American Experience

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.

Barred from performing in Constitution Hall because of her race, Marian Anderson would sing for the American people in the open air.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

The fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the early 1900s, a group of black businessmen purchased land in the northeast section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. They called their community Greenwood.

The story of Greenwood, an extraordinary Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that prospered during the 1920s and 30s despite rampant and hostile segregation.

Part Two examines the mounting dispute over strategy and tactics, and reveals how the pervasive racism of the time, particularly in the South, impacted women's fight for the vote.

Part Two examines the mounting dispute over strategy and tactics, and reveals how the pervasive racism of the time, particularly in the South, impacted women's fight for the vote.

The women of New York came together like nowhere else to push for their state’s ratification of the 19th Amendment and win a pivotal victory in the long fight for women’s suffrage.

Black women have long been at the forefront of the right to vote. Today, 100 years after the passage of the 19th Amendment and 55 years after the Voting Rights Act, their fight continues.

They were just some of the first generation of suffragists: Elizabeth C. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Sarah Remond, Susan B. Anthony.

Reconstruction in the South, immigration in the North, and expansionism in the West — the first
generation of suffragists faced geographic and political division.