Women Appeal for a Suffrage Amendment
Gender and Sexuality
Social Movements
Some suffrage activists were disappointed that the 15th Amendment did not explicitly protect women’s right to vote. Susan B. Anthony and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, based in Washington, D.C., to pressure Congress to pass an amendment that would guarantee women’s suffrage. The N.W.S.A. sent this appeal to hundreds of local groups, calling for a large petition drive to build support in Congress for a women’s suffrage amendment. Two years later, Senator Sargent of California, a friend of Anthony’s, introduced a women’s suffrage amendment. Within four years, both the Senate and House of Representatives had formed “special committees†on women’s suffrage.
National Woman Suffrage Association
National Woman Suffrage Association, “Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment,†10 November 1876, (Washington, D.C.: National Archives).
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1876
1802, 1696, 2131
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Alice Paul Hangs the Ratification Banner at Suffrage Headquarters
Gender and Sexuality
Social Movements
After Congress approved the 19th Amendment in June 1919, the amendment had to be ratified by three fourths of the states. Fortunately, suffragists were well organized at the local level to pressure state legislatures into approving the amendment. To keep track of the amendment’s progress, the National Women’s Party created a “ratification flagâ€, sewing on a star for each state that ratified the amendment. When Tennessee became the 36th state to approve the amendment—and the final of the necessary three-fourths of the states—triumphant suffragists, led by Alice Paul, hung the flag in Washington, D.C on August 18, 1920.
National Photo Company
National Photo Company, When Tennessee the 36th state ratified, Aug 18, 1920, Alice Paul, National Chairman of the Woman's Party, unfurled the ratification banner from Suffrage headquarters, in The Suffragist, Vol. 8, No. 8, (September 1920); from Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1920
1799, 1696
English
Modern America (1914-1929)
Petition from the Citizens of Massachusetts in Support of Women’s Suffrage (with text supports)
Gender and Sexuality
Social Movements
During the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of petitions bearing the signatures of thousands of people flooded Congress, asking for a suffrage amendment. Local activists went door-to-door in their communities, gathering the signatures of sympathetic women and men. These Massachusetts activists followed a template circulated by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; the template provided the proper wording for a petition and suggested that there be separate places for the signatures of men (who could vote) and women (who could not). Suffrage leaders compared their methods to similar anti-slavery petition drives, also led by women, in the antebellum period.
Various
Petition from the Citizens of Massachusetts in Support of Women’s Suffrage, circa 1879 (Washington D.C.: National Archives).
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1879
1801, 1696, 1683
English
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
Petition from the Citizens of Massachusetts in Support of Women’s Suffrage
Gender and Sexuality
Social Movements
During the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of petitions bearing the signatures of thousands of people flooded Congress, asking for a suffrage amendment. Local activists went door-to-door in their communities, gathering the signatures of sympathetic women and men. These Massachusetts activists followed a template circulated by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; the template provided the proper wording for a petition and suggested that there be separate places for the signatures of men (who could vote) and women (who could not). Suffrage leaders compared their methods to similar anti-slavery petition drives, also led by women, in the antebellum period.
Various
Petition from the Citizens of Massachusetts in Support of Women’s Suffrage, circa 1879 (Washington D.C.: National Archives).
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1879
1801, 1696, 1684, 2131
English
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
Ten Thousand Women March for the Right to Vote
Gender and Sexuality
Social Movements
Suffrage activists staged a huge parade up Fifth Avenue in New York City on May 10, 1913. Over 10,000 women and men marched, and a crowd of over half a million lined the streets to watch. New Yorkers were inspired by women who had marched in protest during Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration two months earlier in Washington, D.C. There, suffragists were spit on and attacked. By parading, women claimed a place for themselves in the public sphere. The tactic was borrowed from the labor movement and reflects the growing influence of working women in the suffrage movement.
H.H. Russell
H.H. Russell, [Suffrage parade marching north on Fifth Avenue at 26th Street.], circa 10 May 1913, from National American Women Suffrage Association records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?PS_MSS_CD22_338.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1913 (Circa)
1803, 1696
English
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
A Young American Decides to Fight Fascism in Spain
Social Movements
Large numbers of American college students expressed increasing activism against war in the early 1930s, connecting international war with issues like labor, minority rights, and economic injustice at home. The rise of fascism in Europe, however, forced many young Americans to reconsider their total anti-war position, as Hitler and Mussolini helped launch a destructive civil war in Spain in 1936. This memoir, written in 1986 for an American Student Union fiftieth anniversary reunion, details the moral position of one student, George Watt, and reveals the often-conflicting range of issues confronted by young Americans during this era.
George Watt
George Watt, 1986; from New Deal Network, http://newdeal.feri.org/students/asu11.htm.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1986
English
Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
"Uncle Sam's Got Himself in a Terrible Jam": Protest Music and the Vietnam War
Social Movements
In this activity students analyze the lyrics to a popular Vietnam War protest song and discuss how music can be used to motivate people and for protest. Then students will create a new stanza for the protest song "I-Feel-Like-I'm Fixin'-To-Die Rag."
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2009.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2009
Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
<div><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>
English
Postwar America (1946-1975)
"School Desegration Pickets"
Civil Rights and Citizenship
Social Movements
Though rallies featured national figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., and lawsuits were often filed by men, the day-in, day-out on-the-ground organizing and protesting against school segregation was led by mothers who demanded the best possible education for their children. In 1958 in New York City, a group of mothers nicknamed the "Harlem Nine" vowed to "go to jail and rot there, if necessary," before sending their children to inferior schools created by the city's segregated housing patterns. In Milwaukee, mothers and children like those pictured below formed picket lines to demand integration; in 1964 Milwaukee parents and activists also organized a one-day boycott of the schools during which 15,000 students stayed home.
Unknown
"School Desegregation Pickets," black and white photograph, (Milwaukee, WI: ca. 1964), WHi-4993, Lloyd A. Barbee Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1964 (Circa)
Wisconsin Historical Society. <strong>All reproductions must make reference to the proper image numbers.</strong>
English
Postwar America (1946-1975)
Didactic Dramas: Antiwar Plays of the 1930s
Social Movements
The interwar peace movement was arguably the largest mass movement of the 1920s and 1930s, a mobilization often overlooked in the wake of the broad popular consensus that ultimately supported the U.S. involvement in World War II. The destruction wrought in World War I (known in the 1920s and 1930s as the "Great War") and the cynical nationalist politics of the Versailles Treaty had left Americans disillusioned with the Wilsonian crusade to save the world for democracy. The antiwar movement drew on many tactics honed in earlier suffrage campaigns, including the use of pageants and plays. Circulated by the New Deal-sponsored Federal Theatre Project (FTP), these play synopses suggested the range and diversity of antiwar sentiment in the 1930s. The FTP vetted hundreds of scripts and prepared lists of plays for the use of community theaters. Antiwar dramas were among the most popular, with themes of religious pacifism, moral motherhood, and condemnation of war profiteering.
History Matters
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2000 (Circa)
English
Website
Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
An Aviation Hero Advocates Isolationism
Social Movements
The interwar peace movement was arguably the largest mass movement of the 1920s and 1930s, a mobilization often overlooked in the wake of the broad popular consensus that ultimately supported the U.S. involvement in World War II. The destruction wrought in World War I (known in the 1920s and 1930s as the "Great War") and the cynical nationalist politics of the Versailles Treaty had left Americans disillusioned with the Wilsonian crusade to save the world for democracy. Senate investigations of war profiteering and shady dealings in the World War I munitions industry both expressed and deepened widespread skepticism about wars of ideals. On the right wing of the antiwar movement, Charles A. Lindbergh, popular hero of American aviation, was a champion of isolationism and a prominent member of the America First Committee, organized in September 1940. In this 1941 speech, he drew on a time-honored theme of American exceptionalism as he urged his listeners to avoid entanglements with Europe.
Charles Lindbergh
"An Independent Destiny for America": Charles A. Lindbergh on Isolationism," <em>History Matters</em>, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5163
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1941
English
Speech
Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)