky, congested tunnel in New York City's Grand Central Depot slammed into the rear of another train, instantly killing 17 people and injuring 38 more. An engineer's innovative response to the crisis gave birth to one of America's greatest establishments: Grand Central Terminal. Upon its opening on February 12,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: It was 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco—a mecca for a visionary new society: one that rejected war, hatred, conformity, and money. And for a brief period, it was the playing field for a new way of life. This PBS American Experience episode is a striking picture of San Francisco's summer of ’67—from the utopian beginnings, when peace and love prevailed, to the chaos,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: An Emmy® award-winning program, this episode from the PBS American Experience collection investigates the 1876 event that has become American folklore—the Battle of Little Big Horn—also known as “Custer's Last Stand.” Using journals, oral accounts, and Native American ledger drawings as well as archival and feature films, this program explores this watershed moment from two views: white and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
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Summary: Eighty years ago, Elliot Bobo was taken from his alcoholic father's home, given a small cardboard suitcase, and put on board an “orphan train” bound for Arkansas. Bobo never saw his father again. He was one of tens of thousands of neglected and orphaned children who roamed the streets of New York in search of money, food, and shelter. Beginning in 1853 a young minister named Charles Loring...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1995
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Summary: Saint or Sinner? Sister Aimee, a part of the PBS American Experience collection, tells the dramatic life story of Aimee Semple McPherson— the controversial, charismatic, and wildly popular evangelist (reportedly drawing bigger crowds than P. T. Barnum and Harry Houdini) and her instrumental role in bringing conservative Protestantism into mainstream culture and American politics in the 1920s...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: In October, 1967, in a jungle in Vietnam, a Viet Cong ambush nearly wiped out an American battalion, prompting some in power to question whether the war might be unwinnable. Half a world away, a protest at the University of Wisconsin spiraled out of control. Two Days in October, from the PBS American Experience collection, is based on David Maraniss‘ Pulitzer Prize winning book, They Marched...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: In 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt received information that Germany and Japan were developing an elusive and terrifying arsenal of biological weaponry. In response, the U.S. and its allies rushed to develop their own germ warfare program, enlisting some of America's most promising scientists in the effort. The Living Weapons, a part of the PBS...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Martha Ballard was a midwife and mother living in the wilds of Maine during the chaotic decades following the American Revolution. Her diary is an up-close view of the poverty, disease, and day-to-day hardships of a struggling young nation. Some two hundred years later, in a quest to understand 18th-century America through a woman's eyes, historian and author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich spent eight...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1997
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Summary: In May 1960, the FDA approved the sale of a pill that arguably would have a greater impact on American culture than any other drug in the nation's history. Although a backlash was expected, as soon as the drug hit the market, there was very little protest. In fact, within five years, more than six million American women would make it part of their daily lives. The Pill, from the PBS American...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
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Summary: Before the Civil War broke out, and during it as well, the “Underground Railroad” operated as an effective, secret network for African-Americans to escape the bonds of slavery. Roots of Resistance, from the PBS American Experience collection, chronicles the workings of the Underground Railroad, from its creation and support by ex-slaves and white abolitionists, to its up-close portrayal of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
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Summary: In June 1943, Los Angeles erupted into the worse race riots in the city to date. For ten straight nights, American sailors armed with make-shift weapons cruised Mexican-American neighborhoods in search of “zoot-suiters”—hip, young teens dressed in baggy pants and long-tailed coats—symbols that blurred cultural lines and pushed the boundaries of race and class. Their posturing and self-assurance...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
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Summary: Martyr, madman…and murderer. John Brown led a righteous crusade against the evils of slavery yet used horrifying violence to carry out his mission. He was an extremist who was as controversial and misunderstood in the mid-1800s as he is to this very day. To his supporters, John Brown was a saint; to his opponents he was an insane murderer. His 1859 raid on the armory at Harpers Ferry sparked a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1999
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Summary: Robert Jackson, a 53-year-old Supreme Court Justice from New York, appeared before the Nuremberg Tribunal on November 20, 1945. He was the chief prosecutor in the first-ever trial to put an entire national government in the dock. While governments and armies had been waging wars for centuries—an action not punishable according to international law—the actions of the German Nazi party during...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: What came to be known as the “I Have a Dream” speech was a high point in the public career of Martin Luther King, Jr. But it was also a turning point in his personal life as he embarked on a controversial, often lonely struggle to redefine and redirect the movement he had helped lead. Through it all, he remained steadfast in his profound spiritual commitment to the human rights of all people...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
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Summary: For decades in the 19th century, Apache tribes resisted the westward advance of the pioneers and the threat they posed to traditional ways of life. Fighting the longest was Geronimo—one of the most famous, feared, and misunderstood Native American warriors in history. Geronimo and the Apache Resistance, from the PBS American Experience collection, separates myth from reality in the tragic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1988
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Summary: By the middle of the 19th-century, a network of telegraph poles strung across America had changed the way the country did business. But communicating with Europe was another matter. Messages to London were sent aboard sailing ships, taking up to several weeks to reach their destination. Though the need for a transatlantic cable was obvious, the physical challenges to laying one were enormous....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program explores the Republic of South Korea, focusing on its culture, traditions, and especially its cuisine. This modern country with a unique cultural identity is known for its rice farming, traditional celadon pottery-making, fishing, and its national dish—kimchi. This program from PBS’s Hidden Journey series also includes the Chu’sok festival, which honors ancestors, Buddhism, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000