Women’s Suffrage Lesson Plan
Created by PHM Intern Tabitha Rice
This lesson plan is made possible with grant funding from Humanities New York and Teaching the Hudson Valley.
This lesson helps to teach students about the Women’s suffrage movement and how key events built upon one another.
- Timeline of Women’s Suffrage
- Use dates and key events from panels to create a pre-lesson sheet for students. This would be written with the timeline loosely written throughout. It would also include the definition of the word suffrage at the beginning.
- Objective: To gain knowledge of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. To understand the order that events happened. To understand how events can be influenced by past events.
- Lesson Materials: Background information document and timeline.
- Procedure: Read Background Sheet first. Then students will use information blurbs given to correctly place historical moments on the timeline.
“Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.”
Susan B. Anthony
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” The Declaration of Independence was the beginning of the birth of the United States, however, they left out key freedoms for half the population. Who you may ask? Well, the women of course! For the following 144 years, women legally did not have the right to vote.
On July 19 and 20, 1848, 258 women and 42 men gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, “to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.” This meeting, often called the Seneca Falls Convention, was the beginning of a 72-year battle for women to gain the right to vote in the United States. The convention was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Stanton was the chief author of its “The Declaration of Sentiments,” affirming that “all men and women are created equal.” The document also demanded equal rights for women in property and divorce laws, in educational opportunities, and in participation in church, professions, and politics.
In 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was created. The organization was created by the combining of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. NAWSA served as an umbrella organization for hundreds of local women’s suffrage groups. To help spread their message for suffrage NAWSA would get key endorsements from celebrities, train and pay organizers to canvas areas, and host parades and rallies where members wore distinctive white uniforms.
African American women played a unique role in the fight for suffrage. Women of color were often barred from attending NAWSA meetings and rallies based on the color of their skin. In 1896, the National Association for Colored Women (NACW) was founded by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Charlotte Forten Grimke. The NACW focused both on civil rights and women’s suffrage. Their motto was “lifting as we climb” to reflect their goals as an organization to uplift the socio-political status of Black women.
In Putnam County, the push for women’s suffrage began to heat-up during the early 1890s and continued through the 1910s. Numerous local women’s suffrage supporters gained traction for the movement by hosting and giving talks, organizing booths at local civic events, and marching in parades. In 1914, the Women’s Christian Temperance Association chapter in Brewster sponsored meetings and forums on women’s suffrage. Local women such as Antoinette Hopkins, Mrs. Philip Diehl, and Edith Diehl revived the Brewster Equal Suffrage Association started around 1912.
In response to the anti-suffragists claim that “most women do not want the vote,” suffragists made an unprecedented move by canvassing the entire state to raise awareness. Traveling through small towns and large cities alike, they collected over a million signatures on their petitions for suffrage. On October 17, 1917, a “Procession of Petitions” marched down Fifth Avenue carrying placards on which the signed petitions were mounted. On November 6, 1917, New York State added women’s suffrage to the state constitution. New York voters ratified the amendment with 102,353 votes. This became a turning point in the national movement. Putnam County voters were in favor, with 55.1% casting their vote in support of women’s suffrage.
In 1919, the Senate passed the 19th Amendment, worded exactly as it was proposed in 1878. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, making women’s suffrage legal in the United States. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920.
After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, Black women voted in elections and held political offices. However, many states passed laws that discriminated against African Americans and limited their freedoms. Black women continued to fight for their rights. Educator and political advisor Mary McLeod Bethune formed the National Council of Negro Women in 1935 to pursue civil rights. Tens of thousands of African Americans worked over several decades to secure suffrage, which occurred when the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. This Act represents more than a century of work by Black women to make voting easier and more equitable.
Activity: Now that you have read about the Women’s Suffrage Movement, use the text boxes below to place key events in the correct order on the timeline.
