This image gallery from Mashable showcases 27 images of various women, both well-known leaders and ordinary citizens, during the American suffrage movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Seeing Suffrage chronicles the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, focusing on photographs from the parade.
On March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, leaders of the American suffrage movement organized an enormous march through the capital that served as an important salvo on the long road to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Coinciding with the widespread rise of photography in daily newspapers and significant shifts in journalism, the parade energized a movement that had been in the doldrums for nearly two decades. In Seeing Suffrage, James G. Stovall combines a detailed account of the parade with more than 130 photographs to provide a stunning visual chronicle of one of the most pivotal moments in the struggle for women’s rights.
You can purchase a copy of the book from its publisher’s website.
For more on the parade, see The Atlantic‘s Pictures of the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade, this academic article examining suffrage parades from 1910-1913, as well as this New York Tribune essay explaining why suffragists were parading, penned by Harriet Stanton Blatch (daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton).
ISBN: 978-1-57233-940-8
The Library of Congress contains a trove of online materials for students and teachers of all grade levels and subjects. The 100-plus teaching-suffrage resources listed on the site—many of which feature primary sources and activities related to them—include:
Additionally, teachers can search by teaching standards to find resources that adhere to various state standards, the Common Core, and more.
Want to find your own teachable primary sources? Check out the Selected Suffrage Images from the Library of Congress archive.
This Vanity Fair video by director Gilly Barnes is short—at just under four minutes, it’s closer in length to a film trailer than a typical documentary—but packs in a lot of information.
Part of the “1910s” portion of Vanity Fair‘s centennial “Decades Series,” the video combines suffrage-era primary sources like photos, quotes, and newspaper clippings with dramatic reenactments of a suffragist narrator explaining how she discovered the cause.
Though perhaps too condensed to be much use to viewers already steeped in the history of the American suffrage movement’s final decade, the video is a good introduction to the topic, and places it neatly within its historical context.
This description of the “Decades Series” comes from the project’s YouTube page:
Ten decades, 10 directors. In celebration of V.F.’s 100th anniversary, 10 eclectic filmmakers—from Judd Apatow to Don Cheadle to Brett Ratner—created a film on each era of V.F.’s century-old history and the Zeitgeist that defined it.
This 31-page document (click the button below to download it as a PDF) contains myriad useful resources for those interested in teaching—or learning—about the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote in New York State. It may also be of use to those already familiar with the topic, as it offers an admirably condensed overview of the various events that both public and private organizations will be staging over the course of 2017 in celebration of the centennial (see the document’s “Centennial Calendars of Events” section starting on p. 6).
The guide’s Educator Resources section contains a range of teaching materials, variously aimed at elementary school, junior high, high school, and even undergraduate students. These include:
The guide also contains a wealth of resources in addition to those meant just for teachers, including lists of books and films pertaining to suffrage and women’s rights, conversation starters, tips on how to host a speaker or a traveling exhibition, and research support.
From the guide, a description of the organization that put the project together:
Humanities New York is bringing the people, places and ideas of the women’s suffrage movement to life. As of May 2017, Humanities New York has invested over $344K in Centennial-themed activities that explore the diversity of individuals and ideas that contributed to this grassroots movement. In particular, Humanities New York has supported projects that connect contemporary concerns (civil rights, gender diversity, equality, and civic engagement) to the history of women’s suffrage.
This 19-page lesson plan is designed to help teachers introduce seventh graders to the history of the Progressive Era, with a particular focus on the US suffrage movement and the 19th Amendment. It uses primary sources like cartoons and propaganda posters to help students consider the media’s crucial role in the struggle for women’s enfranchisement.
The plan includes guiding questions, lesson objectives, assessment tools, instructions for how to get students’ attention and run the activities, accommodations for Diverse Learners, and teaching materials in the form of primary-source documents from the suffrage era.
The lesson is designed to meet National Council for the Social Studies standards and should take about 90 minutes to complete.
Note: The Virginia Tech website that used to host the plan has been closed down, but you can download its as a .pdf by clicking on the button below.
DocsTeach, a National Archives-sponsored website of resources for teaching history, is designed to provide information and lesson plans for teachers. It may also be useful for students and others looking for primary sources on women’s rights and suffrage, however.
Likely the most useful resources for teachers are two teaching activities specifically related to suffrage. These include learning objectives, detailed lesson instructions, and extension activities. There is one lesson for high school students and one for middle schoolers. Note: There are nine more suffrage teaching activities available to those who register with the site. Registration is free and open even to those who aren’t teachers.
Additionally, the site contains:
Nearly all the documents include thorough citations and are copyright-free/public domain (although it’s worth looking at the Archives’ accessible and straightforward legal page before you use material from the site).
Some of the highlights include:
This extensive digitized collection from the Library of Congress contains hundreds of suffrage-era resources related to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, a prominent American suffrage organization whose founders included Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The collection consists of a wide array of media, including books, pamphlets, scrapbooks, newspapers, and posters.
The following description comes from the Library of Congress overview of the collection:
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Collection is a library of nearly 800 books and pamphlets documenting the suffrage campaign. They were collected between 1890 and 1938 by members of NAWSA and donated to the Rare Books Division of the Library of Congress on November 1, 1938. The bulk of the collection is derived from the library of Carrie Chapman Catt, president of NAWSA from 1900-1904, and again from 1915-1920. Additional materials were donated to the NAWSA Collection from the libraries of other members and officers, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Smith Miller, and Mary A. Livermore.
The complete collection consists of a variety of materials—newspapers, books, pamphlets, memorials, scrapbooks, and proceedings from the meetings of various women’s organizations—documenting the suffrage fight.
…
The materials in the collection amount to approximately 65,683 pages and can be broken down as follows:
Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37,382
Memorials . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Pamphlets . . . . . . . . . . . 4,165
Proceedings/Reports . . . 2,058
Serials . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21,800
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . 65,683
This online selection was based on a number of user groups in mind: students at both the high school and college levels interested in developing a basic understanding of the suffrage movement; teachers of courses at these levels; and advanced scholars engaged in research. In all cases, materials were selected that best represented the NAWSA organization and its place in the woman suffrage campaign.
Users should note that the collection mirrors the biases of NAWSA’s membership. For the most part, it represents the concerns of well-educated, middle- and upper-class white women living in the North, and especially in New England. There is little in the collection to document the role of Southern women or women of color. Working-class women receive a slightly larger share of attention, but, for the most part, the collection details the experiences of the affluent white women who formed the suffrage campaign’s leadership cadre.
Click here to view other NAWSA-related resources from Women’s Suffrage and the Media.
This CNN photo gallery, titled “The Long Road to Women’s Suffrage,” showcases the struggle for women’s voting rights in the United States, which culminated in August 1920 with the final ratification of the 19th Amendment.
A number of the photos show how suffragists adopted a variety of tactics to gain press coverage, including dressing in theatrical costumes.
For more photos of the suffrage era, see Pictures of the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade.
This PBS documentary is a sweeping look at the women’s suffrage movement, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s famous Seneca Falls call to arms to the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women voting rights.
Narrated by Susan Sarandon, the documentary features historical photos and video clips of the suffrage movement, as well as a number of historians who provide needed context. The film also delves into the deep divisions within the suffrage movement, like the one over the question of whether to support voting rights for black men. In addition, the film looks at regional differences within the movement and differences over whether to use militant tactics.
The New York Times called the film “inspiring without being rhapsodic,” saying it tells viewers “as much about the exigencies of American politics as about the heroism of three generations of American women.” The National Women’s Studies Association Journal also published an informative review of the film, accessible through JSTOR.
You can buy the film through PBS, or order it through Netflix.
There is a companion book by the same name that you can buy on Amazon. The book is an anthology of contemporary and historical writing on women’s suffrage.