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Women's Suffrage Mini Unit Study

In honor of National Women's History Month, this mini-unit will explore how women in the United States got the right to vote. It may come as a surprise to many of our children that less than 85 years ago their mothers would not have been allowed to cast a vote in the presidential election, nor in any other elections throughout the majority of the country. It wasn't until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that women gained the right to vote in all elections.

Women and their supporters fought a long 72-year battle that began with a national convention in Seneca Falls, New York led by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott and ended in a congressional vote championed by Carrie Chapman Catt, Lucy Stone and Alice Paul. Along the way, women in New Zealand, Australia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, Canada, Estonia, Poland, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Sweden all were granted suffrage before women in the United States.

In this mini-unit study, you can: read about the history of women's suffrage, learn about the famous women that led the movement, read the 19th Amendment, hear the story of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, see a suffrage history timeline, view a list of countries around the world to learn when women could vote in each, examine original photos and documents of suffragettes and create a scrapbook out of them, find out who was opposed to suffrage and read a script commemorating the suffrage movement.

Reading

Short overviews of the suffrage movement - one for grammar school age and one for middle schoolers.

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/womenvoting1.htm

http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/woman/herstory.html

Biographies of leaders in the suffrage movement:

http://www.rochester.edu/SBA/biographies.html

http://pbskids.org/wayback/civilrights/features_suffrage.html

A history timeline of women's suffrage in the United States:

http://winningthevote.org/TLnational.html

Suffrage around the world - tracking when women could vote:

http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/suffrage.htm

Primary Sources

Read the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/constitution

/19th_amendment.html

See articles in the New York Times on the ratification of the 19th Amendment:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/nytimes.html

Multimedia

Hear and see the story of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in this multimedia presentation. To begin, click on the left-hand side of the web page. To advance the presentation, click on the page numbers at the bottom of the pop-up screen.


http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/index.html

Project Ideas

This site is a treasure chest of original, archival photos of the women's suffrage movement. Look through this collection and select 10 to 15 photos that you think tell a good story about the movement. Either save them or print them out to create a digital or paper scrapbook that uses these pictures to tell the story of how women got the right to vote. Be creative and ad your own narration to go along with the pictures.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfwhtml/vfwhome.html

For a research project, find out who was opposed to women getting the right to vote and why. List all of the reasons that were given as to why women should not be allowed to vote, and write your response to each one.

Gather a group of friends or family members to read aloud this narrative script on the history of the suffrage movement:

http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/woman_suffrage

/script_intro.html

Recommended Resource

A Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen, Washington, D.C., 1917

Thirteen-year-old Kathleen Bowen is living in Washington D.C. in 1917. This is a turbulent time for both her family as well as her country. While the prospect of war in Europe looms over everything, some of the women in Kat's family are fighting a war of their own - for the right to vote.

The book includes a timeline of women in politics as well as historical photos of suffragettes.


Book (Hardcover)
Authors: Kathryn Lasky

Lists at: $10.95, Amazon Price: $8.76



Read more about the book on Amazon