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PBS: Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony-Resources

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Objectives

Students will:

Understand the constitutional basis and history of the State of the Union Address

Explore significant moments in twentieth century State of the Union Addresses and identify important historic themes

Collaborate with classmates to identify likely topics for the State of the Union Address

Assess President Obama's State of the Union Address

Resources
Handout: The State of the Union Address Video: Inside the White House: "The State of the Union Address" Interactive Timeline: Historic State of the Union Addresses Graphic Organizer: Historic Addresses Graphic Organizer: President Obama's Address Handout: A Letter to the President These activities require access to the internet.
1. The Origins of the State of the Union Address

a. Interpreting the Constitution: Distribute the handout The State of the Union Address to the class. Ask students to read Article II, Section III silently to themselves and then ask someone to read it aloud to the class. Prompt students to identify words or phrases they don't understand. Have students express Article II, Section III in their own words. How precise is the Constitution about how often the president needs to report on the State of Union?

b. A Short History: Have students watch the short video Inside the White House: "The State of the Union Address". Ask students how the State of the Union has evolved over time? Where is it given? Who attends the State of the Union Address?

2. Historic State of the Union Addresses

Break the class into groups of two or three. (The activity can also be done as a whole class, or as a homework assignment.) Distribute the graphic organizer Historic Addresses to each student. Direct students to the interactive timeline. Depending on time available, assign each group a few or all of the presidential speeches and have them fill in the graphic organizer. Tell students to look for the "recommended viewing" time period at the end of each description. (Students viewing President Nixon's Address have two short clips to watch.)

Have the groups report back to the class. Tell students to record information from the other groups' reports on their graphic organizer.

What historical events are mentioned?

Which State of the Union Addresses were optimistic? Which were pessimistic?

What were the main issues featured in the video selections?

Were issues repeated from president to president?

Do any of the issues mentioned have relevance today?

3. Previewing the President's Address

Tell students that they will be watching President Barack Obama's 2016 State of the Union Address.

Distribute the graphic organizer President Obama's Address. Ask the class to brainstorm what students think the president will speak about. What do students think will be the main issue? Have students explain their reasoning. What are the other issues that they believe President Obama will bring up? Have students record their answers on the graphic organizer. Tell students that they will use the graphic organizer when watching the State of the Union. Watch the State of the Union Address as a class or assign it for homework.

4. Making Connections

Have students refer to their graphic organizers and present their findings.

What topic got the most attention from the president? Why do students think the president focused on these topics?

Did the president make any historical references?

Did he talk about any topics that the class did not anticipate?

Are there any from their list of anticipated topics that the president did not talk about? Why do they think this is so?

Ask each student to share one point that the president made that he/she agreed with.

Ask each student to share one point that he/she disagreed with.

What was the main idea or message of President Obama's speech?

5. Extra Challenge

Tell students that President Obama, like many presidents before him, reads letters everyday and responds to some of the letters that are written to him. Distribute the handout A Letter to the President to the class. Have students write a letter to the president about some aspect of his State of the Union Address. They can choose to write in support or opposition to a policy that he has expressed. They might also choose to note an issue that he did not mention or include a personal story that relates to a policy issue. Students can mail their letters to the president or use the White House website.

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Surveying State of the Union Addresses - The Choices Program

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Students will: Understand the constitutional basis and history of the State of the Union Address Explore significant moments in twentieth century State of the Union Addresses and identify important historic themes Collaborate with classmates to identify likely topics for the State of the Union Address Assess President Obama's State of

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Slavery and the Making of America . The Slave Experience: Responses to Enslavement | PBS

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SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York. © 2004 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.

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State of the Union Speeches by United States Presidents - Wikisource, the free online library

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State of the Union Speeches by United States Presidents

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Slavery in America | Explore Black History | PBS

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Slavery in America | Explore Black History | PBS

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Revisit America's arduous journey through slavery with this special collection of videos and web-exclusive features by trusted producers across PBS.

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Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality. It was a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the 20 th century.

For most Americans this is entirely new history. Slavery by Another Name gives voice to the largely forgotten victims and perpetrators of forced labor and features their descendants living today.

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Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality.

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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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Its beautiful bolls,
And bales of rich value, the Master controls.
Of "mud-stills" he prates, and would haughtily bring
The world to acknowledge that "Cotton is King." -The Gospel of Slavery, by "Iron Gray," [Abel C. Thomas] 1864.
The most commonly used phrase describing the growth of the American economy in the 1830s and 1840s was "Cotton Is King." We think of this slogan today as describing the plantation economy of the slavery states in the Deep South, which led to the creation of "the second Middle Passage." But it is important to understand that this was not simply a Southern phenomenon. Cotton was one of the world's first luxury commodities, after sugar and tobacco, and was also the commodity whose production most dramatically turned millions of black human beings in the United States themselves into commodities. Cotton became the first mass consumer commodity.

Understanding both how extraordinarily profitable cotton was and how interconnected and overlapping were the economies of the cotton plantation, the Northern banking industry, New England textile factories and a huge proportion of the economy of Great Britain helps us to understand why it was something of a miracle that slavery was finally abolished in this country at all.

Let me try to break this down quickly, since it is so fascinating:

Let's start with the value of the slave population. Steven Deyle shows that in 1860, the value of the slaves was "roughly three times greater than the total amount invested in banks," and it was "equal to about seven times the total value of all currency in circulation in the country, three times the value of the entire livestock population, twelve times the value of the entire U.S. cotton crop and forty-eight times the total expenditure of the federal government that year." As mentioned here in a previous column, the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased the productivity of cotton harvesting by slaves. This resulted in dramatically higher profits for planters, which in turn led to a seemingly insatiable increase in the demand for more slaves, in a savage, brutal and vicious cycle.

Now, the value of cotton: Slave-produced cotton " brought commercial ascendancy to New York City, was the driving force for territorial expansion in the Old Southwest and fostered trade between Europe and the United States," according to Gene Dattel. In fact, cotton productivity, no doubt due to the sharecropping system that replaced slavery, remained central to the American economy for a very long time: "Cotton was the leading American export from 1803 to 1937."

What did cotton production and slavery have to do with Great Britain? The figures are astonishing. As Dattel explains: "Britain, the most powerful nation in the world, relied on slave-produced American cotton for over 80 per cent of its essential industrial raw material. English textile mills accounted for 40 percent of Britain's exports. One-fifth of Britain's twenty-two million people were directly or indirectly involved with cotton textiles."

And, finally, New England? As Ronald Bailey shows, cotton fed the textile revolution in the United States. "In 1860, for example, New England had 52 percent of the manufacturing establishments and 75 percent of the 5.14 million spindles in operation," he explains. The same goes for looms. In fact, Massachusetts "alone had 30 percent of all spindles, and Rhode Island another 18 percent." Most impressively of all, "New England mills consumed 283.7 million pounds of cotton, or 67 percent of the 422.6 million pounds of cotton used by U.S. mills in 1860." In other words, on the eve of the Civil War, New England's economy, so fundamentally dependent upon the textile industry, was inextricably intertwined, as Bailey puts it, "to the labor of black people working as slaves in the U.S. South."

If there was one ultimate cause of the Civil War, it was King Cotton - black-slave-grown cotton - "the most important determinant of American history in the nineteenth century," Dattel concludes. "Cotton prolonged America's most serious social tragedy, slavery, and slave-produced cotton caused the American Civil War." And that is why it was something of a miracle that even the New England states joined the war to end slavery.

Once we understand the paramount economic importance of cotton to the economies of the United States and Great Britain, we can begin to appreciate the enormity of the achievements of the black and white abolitionists who managed to marshal moral support for the abolition of slavery, as well as those half a million slaves who "marched with their feet" and fled to Union lines as soon as they could following the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Fifty of the 100 Amazing Facts will be published on The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross website. Read all 100 Facts on The Root.

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The Role Cotton Played in the 1800s Economy | African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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Its beautiful bolls, And bales of rich value, the Master controls. Of "mud-stills" he prates, and would haughtily bring The world to acknowledge that "Cotton is King." -The Gospel of Slavery, by "Iron Gray," [Abel C. Thomas] 1864. The most commonly used phrase describing the growth of the American economy in the 1830s and 1840s was "Cotton Is King."

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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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FREE IN THE NORTH AND SOUTH

Although Southern states made life for a free black difficult, whether denying residency or threatening re-enslavement for minor criminal offenses, more free blacks lived there than in Northern states, even through the Civil War.

When slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War in 1865, the greatest increases in the black population of northern cities were in Cleveland, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

In 1860, free blacks numbered 488,070, about 10 percent of the entire black population. Of those, 226,152 lived in the North and 261,918 in the South.

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African-American Migrations, 1600s to Present | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | PBS

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Although Southern states made life for a free black difficult, whether denying residency or threatening re-enslavement for minor criminal offenses, more free blacks lived there than in Northern states, even through the Civil War. When slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War in 1865, the greatest increases in the black population of northern cities were in Cleveland, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

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Africans in America/Part 4/Resource Bank Contents

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"Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race" * Letter from Henry Tayloe on the domestic slave trade * E. S. Abdy description of a Washington, D.C., slave pen * H. E.

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Look through a new lens with our collection of documentary films from Ken Burns.