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.
Nazi Town, USA tells the unknown story of the German American Bund, a 1930s pro-Nazi group with chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country. Many believe the Bund represented a real threat of fascist subversion in the U.S.
An intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking writings revolutionized our relationship to the natural world and launched the modern environmental movement.
The little-known story of a deadly 1898 race massacre and coup d’état in Wilmington, North Carolina, when white supremacists overthrew the multi-racial government of state’s largest city through a campaign of violence and intimidation.
The dramatic story of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The film highlights the determined people who literally put their bodies on the line to pass the legislation that changed the lives of all Americans.
The story of civil rights hero Walter White — one of the most influential Black men in mid-century America and leader of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, yet one of the least known figures in civil rights history.
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.
Explore the lives and legacies of three African American ambassadors who broke racial barriers to reach high-ranking appointments in the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations and left a lasting impact on the Foreign Service.
Meet the influential author and key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Also a trained anthropologist, Hurston collected folklore throughout the South and Caribbean — reclaiming, honoring and celebrating Black life on its own terms.
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.
In 1969, homosexuality was illegal in almost every state... but that was about to change. The Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement.
A brilliant scientist, Oppenheimer was tasked with the development of the atomic bomb in the top-secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico during World War II.
What happens when the president is unable to serve? Explore the dramatic period between 1963 and 1976, when a grief-stricken, then scandal-stricken America was forced to define the role of the vice president and the process of succession.
Explore what happened when the small Mississippi town of Leland integrated its public schools in 1970. Told through the remembrances of students, teachers and parents, the film shows how the town – and America – were transformed.
Meet the titans and barons of the glittering late 19th century, whose materialistic extravagance contrasted harshly with the poverty of the struggling workers who challenged them. The vast disparities between them sparked debates still raging today.
The story of nine working-class young men from the University of Washington who took the rowing world and America by storm when they captured the gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
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.
The Cancer Detectives tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the coalition of people who fought tirelessly to save women from cervical cancer—which was once the number one cancer killer of women.
In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY discovered their neighborhood had been built on a former chemical waste dump. Housewives activated to create a grassroots movement that galvanized the landmark Superfund Bill.
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.
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.
The shocking story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy college students who murdered a 14-year-old boy in 1924 to prove they were smart enough to get away with it.
Discover the story of the polygraph, the controversial device that transformed modern police work, seized headlines and was extolled as an infallible crime-fighting tool. A tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.