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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.
Riveted: The History of Jeans reveals the fascinating and surprising story of the iconic American garment. They’re more than just a pair of pants — America’s tangled past is woven deeply into the indigo fabric. From its roots in slavery to the Wild West, youth culture, hippies, high fashion and hip-hop, jeans are the fabric on which the history of American ideology and politics are writ large.
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.
The story of a Mississippi town’s effort to integrate its public schools in 1970.
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.
Casa Susanna recounts how 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, it provided a safe place where the persecuted and frightened found freedom and acceptance.
Until his death at the age of 106, Tyrus Wong was America’s oldest living Chinese American artist and one of the last remaining artists from the golden age of Disney animation. The quiet beauty of his Eastern-influenced paintings had a pioneering impact on American art and popular culture.
Explore the life and times of author L. Frank Baum, the creator of one of the most beloved, enduring and classic American narratives - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Baum never lost his childlike sense of wonder and eventually crafted his observations into a magical tale of survival, adventure and self-discovery, reinterpreted through the generations in films, books and musicals.
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.
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Taken Hostage, revisits the Iran hostage crisis that began on November 4, 1979. The taking of 52 Americans hostage in Tehran began a crisis that would transform both the U.S. and Iran and forever, and upend the focus and direction of American foreign policy.