Join Revolutionary Spaces Associate Director of Collections Lori Erickson Fidler and acclaimed podcaster and New York Times best-selling author Mike Duncan ( Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution) as they explore an iconic artifact from the Revolutionary Spaces collection, a sword brought to America by Lafayette.

The program will examine Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equality on both sides of the Atlantic, the deep interconnections between the American and French Revolutions, and the impact of his legacy on our world today. A wealthy French aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette played a decisive role in the American Revolution while fighting alongside George Washington, eventually becoming a globally revered statesman, fierce advocate for liberty, and a passionate abolitionist. The program will conclude with an audience Q&A.

Celebrating women throughout our country’s diverse history, Tiya Miles, award-winning Harvard historian, converses with Pulitzer Prize winner Laurel Thatcher Ulrich about the natural world and the women who changed America. 

Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. The Indigenous women’s basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced competitors at the 1904 World’s Fair. Spotlighting such women who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, farmworkers’ champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.

For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits; they were techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, this beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage, and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women’s independence, resourcefulness, and vision.

A major exhibition on the Holocaust and the infamous concentration camp is now open in Boston.

Under the Radar sits down with the author of “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song," a new biography detailing the life of jazz legend, Ella Fitzgerald.

In 1974, U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ordered the Boston Public Schools to bus students between predominantly white and Black neighborhoods. The plan was intended to integrate the schools, but it led to racial violence and protests. The talks here study what happened that year from different perspectives and the long lasting legacy.

10 Million Names aims to recover and restore the history of those enslaved from America's past.

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is pleased to present a film preview and discussion of our upcoming film,  The Cancer Detectives . The event will feature an extended clip from the film and a panel discussion with filmmakers and participants.

Click this link to join:  https://wgbh.zoom.us/j/99001979557

Featured guests include:

Gene Tempest is the writer and director of The Cancer Detectives. She is an award-winning filmmaker and historian whose work has appeared in The Boston Globe and The New York Times. From 2016-2017, she served as the first-ever Historian in Residence for American Experience, where she helped fund and develop new history programming for public television.

Deirdre Cooper Owens is an award-winning historian and popular public speaker. She is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut and the author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and The Origins of American Gynecology.

Rachel Gross is an award-winning science journalist and the author of Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, WIRED, New Scientist, Slate, Undark, and NPR, among others.

The discussion will be moderated by Cameo George, executive producer of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

About the film: The story of how the life-saving cervical cancer test became an ordinary part of women’s lives is as unusual and remarkable as the coalition of people who ultimately made it possible: a Greek immigrant, Dr. George Papanicolau; his intrepid wife, Mary; Japanese-born artist Hashime Murayama; Dr. Helen Dickens, an African American OBGYN in Philadelphia; and an entirely new class of female scientists known as cyto-screeners. But the test was just the beginning. Once the test proved effective, the campaign to make pap smears available to millions of women required nothing short of a total national mobilization. The Cancer Detectives tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the people who fought tirelessly to save women from what was once the number one cancer killer of women.

The Cancer Detectives  premieres Tuesday, March 26th at 9/8c on PBS.



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Major funding for American Experience provided by Liberty Mutual Insurance, Carlisle Companies and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Funding for The Cancer Detectives provided by GBH Voices and Equity Fund and members of The Better Angels Society including The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund. Additional funding for American Experience provided by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, The American Experience Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television viewers. American Experience is produced for PBS by GBH Boston.


Photo credit: GBH Creative

Photographer Stanley Forman captured a desegregation protest at City Hall Plaza that roiled the nation.

"Fly With Me" features the stories of stewardesses who fought back against the sexist and racist restrictions of the 1950s airline industry.

A new podcast from GBH News, "What Is Owed?" explores what reparations would look like in one of America's oldest cities.