Teaching Ideas
Each page can be used to build lesson plans. Example learning objectives are listed at the bottom of each page.
Traditional lesson plan example
Introduce the photograph above.
Who took the photo? Explain that the National Woman's Party had its own publicity and photography done, especially for its own newsletter. The Suffragist. The Suffragist : Free Texts : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive. This banner has a long message about what event? What was the response of anti-suffrage groups? Have students search for information about the political history of the 19th Amendment after reading the text of this banner. Why the comparison to Prussia? How were words used from World War I? The sources on this website are here to help students discover the difficult path to pass the amendment in Congress to be sent to states.
Other Teaching Ideas
Both groups fought for suffrage while reassuring politicians that it would not increase the ballot for black people. In the primary sources, African Americans' and Native Americans' efforts for women's right to vote are harder to find. This does not mean they did not exist. Example questions could include:
- What was the stance or propaganda about women's suffrage in African American newspapers of the time?
- This book is focused on Washington, D.C area and Virginia. What did your state or local area media have about women's suffrage?
To foster further student critical thinking about the context during World War I and the issues faced by people of color, teachers could add assignments to research African American newspapers or Native American news to find media articles and see if the watchfires were even discussed. In my research efforts, African American Newspapers had articles about women's suffrage, but understandably less prominent than the race riots, anti-lynching legislation, and their rights to vote as citizens.
To Broaden the Stories About Women's Suffrage
African American Newspapers
Here is a link to an African American newspaper article from The Richmond Planet after the 19th Amendment was defeated in the Senate in October of 1918. It described the Richmond Times-Dispatch being critical of President Wilson and their response. This is an excellent article to illustrate the use of the states' rights argument for the vote against the federal amendment. The Richmond Planet is a good resource. The report is left of the page, titled "Criticising the President."
Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, October 05, 1918, Page FOUR, Image 5 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress (loc.gov)
Secondary Source
Who Was Left Out of the Story? | National Museum of American History (si.edu)
Teaching and Scalar Information:
Teachers can ask for a registration key and build their classroom project. For this "book," I am currently the sole author after emailing and requesting a registration key. Within a "book," people can build entire pages. As you see for this "book," each page shows I am the author; this can change if someone else wants to build upon this work and build new pages within the interactive website. Feel free to copy my book to your own classroom-built "book" on women's suffrage. Within scalar, you can freely add and build using links to websites, internet archives, and omeka websites. Welcome (usc.edu)
Examples of Omeka Websites that can be used to link to women's suffrage scalar projects include:
About · The Suffrage Postcard Project (omeka.net)
Browse Collections · Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia (presidentwilson.org)
Use this contact form to start your scalar project, Alliance for Networking Visual Culture » Contact (scalar.me) , or feel free to copy this one. If you have any questions or want to add specifically to this "book," my email is mshuman3@gmu.edu.
This page has paths:
- Watchfires of Women's Suffrage Mary Susan Shuman
