Subject Areas |
History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - Women's Rights/History |
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Time Required |
| Four or more 45-minute classes, depending on the guidelines for research and presentation |
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Skills |
| Note-taking
Research
Interpreting archival documents, including news articles and editorial cartoons
Collaboration
Understanding inferences
Debating
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Additional Data |
| Date Created: 10/25/02 |
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Date Posted |
| 10/25/2002 |
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Who Were the Foremothers of Women’s Equality?
IntroductionThe 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? Note: This lesson may be
taught either as a stand-alone lesson or as a companion to any or all of the complementary
EDSITEment lessons Women's
Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs, Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage, and Women's
Suffrage: Why the West First?. 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 ObjectivesAfter
completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to: - List the
names of women involved in the formative years of the struggle for women's rights.
- Discuss the achievements of women involved in the formative years of
the struggle for women's rights.
- Present arguments to support their opinions
about which women made particularly important contributions.
- Cite some
documents important to the early history of the Women's Rights Movement.
Preparing to Teach this Lesson- Review
the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other useful websites.
Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary
for student viewing.
- Download the worksheet packet, Who
Were the Foremothers of Women's Equality?, available here as a PDF file. Print
out and make an appropriate number of copies of any handouts you plan to use in
class.
- This lesson starts with a question. If there is validity to the
statement above about women "whose names and accomplishments should become as
familiar to Americans as those of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin
Luther King, Jr.," who are these women? We generally consider our country's Forefathers
to be the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation,
or the U.S. Constitution. Some of those signers are little known today, while
others are icons. Which women involved in the formative Women's Rights Movement
should be raised to the level of those icons? This lesson puts students in touch
with some key documents of the equal rights movement as well as other sources
for locating information about the Foremothers of women's equality. Give your
students a more complete picture of the movement and the climate in which it grew
by using the complementary EDSITEment lessons Women's
Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs, Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage, and Women's
Suffrage: Why the West First?.
- In Part 2,
below, Group 3's assignment requires little reading. As it requires viewing an
online presentation, however, time and computer access are necessary.
- For
background information, consult the following resources:
- How
you organize your student groups for researching the lives of women active in
the early Women's Rights Movement (see Part 5, below) will
depend on your particular goals. You can assign specific individuals to each group;
groups can choose from a list created by the class; or students can look through
the various sites freely to create their own list of candidates based on the number
of candidates you allow.
- For further reading, consult the Recommended
Reading List provided here as a PDF file.
Suggested
Activities
1. Introduction:
What Did the Foremothers of Women's Equality Accomplish? 2.
Group Work: Desperately Seeking Foremothers… 3.
A Pool of Candidates 4. Arriving
at a Process 5. The Search for
Foremothers 6. And the Foremothers
of Women's Equality Are… 7.
Suggestions for Optional Culminating Activities 1.
Introduction: What Did the Foremothers of Women's Equality Accomplish? Share
with the class the following quote from A
Short History of the Movement from National
Women's History Project, a link from the EDSITEment resource Women
and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000: Among
these women are several activists whose names and accomplishments should become
as familiar to Americans as those of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin
Luther King, Jr. 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? First, share with your
students some examples of attitudes toward women that were widely held early in
the nineteenth century. Show them Your
Valentine: An Anti-Suffrage Postcard, available on Western
New York Suffragists, a link from the EDSITEment resource Women
and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000. What entrenched attitudes
about women are revealed in the postcard? (Please note that a much fuller exploration
of contemporary attitudes towards Women's Rights is available in the companion
piece to this lesson, Women's
Equality in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs.) 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.) Any student
with an interest in reading the complete Declaration of Sentiments, can view versions
of the Declaration
of Sentiments and the Declaration of Independence Side by Side at the site
Liberty
Rhetoric and Nineteenth Century Women, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed
website History Matters.
2. Group Work: Desperately
Seeking Foremothers… 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 MovementWe
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.)
Group 2: Looking for Foremothers in More Keystone Documents
of the Women's MovementWe 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 ImagesGroup 4: Looking for Foremothers in
Creative WritingGroup 5: Looking for Foremothers in Essays by Scholars
Group
6: Looking for Foremothers in the Histories 3.
A Pool of Candidates 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. 4.
Arriving at a Process 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: - About how many names
will be included in your class's final list of Foremothers?
- What are
the ground rules for candidates?
- What are the guidelines for group work?
- How many candidates for inclusion on the list should each group research?
- Can there be overlap from one group to the next? Should you simply divide
the class's list of potential candidates among the groups, or should each group
choose its own candidates?
- From the lengthy list compiled, how will students
determine who to research?
- What will be the criteria for admission into
the pantheon of Foremothers?
- Any guidelines for presentations?
Based
on students' answers, develop clear guidelines as to how the class will select
Foremothers from the master list. 5.
The Search for Foremothers 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. 6.
And the Foremothers of Women's Equality Are… 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. 7. Suggestions
for Optional Culminating Activities 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- Have
students research the role of men in the Women's Rights Movement, using the following
documents, among others:
- Interested students can conduct biographical
studies of other important figures in the Women's Rights Movement, using resources
listed under Selected EDSITEment Websites, below.
- Students
can research Sojourner Truth's speech to the 1850 Women's Rights Convention as
described in an account of the proceedings that appeared in the Boston Daily
Mail (the
account of Sojourner Truth is reproduced by the EDSITEment resource Women's
History Workshop; go to the link for this webpage, then use the search feature
in your browser to locate the phrase "plain truth").
Selected EDSITEment Websites
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