The Women’s Suffrage Movement

The 2020 Women’s History Month theme is “Valiant Women of the Vote.” According to the National Women's History Alliance, "The theme honors 'the brave women who fought to win suffrage rights for women, and for the women who continue to fight for the voting rights of others.'" Teach your students about the fight for women’s suffrage. Students will learn about leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott, and their determination to achieve equal rights for women. In this lesson, students learn about the Seneca Falls Convention and choose from a number of assignments including an acrostic poem and a letter to a suffragist.

Students learn about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott as well as the role of abolitionists during this time. Students then learn about the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls. Discuss the Declaration of Sentiments and its purpose. Next, introduce Susan B. Anthony and the formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Students then watch a video that includes real footage and interviews with people who were alive at the time. Tell students that the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote and was passed in 1920, 100 years ago! Have students think of ways the world might change in another hundred years.