‘The Real All Americans’

Reel All Americans

The Real All Americans is Sally Jenkins’ sweeping nonfiction account of two coinciding chapters in American history: Just as the Western frontier was closing, football “jumped up out of the mud” to replace it in the national psyche. Jenkins’ tale takes readers from a real battle in 1866 to a football contest in 1912, pitting the Carlisle Indians against West Point. “Football,” says the veteran sportswriter, “became a substitute for war,” and in its earliest days the game, like the real thing, could be mortally dangerous.

NPR Podcast: Sally Jenkins Discusses ‘The Real All Americans’ (37:43)

Native Americans as Prisoners of War

Background – Aaron Huey’s effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people — appalling, and largely ignored — compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking history lesson in this bold, courageous talk.

#1 View Mr. Huey’s TED Talk ” America’s native prisoners of war” (15 Minutes)

#2 From the talk construct a timeline on Native America History and provide a brief summary of each event mentioned

#3 Provide a reaction/reflection to one of the following Aaron Huey quotes:

“[The U.S. government] was tired of treaties. They were tired of sacred hills. They were tired of ghost dances. And they were tired of all the inconveniences of the Sioux. So they brought out their cannons. ‘You want to be an Indian now?’ they said, finger on the trigger.”

“‘Wasichu’ is a Lakota word that means ‘non-Indian,’ but another version of this word means ‘the one who takes the best meat for himself.’”

More Medals of Honor were given for the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children than for any battle in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.” on the Wounded Knee massacre

“The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, ‘My God, what are these people doing to themselves? They’re killing each other. They’re killing themselves while we watch them die.’ This is how we came to own these United States. This is the legacy of manifest destiny.”

Enrichment: Photographing, and Listening to, the Lakota

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/photographing-and-listening-to-the-lakota/

Review: Transportation Innovation

1825 Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation
Key Player : Gov. DeWitt Clinton The building of the Erie Canal, like the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal, embodies one of the greatest and most riveting stories of American ingenuity

The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 Key Player: Theodore Judah
” An Act to aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, and to secure to the government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes.”

1914 Building of the Panama Canal Key Player: Alfred Thayer Mahan
“A continent divided, a world united” The United States now has a two sea navy. Mahan vision of a stronger navy to protect American interests and commerce comes just in time for the start of World War.

Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Key Player: President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act massive interstate highway building (41, 000 miles) contributes to suburbanization.

The Railroad Prophet

Judah

The prophet of the transcontinental railroad did not live to see it built. Theodore Judah was known as “Crazy Judah” because of his single-minded passion for driving a railroad through the Sierra Nevada mountains. His advocacy and enthusiasm for the project in California and in Washington, D.C., made possible America’s first transcontinental route. Judah constructed the first railroad in California, helped organize the Central Pacific Railroad Co., surveyed routes across the Sierra Nevada, and served as the railroad’s agent in Washington, D.C.

Yet his scouting, surveying, lobbying, and fundraising efforts defined the route and prepared the way for the technology that would unite a nation.

New Technology
Theodore Judah and the American railroad matured together. He was born in 1826 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1830, America had just 23 miles of track, but the railroad businesswas about to explode. As a boy Judah studied civil engineering. By 18 he was a railroad surveyor, giving himself a practical education in technology not even two decades old.

A Practical Plan
Engineers were in high demand in the late 1840s, as tracks spread across the countryside like creeping vines. Judah’s enthusiasm earned him the nickname “Crazy Judah,” but by 1856 he and his men had built the Sacramento Valley Line, the first railroad west of the Missouri River. The following year he published a pamphlet, “A Practical Plan for Building the Pacific Railroad,” reviewing engineering problems and painting visions of a nation united by tracks — and commerce — from coast to coast. Such a railroad had been discussed for decades — but the financing and engineering obstacles were formidable.

Maps and Money
Nominated by California’s 1859 Pacific Railroad Convention, Judah traveled to Washington for a crash course in lobbying. He returned having argued persuasively for transcontinental train travel. But he realized he would have to define a practical route and find private financial backing. By October 1861, he had both: a route over the Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada, and a group of California businessmen as partners.

Untimely Death
Soon after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, tensions mounted between Judah and his business associates. He decided to find new partners in New York — but he got sick during the journey, and died soon after his arrival on the east coast in late 1863. Judah’s partners, known as the Big Four — Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford — would reap the rewards of the project Judah set in motion. When it was completed in 1869, the transcontinental railroad made the nation smaller, fostered trade, and improved frontier life.

Working on the Railroad
Stephen E. Ambrose tells the story of the men who linked the East and West coasts.

Stephen Ambrose: Nothing Like It In The World
The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869

Heroism and the Transcontinental Railroad

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/judah_hi.html