Lesson Plans from EDSITEment

The website America's Library, a link from the EDSITEment resource American Memory, asserts that "just as George Washington is considered a 'Forefather' of American democracy, [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton and [Susan B.] Anthony are 'Foremothers' of the struggle for women's equality." Yet, while Stanton and Anthony are arguably the best known suffragists, most young people know little about them or the women who fought alongside them, "activists whose names and accomplishments should become as familiar to Americans as those of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr." (see A Short History of the Movement, a resource from the National Women's History Project), a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed website Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000). Who were the activists whose names deserve to be remembered alongside such iconic figures as Jefferson, Lincoln, and King?

Guiding Questions:

What sources are useful for uncovering the names of the women who contributed to the early Women's Rights Movement in the U.S.? Which contributions and individuals were particularly significant?

Learning Objectives

Preparing to Teach this Lesson

Suggested Activities

This quote raises many questions that will be explored in the exercises below. Who are the "several activists" of the women's movement whose names ought to be remembered alongside those of Jefferson, Lincoln, and King? What were their accomplishments and why were these accomplishments so significant in American history? The Forefathers of democracy transformed a loosely connected set of colonies into one country attempting a great political experiment; is it legitimate, based on the changes they brought about in American society, to speak of these "several activists" as the Foremothers of women's equality? Why or why not? How well represented in our history books and textbooks are the activists of the Women's Movement in the nineteenth century?

Students can begin to explore these questions by considering the obstacles that activists for women's equality faced in the nineteenth century. What exactly were these women trying to change? What obstacles did they face?

Women had more to overcome than attitudes, however. Inequities were built into the legal system. Elizabeth Cady Stanton listed many of the various hardships women faced in the complaints section of her seminal "Declaration of Sentiments," endorsed at the Women's Rights Convention of 1848. Download, copy and distribute to students the worksheet "Complaints in the Declaration of Sentiments" on pages 1-3 of the PDF file (see Preparing to Teach This Lesson, above, for download instructions) In the exercise, students will first match summary versions of the complaints—written in contemporary language—with Stanton's own; this is a way of making the complaints accessible as students become familiar with them. Then students will select specific complaints in answer to five questions as they think about the reality of life for women in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

After students have had time to complete the exercise, discuss their answers (and tally their selections, if desired), keeping in mind that the worksheet features open-ended questions with no specific right answers. (NOTE: "Complaints in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Original Order," a matched set of the original complaints and the reworded versions, is available on pages 4-5 of the PDF file; see Preparing to Teach This Lesson, above, for download instructions.)

Ask students to quickly name some of our country's Forefathers; they can probably name a few with little trouble. What made them Forefathers? Explain that we generally consider the Forefathers—or Founding Fathers—to be those men who were present at the birth of our nation and who signed any one of the Charters of Freedom: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or the U.S. Constitution. Briefly look at the list of Founding Fathers on the EDSITEment resource Digital Classroom. (Be aware that some figures are conspicuously absent from this list, most notably Thomas Jefferson, who did not attend the Constitutional Convention.)

In this exercise, students will scan the following documents to collect and compile names of potential Foremothers. The documents have been divided into six groups. Feel free to rearrange the documents and groupings as desired to fit your class. (In Activity 4 below, students will address the question of just how many names should be on the list of Foremothers. The list of Founding Fathers above, for example, contains 55 names: if women have achieved equality, should there be at least 55 Foremothers?)

Group 1: Looking for Foremothers in the Keystone Documents of the Women's Movement

We find the Forefathers in key documents they helped create and/or to which they affixed their signatures. What are some corresponding documents for the Women's Rights Movement? (NOTE: You could use this set of documents in a whole-class setting to allow you to provide students more guidance about the documents themselves.)

The 1776 letter Remember the Ladies from Abigail Adams to her husband, John, and his response, are available on the website of the National Park Service, from which the EDSITEment resource Links to the Past is an extension.
The Declaration of Sentiments (1848), also available on the website of the National Park Service. Look at the Signers of the Declaration of Sentiments, which includes links to significant biographies, as well as the List of Participants, with links to other significant figures, including some who got involved with the movement as a result of the Women's Rights Convention—even though they did not attend.

Group 2: Looking for Foremothers in More Keystone Documents of the Women's Movement

We find the Forefathers in key documents they helped create and/or to which they affixed their signatures. What are some corresponding documents for the Women's Rights Movement?

Protest of Taxation without Representation (January 18, 1858), a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930 (Note the argument used to protest the tax bill; it references the American Revolution as did Stanton in the Declaration of Sentiments.)
The Petition to the New Jersey Legislature (1868), available on the New Jersey Women's History Page, a link from the EDSITEment resource Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930 (NOTE: In what ways do the authors' requests resemble the Declaration of Sentiments?)
Dress Reform, from The Lily (March 1853, pp. 2-3), available through the EDSITEment-reviewed website Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930

The original Equal Rights Amendment, first introduced in Congress in 1923, is available through the EDSITEment resource American Memory, go to the middle of the book page displayed to see the simply-worded amendment framed in quotes. One version of the ERA was submitted to the states in 1972; however, it failed to achieve ratification in 1982.

Group 3: Looking for Foremothers in Images

Look through the online exhibit Votes for Women: The Struggle for Women's Suffrage—Selected Images from the Collections of the Library of Congress, available via a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory, featuring a series of Portraits of women deemed important to the struggle for women's rights.
View the Interactive History of the Women's Movement from Not For Ourselves Alone, a link from the EDSITEment resource New Perspectives on the West.

Group 4: Looking for Foremothers in Creative Writing

Read through the play Failure Is Impossible from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Digital Classroom.

Group 5: Looking for Foremothers in Essays by Scholars

Scan the essay on the National Women's History Project, a link from the EDSITEment resource Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000.

Group 6: Looking for Foremothers in the Histories

One Hundred Years Toward Suffrage: An Overview, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory as part of the collection Votes for Women Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920, also contains images related to the early Women's Suffrage Movement.
The U.S. Suffrage Movement Timeline on The Anthony Center for Women's Leadership, a link from the EDSITEment resource Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000
The National Suffrage Timeline on Western New York Suffragists, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000

Collect the names from the student groups and compile a master list. Some of the women (and perhaps men) on the list will certainly be icons of the Women's Rights Movement. Others will be worthy, but less well-known; still others will have faded into obscurity. Allow students to add any additional candidates to the list who were not part of this research but with whom students are familiar.

Before commencing their research to determine who on the list deserves to be named a Foremother, students should work together as a class to develop a pool of candidates and determine the process for sorting through those possibilities. To help them do so, student groups should respond to the following questions:

If you have not done so already, break up the class into small groups to research candidates for admission to your pantheon of Foremothers. Students should use the websites listed in bold-face type under Selected EDSITEment Websites, below, to conduct their research.

Students will present their findings to the class arguing in favor of admission of their candidate(s) into the "pantheon" of Foremothers. "Choosing the Foremothers," a graphic organizer on page 6 of the PDF file (see Preparing to Teach This Lesson, above, for download instructions), will help students take notes as presentations are made.

To culminate the activity, the class could create a Foremothers' Museum as a bulletin board, slide show, or online presentation. Technically savvy students could set up an online gallery of photos with links to information, similar to the online exhibit Signers of the Constitution on the EDSITEment-reviewed website Digital Classroom.

Extending the Lesson

Students interested in learning more about the trial of Susan B. Anthony for the crime of voting can consult Famous American Trials, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet Public Library.
The Women's Rights Movement was quite active during the 1960s. Students interested in studying that period and/or comparing it to the formative movement referenced in these lessons can start by exploring the Women's Studies Resources Home Page from the Duke Special Collections Library, from which the EDSITEment resource African-American Women is an extension.
According to the essay Living the Legacy: The Women's Rights Movement 1848 - 1998, available via a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000:
[Did you know that] 25 years ago married women were not issued credit cards in their own name? That most women could not get a bank loan without a male co-signer? That women working full time earned fifty-nine cents to every dollar earned by men?

Help-wanted ads in newspapers were segregated into "Help wanted--women" and "Help wanted--men." Pages and pages of jobs were announced for which women could not even apply.
—Bonnie Eisenberg and Mary Ruthsdotter, National Women's History Project
Students can interview women with first-hand knowledge of these and similar inequities.
Try some of the suggestions from Collection Connections on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory.
- Marriage laws were an important issue for the early suffragists. American marriage law was based on the English concept of coverture, in which a woman's legal status became subordinate to her husband. Interested students can explore the concept of coverture and the following documents:
- To Keep a Wife in Subjection, by Emily Collins, available through the EDSITEment resource American Studies at the University of Virginia
- Broadside / Abolishing the Unjust Marriage Law (Image; (Full Text), available on the EDSITEment-reviewed website American Memory
- Declaration of Sentiments and the Declaration of Independence Side by Side, on Liberty Rhetoric and Nineteenth Century Women, a link from the EDSITEment resource History Matters, includes Elizabeth Cady Stanton's remarks about the marriage laws.
EDSITEment offers a lesson entitled Cultural Change that concentrates on the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments.

Who Were the Foremothers of Women’s Equality?

Introduction