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We are adding inquiry-based lessons every week and constantly seeking those that are already out there by others. If you have one to contribute, email us at remedialherstory@gmail.com.
Inquiries are provided in chronological order. Click here for How to Teach with Remedial Herstory Lessons. |
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Reconstruction: And Woman Suffrage
Taylor, James E., Artist. The Misses Cooke's school room, Freedman's Bureau, Richmond, Va. / from a sketch by Jas. E. Taylor. , 1866. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/98510871/.
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Were Black women free during Reconstruction?
White, Black, southern, and northern women all had unique perspectives on American Reconstruction after the Civil War. Their reflections and ideas give us great insights into the success of Reconstruction and whether Black women were free. 
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Sojourner Truth. , . N. D. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/rbcmiller001306/.
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Do Black men need the vote more than women?
Following the 13th and 14th Amendments, conversation shifted to voting rights and the American Equal Rights Association emerged to push for Universal Suffrage, but it quickly became clear not everyone would get the vote at the same time-- and Black men would be first.
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Palczewski, Catherine H. Postcard Archive. "Suffragette Series no.4." University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA. Retreieved from https://sites.uni.edu/palczews/NEW%20postcard%20webpage/Dunston%20Weiler.html.
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Why were people opposed to woman suffrage?
Women's suffrage took over 60 years of activism to achieve. It was highly controversial and was seen not only as an expansion of the franchise, but also a disruption to engrained gender roles. In this lesson, students analyze political cartoons produced in New York to more deeply understand the gendered expectations that hardened the opposition against suffrage. This lesson plan would be a great introduction to the Stanford History Education Groups Lesson on Anti-Suffrage. In this lesson, students study a speech and anti-suffrage literature to explore the reasons why so many Americans, including many women, opposed women's suffrage.
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Bain News Service, Publisher. Susan B. Anthony. , ca. 1915. [Between and Ca. 1920] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2014710284/.
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Why was Susan B. Anthony a criminal?
To answer this questions, students will reenact her trial, which took place in New York in 1873. Students will first be struck by the fact that no women were a part of the court proceedings, and even Anthony was unable to speak until the end. Her trial was a very big deal, former president Millard Filmore attended, because, as Matilda Gage put it, "Susan B. Anthony was not on trial, the United States was on trial."
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Harris & Ewing, Washington, D.C. Women's Voter Convention, Sept. Alva Belmont seated second from right. United States, 1915. Sept. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000282/.
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Were white suffragists racist?
In the last few decades increasing numbers of historians have begun to question the legacy of the women suffrage movement. What is it a women’s movement? Or a white women’s movement? In this inquiry students examine two articles written for the suffrage centennial celebration. Students will pull specific evidence from each and form their own conclusion. There is also a second inquiry using mostly primary sources and arguing the same question.
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5 female Negro officers of Women's League, Newport, R.I. , 1899. [?] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001705854/.
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Why did Black women’s clubs develop? Were these clubs elitist or a necessary step?
In the 1890's Black women formed clubs to address issues not addressed in white society. These clubs pushed the "politics of respectability," which was arguably condescending. But was it a necessary step? In this inquiry, students examine the rise of these clubs, their goals and their effect on Black women.
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Lessons from Others
- Anti-Suffrage:
- Stanford History Education Group: The 19th Amendment was passed seventy-two years after the Seneca Falls Convention. This fact demonstrates the strong opposition that women’s suffrage faced. In this lesson, students study a speech and anti-suffrage literature to explore the reasons why so many Americans, including many women, opposed women's suffrage.
- Black Women Advocates:
- Teaching Tolerance: In this lesson of the series, “Beyond Rosa Parks: Powerful Voices for Civil Rights and Social Justice,” students will read and analyze text from “The Progress of Colored Women,” a speech made by Mary Church Terrell in 1898. Terrell was the first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), an organization that was formed in 1896 from the merger of several smaller women’s clubs, and was active during the period of Jim Crow segregation in the South.
- National History Day: Sojourner Truth (Isabella Van Wagenen) (1797-1883) was born into slavery in New York. Truth escaped slavery in 1826 and moved to New York City until 1843 when she adopted the name “Sojourner Truth” in anticipation of her new career: traveling to preach what she saw as God’s truth about women’s status and about slavery. Although illiterate and uneducated, Truth was a skilled public speaker and best known for her impromptu speeches delivered on the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and other social issues of the day. Resourceful and devoted to her cause, Truth supported herself through sales of her dictated 1850 biography, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, A Northern Slave, as well as portraits of herself known as cartes-de-visite, which resemble modern baseball cards. Just one year after her biography was published, Truth delivered her most well-known speech, “Ain’t I A Woman,” to a Women’s Rights Convention in Ohio, arguing against the injustice of the overlooked subordinate status of women in American life. During the Civil War, Truth collected food and supplies for U.S. Colored Troop Regiments and continued to fight for racial equality during Reconstruction when she fought for freedmen’s rights. During this time, she never stopped advocating for women’s equality.
- White Women Advocates:
- Voices of Democracy: Anthony’s speech helps students understand the Constitution as a living document. She uses a variety of techniques of legal reasoning and interpretation to challenge other, exclusionary uses of the document. She bases an argument for change on an interpretation of a founding document. Reconstruction is a challenging era for students to understand. Anthony’s speech captures the complexities of the Reconstruction Amendments and how they opened new avenues for disenfranchised groups to assert their rights. It also explores the interrelationship of the women’s suffragists with other movements. Anthony highlights the cultural, social, and political aspects of women’s struggle for equal rights. The speech does not simply assert women’s right to vote, but also more broadly addresses the subordinate position of women within the home and in other areas of public policy.
- Edcitement: Every time our society benefits from its recognition of the equality of women, thank the Foremothers of the Women's Movement, pioneers such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton understood the difficulties women faced, clarifying the extent and vehemence of the opposition to equality in her Declaration of Sentiments. She detailed, in a series of grievances, the "absolute tyranny" society held over women. The "injuries and usurpations" she described were enabled, in part, by widely accepted stereotypes and beliefs about gender reflected in and perpetuated by everything from children's stories to magazine humor. Analyzing archival materials contemporaneous with the birth of the Women's Rights Movement, your students can begin to appreciate the deeply entrenched opposition the early crusaders had to overcome.
- Suffrage in Western States:
- Gilder Lehrman: Diverse women lived in the American West and participated in the making of its history. Diaries, letters, and oral histories tell us that these women—Native American, Hispanic, black, Asian, and white—experienced life on the frontier differently as they sought to use the land and its resources. Because women struggled to live on the frontier within the constraints of their own cultures, each group offers a different perspective on our study of the region. As a result, a history that includes the lives of different women in the West gives us not only a clearer understanding of the region but also gives the story of the West the depth that it deserves. We are going to look at two groups of women—Native Americans and white women—to understand the lives and experiences of these women as well as what happens when one group has power over the other. Using the classroom as an historical laboratory, students can use primary sources to research, read, evaluate, and interpret the words of Native American and white women.
- Edcitement: Why the west first? The 19th Amendment, granting suffrage to women, was ratified by Congress in 1920. It was over fifty years previously, however, that Wyoming had entered the Union as the first state to grant some women full voting rights. The next eight states to grant full suffrage to women were also Western states: Colorado (1893); Utah and Idaho (1896); Washington (1910); California (1911); and Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona (1912). Why was the West first? Focused on efforts in support of women's suffrage in Western states, this lesson can be used either as a stand-alone unit or as a more specialized sequel to the EDSITEment lesson, Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage, which covers the suffrage movement in general. The latter lesson also contains activities and resources for learning how the movement to gain the vote for women fits into the larger struggle for women's rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
