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Serious Susan Sought Suffrage...(Susan B. Anthony)
Carlene Jennings
Overview of The Abolitionist & Suffrage Movements
Students will analyze Susan B. Anthony's petition to Congress in 1874 and other artifacts related to the suffrage movement.
-White board and marker or sentence strip with lesson title (Serious Susan Sought Suffrage)
-Susan B. Anthony coin(s), white copy paper, and crayons, if possible
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/anthony-petition.html
-website with suffragette banner:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=106
-website for photo analysis worksheet:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheetanalysis_worksheet.pdf s/photo_
-The teacher may wish to display key vocabulary terms on a word wall or chart; words may include suffrage, suffragist, voting rights, enfranchisement, 19th amendment, election, and reform
50 min.
LP5
Why was Susan B. Anthony called the "powerhouse" of the women's suffrage movement?
Are women now truly equal to men?
Write the lesson title on the board. Ask students to write the tongue twister on their papers and try to memorize it.
Pass out the Susan B. Anthony coin(s) and/or other coins, white copy paper, and crayons, if possible.
Provide students with coins and ask them to examine the details of the coins. The teacher may wish to have students create a "rubbing" by placing a piece of white copy paper on top of the coin(s) and rubbing over the paper with a crayon to make an imprint of the coin(s).
If the teacher cannot locate the actual Susan B. Anthony coin, the following website provides pictures and information:
http://www.usmint.gov/kids/coinNews/coinOfTheMonth/2000/08.cfm
Invite students to suppose that they lived in the 1800s and firmly believed that women should have the right to vote. What action would they take? What might their families think? How might their friends react? How would they express their feelings? Would they be willing to go to jail for their beliefs? How would they get politicians to listen?
Show students the photo of the suffragette banner from the website:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=106
Ask for their observations and reactions.
Go through the photo analysis together from the website:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/photo_analysis_worksheet.pdf
Have students fill in their responses and collect their papers.
Explain to students that Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were instrumental in obtaining the vote for women. Many women were ridiculed and rejected because of their belief in equality, but Susan B. Anthony was brought to trial for voting. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted in 1868, had declared that all people born in the U.S. were citizens and that no legal privileges could be denied to them. Susan B. Anthony decided to challenge this amendment. She said that women were citizens, so she registered to vote in Rochester, New York, on Nov. 1, 1872. She and fifteen other women voted in the presidential election. Three weeks later, all sixteen women were arrested, but only Anthony was brought before a court. The judge in her trial, United States vs. Susan B. Anthony, did not want women to vote and wrote his decision before the trial even started. The judge would not let Anthony testify, and he ordered the jury to find her guilty. Then he sentenced her to pay a $100 fine. Anthony said that she would never pay a penny of it, and wrote a petition to Congress. (No further action was taken against her.)
Have students examine the Susan B. Anthony's petition to Congress from the website:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/anthony-petition.html
Students may work in collaborative pairs or small groups to analysis the petition using the written document analysis worksheet available from the website:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/written_document_analysis_worksheet.pdf
Discuss students' responses as a whole group. Ask students to complete their worksheets and collect their papers.
Explain that Anthony continued to campaign for women's rights after this. Through her determined work, many professional fields became open to women. At the time of her death in 1906, four states had granted suffrage to women. But in 1920, Congress adopted the Nineteenth Amendment. finally giving women throughout America the right to vote.
Ask students to consider the rights women have gained over the years. Have them respond in their notebooks or learning journals to these questions:
Are women now truly equal to men? In what ways? If not, what equalities have they yet to obtain and how might they obtain them?
The teacher may wish to have students complete this analogy:
Frederick Douglass is to abolitionist as Susan B. Anthony is to ____________________. (suffragist)
As an "extra time" activity, the teacher may wish to show students a virtual tour of the Susan B. Anthony House at the website:
http://www.susanbanthonyhouse.org/virtual_tour/index.shtml
Students who are interested in coins, may wish to create their own commemorative coin designs.
Students who are interested in stamp collecting may wish to research "Women Who Left Their 'Stamp' on History" at www.infoplease.com and create their own original stamp designs.
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