The last twenty years of the Women’s Suffrage movement were led by a different group of activists than those who led the first fifty years, but by celebrating the anniversaries of the first convention, these later activists remained committed to the goals of the early movement.
By examining the digitized correspondence of suffrage leaders including Miriam Florence Follin Leslie, asking questions, and exploring related collections, students can learn more about some of the lesser-known suffrage supporters.
The story of women’s suffrage contains many smaller stories that can help us understand the larger movement more completely. The dress reform movement is a powerful lens through which to study and teach the story of the women’s suffrage movement.
Join us at the Library of Congress on October 19th from 9am-3pm for a special one-day professional development event on Women's Suffrage, open to K-12 educators of all disciplines interested in incorporating primary sources into their classroom instruction.
One image from the exhibit "Shall Not Be Denied: Women's Fight for the Vote" in particular struck me both for what it shows and for what it does not make evident.
Where can you look if you think you’ve run out of information about a person or place? How can we encourage students to be persistent researching in the face of a “dead end”? And how do we equip students with the knowledge of databases and archives, so that when they run into a historical dead end, they know where to keep looking?
My hope is that my work to create source materials on Civil War nurses situates nurses in the heart of the Civil War and proves their importance in the growing war historiography.