thesis statement about women's suffrage

92 Women’s Suffrage Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best women’s suffrage topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 most interesting women’s suffrage topics to write about, 👍 good research topics about women’s suffrage, ❓ research questions about women’s suffrage.

• Women’s Suffrage Movement: Historical Investigation The historical event under investigation is the women’s suffrage movement and the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. First, the book Women’s Suffrage: The Complete Guide to the Nineteenth Amendment by Wayne presents a […]
• The Women’s Suffrage Movement It shows the cause-and-effect relationship between the lack of substantial funds for the campaigns of activists and the subsequent decision to accept money from the person ideologically opposed to the female participants with their agenda. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Women’s Suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment Though the early Suffrage movement lacked diversity and the associated perspectives, it did lay the foundation for the 19trh Amendment despite quite vocal claims against change among some of the more racist Tennessee women, who […]
• American Women in History: Feminism and Suffrage It is important to note that the key sharp issues discussed in this chapter are: a finding of the independent women suffrage movement, the role of the constituency in this process, the role of war […]
• The Women’s Suffrage Movement in England in 19th Century It can also be claimed that the attempts of women to enter the sphere of politics have become the most important determinant in the construction of ideas about British democracy and culture. In this period, […]
• Women Suffrage in Carrie Chapman’s Rhetoric The paper is a bright example of the in-depth analysis of the problem and a perfect insight into the future of womens participation in the political life of the country.
• Women’s Suffrage: The Nineteenth Amendment The abolition movement, which dealt with the attempt to stop slavery, and the women’s rights movement, which was meant to allow females to enter the political life of the country.
• Sojourner Truth: Slavery Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage The main aim of this step was to show that black people should also be given the right to participate in elections and chose the future of their own state.
• Women’s Suffrage Movement The struggle for women suffrage augmented in the middle of the nineteenth century with the establishment of diverse associations. The formation of the International Council of Women occurred in the year 1888.
• Views on Women’s Suffrage by E.Kuhlman, L.Woodworth-Ney and E.Foner They have presented similar examples as factors in the enactment of women’s voting rights; these examples include the participation of women in wars at the home front and the contribution women made to build the […]
• Women’s Suffrage in America Suffrage is the right to vote, and women’s suffrage is the right of women to take part in the process of voting.
• Women’s Suffrage Discussion The entrenchment of equal rights of women and men and more noticeably the right of every American woman to vote came into being after the enactment of the nineteenth amendment.
• How Did Women Change Their Stature in Society: Women’s Suffrage The status of women in society has been considerably changed and, now, women take leading positions in different spheres: women in education choose proper approaches to study children and help them develop their skills; women […]
• Partisan Competition and Women’s Suffrage in the United States
• The First World War and Women’s Suffrage in Britain
• The Right for Women’s Suffrage
• Emily Stowe and the Women’s Suffrage Movement of Canada
• Reconstruction, Progressivism, Labor Unions and Women’s Suffrage
• Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government
• Methods Used in the Women’s Suffrage Movement
• Women’s Suffrage Movement Throughout the History of the United States
• Latin American Feminism and Women’s Suffrage
• Political Practices, Women’s Suffrage and Changes in California
• Municipal Housekeeping: The Impact of Women’s Suffrage on Public Education
• Reconstruction Through Black Suffrage and Women’s Rights
• What Was the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and How Did It Change America
• The National League for Opposing Women Suffrage
• The Women Suffrage Movement in the United States History and the Ability to Vote
• Men, Women, and the Ballot Woman Suffrage in the United States
• Feminism and Its Impact on Women’s Suffrage Movement
• Local North West Indiana Groups in Support of Women’s Suffrage
• Ireland’s Women’s Suffrage Movement
• Historical Events Surrounding the Women Suffrage Movement in the U.S.
• Link Between Women’s Suffrage and Education
• Californian Women Suffrage During the Election of 1912
• Women’s Suffrage Movement During the Progressive Era
• Campaigns for Women Suffrage and Their Effectiveness
• The National American Women Suffrage Association
• The Reasons Behind the Development of Women’s Suffrage Campaign
• Women Leaving the Playpen: The Emancipating Role of Female Suffrage
• The Pros and Cons of the Women’s Suffrage Movement
• The American Legal System: Women’s Suffrage Movement
• Why Suffrage for American Women Was Not Enough
• 19th Century Women’s Suffrage in Europe
• The Foundation and Impact of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States
• Gender Roles, Sexuality, and Women’s Suffrage
• Frederick Douglass and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage
• Woman Suffrage: The Issue of Women’s Voting Rights
• The Life During the Women’s Suffrage
• The Women’s Suffrage and the Role of Women in Society
• 20th Century Women’s Suffrage Movement
• Chartism: Women’s Suffrage and National Political Movement
• The Fight for Universal Women ‘s Suffrage
• Women’s Suffrage and the Role of Women in Society
• The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Historical Perspective
• The Second Great Awakening and the Women’s Suffrage Movement: The Democratic Deals
• Campaign for Women’s Suffrage in 1870
• Women Suffrage Citizenship and Be Respected Just the Same as Men
• Early 20th Century Temperance and Women’s Suffrage
• Women’s Lasting Battle Towards Suffrage
• Katie Stanton and Susan Anthony Gave Women’s Right to Suffrage a Voice
• How Did the Industrial Revolution Influence Women Suffrage
• What Is a Consequence of Women’s Suffrage in New Zealand?
• When Did the Women’s Suffrage Movement Start and End?
• What Was the Main Purpose of the Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• How Did WWI Have an Impact on Women’s Suffrage?
• Was F.D. Roosevelt for or Against Women’s Suffrage?
• What Was the First Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• Who Ended Women’s Suffrage?
• What Changed After Women’s Suffrage?
• What Did the Women’s Movement Accomplish?
• Which Amendment Allowed For Women’s Suffrage?
• Did President Franklin Pierce Support Women’s Suffrage?
• Did Any States Vote Against Women’s Suffrage?
• What Was the Impact of the Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• What Was the Biggest Accomplishment of the Women’s Movement?
• What Were the Causes and Effects of Women’s Suffrage Movement in the US?
• Did Women’s Suffrage Cause the Collapse of Western Civilization?
• When Did the Women’s Suffrage First Start in India?
• Why Was Women’s Suffrage Granted in the West Before the East?
• What Were Some Challenges Women Faced During Women’s Suffrage?
• How Did the Civil Right Act Influence Women’s Suffrage, or How Are They Similar?
• Who Was the President During the Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• What Is the Cost of Progress in Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• How Did Irish Women Relate to the British Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• Why Was the Women’s Suffrage Movement So Important?
• What Were the Three Major Events in the Women’s Rights Movement?
• Who Started the Women’s Suffrage Movement and Why?
• What Is Controversial About Women’s Suffrage?
• Why Did the Women’s Suffrage Movement Fail?
• Which Party Voted for Women’s Suffrage?
• What Were Major Issues in the Women’s Movement?
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Women’s Suffrage

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 20, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Women’s Rights Movement Begins

The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War . During the 1820s and '30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had.

At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States— temperance leagues , religious movements, moral-reform societies, anti- slavery organizations—and in many of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood”: that is, the idea that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen of the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists—mostly women, but some men—gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women’s rights. They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott .

Most of the delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

Civil Rights and Women's Rights During the Civil War

During the 1850s, the women’s rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution’s protection to all citizens—and defines “citizens” as “male”; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees Black men the right to vote.

Some women’s suffrage advocates believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African Americans.

In 1869, a new group called the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Others argued that it was unfair to endanger Black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.

Gallery: The Progressive Campaign for Suffrage

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization’s first president.

By then, the suffragists’ approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were “created equal,” the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men.

They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral “maternal commonwealth.”

This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would “ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained.”

Did you know? In 1923, the National Woman's Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited all discrimination on the basis of sex. The so-called Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified.

Winning the Vote at Last

Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.

Still, southern and eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a “Winning Plan” to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with a special focus on those recalcitrant regions.

Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Woman’s Party founded by Alice Paul focused on more radical, militant tactics—hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance—aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.

World War I slowed the suffragists’ campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women’s work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men.

Finally, on August 18, 1920 , the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Feminism — Women's Suffrage

Essays on Women's Suffrage

What makes a good women's suffrage essay topic.

When it comes to writing a Women's Suffrage essay, choosing the right topic is crucial. A good essay topic should be thought-provoking, engaging, and relevant to the subject matter. Here are some recommendations on how to brainstorm and choose an essay topic:

• Brainstorm: Start by brainstorming ideas related to women's suffrage, such as historical events, key figures, and societal impacts. Consider the different aspects of women's suffrage, such as political, social, and cultural factors.
• Consider the audience: Think about who will be reading your essay and what topics would resonate with them. Consider the interests and perspectives of your audience when choosing a topic.
• Relevance: Choose a topic that is relevant to the current social and political climate. Look for topics that address ongoing issues related to gender equality and women's rights.
• Uniqueness: Avoid common and overused topics. Instead, look for unique and lesser-known aspects of women's suffrage that will set your essay apart.

Best Women's Suffrage Essay Topics

When it comes to Women's Suffrage essay topics, there are plenty of options to choose from. Here are some creative and stand-out essay topics to consider:

• The role of women's suffrage in shaping modern democracy
• Intersectionality and the fight for women's suffrage
• The impact of women's suffrage on the feminist movement
• Women of color in the suffrage movement
• The global impact of women's suffrage movements
• The portrayal of women's suffrage in literature and media
• Women's suffrage and the labor movement
• Suffragettes and their role in the fight for women's rights
• The legacy of women's suffrage in contemporary politics
• Women's suffrage and the LGBTQ+ rights movement
• The role of men in the women's suffrage movement
• Women's suffrage and the fight for reproductive rights
• Indigenous women in the suffrage movement
• The impact of women's suffrage on education and academia
• Women's suffrage and the impact on family dynamics
• The role of religious institutions in the women's suffrage movement
• Women's suffrage and the fight for economic equality
• The role of grassroots activism in the women's suffrage movement
• Women's suffrage and the fight for disability rights
• The impact of women's suffrage on the global stage

Women's Suffrage essay topics Prompts

Looking for some creative prompts to inspire your Women's Suffrage essay? Here are five engaging prompts to get you started:

• Imagine you are a suffragette in the early 20th century. Write a first-person account of your experiences and motivations for fighting for women's right to vote.
• Research and write about a lesser-known figure in the women's suffrage movement and their contributions to the cause.
• How has the fight for women's suffrage influenced other social justice movements? Explore the interconnectedness of women's rights with other movements for equality.
• Choose a specific region or country and examine the unique challenges and triumphs of the women's suffrage movement in that area.
• Create a multimedia presentation that showcases the visual and material culture of the women's suffrage movement, including posters, banners, and other artifacts.

When it comes to choosing a Women's Suffrage essay topic, the possibilities are endless. By considering relevance, uniqueness, and audience perspective, you can choose a topic that will engage readers and shed new light on this important historical movement.

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The Contribution of Carrie Chapman Catt in The Women's Suffrage Movement

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The Impact of Feminism on Women's Rights in Law, Politics, Science, and The Whole Society

The biography of carrie chapman catt - the president of the national woman’s suffrage association, the subordinate role of women in somali society in nuruddin farah’s novels, analysis of emmeline pankhurst’s speech "why we are militant", the use of hypophora, pathos and logos in the speech women's right to vote by susan b. anthony, the women's suffrage movement: how it began and what gained, women right to vote, rhetorical analysis of the speech by susan b. anthony "women's right to vote", women rights in the speech by susan b. anthony, "on women's right to vote", male control and women's suffrage in trifles by susan glaspell, a report on the life and legacy of jane addams, suffragettes in the struggle for a better life for immigrants, the powerful influence of women's suffrage movement in american history, the concept of feminism as a carrier of prejudice today, feminist activism, its types and strategies, the intersection between transphobia the feminist movement.

Women’s suffrage is the right of women by law to vote in national or local elections.

Women were excluded from voting in ancient Greece and republican Rome, as well as in the few democracies that had emerged in Europe by the end of the 18th century. When the franchise was widened, as it was in the United Kingdom in 1832, women continued to be denied all voting rights. The question of women’s voting rights finally became an issue in the 19th century, and the struggle was particularly intense in Great Britain and the United States. By the early years of the 20th century, women had won the right to vote in national elections in New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902), Finland (1906), and Norway (1913).

Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Emmeline Pankhurst, Carrie Chapman Catt, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Lucy Burns.

Saudi Arabia gave women the right to vote in 2015, leaving Vatican City as the only place where women’s suffrage is still denied today. The U.N. first explicitly named women’s suffrage as a human right in 1979. Not all suffragists were women, and not all anti-suffragists were men. Susan B. Anthony (and 15 other women) voted illegally in the presidential election of 1872

1. Ramirez, F. O., Soysal, Y., & Shanahan, S. (1997). The changing logic of political citizenship: Cross-national acquisition of women's suffrage rights, 1890 to 1990. American sociological review, 735-745. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2657357) 2. Miller, G. (2008). Women's suffrage, political responsiveness, and child survival in American history. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(3), 1287-1327. (https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/123/3/1287/1928181) 3. Smith, H. L. (2014). The British Women's Suffrage Campaign 1866-1928: Revised 2nd Edition. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315833569/british-women-suffrage-campaign-1866-1928-harold-smith) 4. Abrams, B. A., & Settle, R. F. (1999). Women's suffrage and the growth of the welfare state. Public Choice, 100(3-4), 289-300. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018312829025) 5. Rover, C. (2019). Women's Suffrage and Party Politics in Britain, 1866–1914. In Women's Suffrage and Party Politics in Britain, 1866–1914. University of Toronto Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.3138/9781487575250/html?lang=de) 6. McCammon, H. J., & Campbell, K. E. (2001). Winning the vote in the West: The political successes of the women's suffrage movements, 1866-1919. Gender & Society, 15(1), 55-82. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/089124301015001004?journalCode=gasa) 7. Cockroft, I., & Croft, S. (2010). Art, Theatre and Women's Suffrage. Twickenham: Aurora Metro. (https://www.thesuffragettes.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/PR-Art-Theatre.pdf) 8. Towns, A. (2010). The Inter-American Commission of Women and Women's Suffrage, 1920–1945. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-latin-american-studies/article/interamerican-commission-of-women-and-womens-suffrage-19201945/D6536EB4143959408AEEEF48380A29BD Journal of Latin American Studies, 42(4), 779-807.

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The Suffragette Movement in Great Britain: A Study of the Factors Influencing the Strategy Choices of the Women's Social and Political Union, 1903-1918

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This thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that the W.S.P.U.'s strategy choices were unimportant in regard to winning women's suffrage. It confirms the hypothesis that the long-range strategy of the W.S.P.U. was to escalate coercion until the Government exhausted its powers of opposition and conceded, but to interrupt this strategy whenever favorable bargaining opportunities with the Government and third parties developed. In addition to filling an apparent research gap by systematically analyzing these choices, this thesis synthesizes and tests several piecemeal theories of social movements within the general framework of the natural history approach. The analysis utilizes data drawn from movement … continued below

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Lance, Derril Keith Curry December 1977.

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• North Texas State University Place of Publication: Denton, Texas

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• Discipline: Sociology
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• Grantor: North Texas State University

This thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that the W.S.P.U.'s strategy choices were unimportant in regard to winning women's suffrage. It confirms the hypothesis that the long-range strategy of the W.S.P.U. was to escalate coercion until the Government exhausted its powers of opposition and conceded, but to interrupt this strategy whenever favorable bargaining opportunities with the Government and third parties developed. In addition to filling an apparent research gap by systematically analyzing these choices, this thesis synthesizes and tests several piecemeal theories of social movements within the general framework of the natural history approach. The analysis utilizes data drawn from movement leaders' autobiographies, documentary accounts of the militant movement, and the standard histories of the entire British women's suffrage movement. Additionally, extensive use is made of contemporary periodicals and miscellaneous works on related movements.

• Great Britain politics
• United Kingdom
• Women's Party
• suffragette
• women in politics

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Lance, Derril Keith Curry. The Suffragette Movement in Great Britain: A Study of the Factors Influencing the Strategy Choices of the Women's Social and Political Union, 1903-1918 , thesis , December 1977; Denton, Texas . ( https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc504400/ : accessed April 10, 2024 ), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu ; .

Educator Resources

Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment

Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change in the Constitution – guaranteeing women the right to vote. Some suffragists used more confrontational tactics such as picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Read more...

Primary Sources

Links go to DocsTeach, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.

In the second decade of the 20th century, woman suffragists began staging large and dramatic parades to draw attention to their cause. In 1913, more than 5,000 suffragists from around the country paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

During World War I, suffragists tried to embarrass President Woodrow Wilson into reversing his opposition and supporting a federal woman suffrage amendment.

The National Woman’s Party (NWP) organized the first White House picket in U.S. history in January of 1917. It lasted nearly three years.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, sent this 1871 petition to Congress requesting that suffrage rights be extended to women and that women be heard on the floor of Congress.

The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), founded by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, sent this 1872 petition to Congress asking that women in DC and the territories be allowed to vote and hold office.

This indictment charged Susan B. Anthony with "wrongfully and unlawfully" voting in the 1872 election in Rochester, NY, "being...a person of the female sex." She was one of several women arrested for illegally voting.

Frederick Douglass's son, daughter, and son-in-law signed this 1878 petition to Congress in favor of woman suffrage, along with other residents of the District of Columbia .

In this 1916 resolution, "Rhode Island Union Colored Women's Clubs" asked Congress to secure a federal woman suffrage amendment. African American women organized women’s clubs across the country to advocate for suffrage, among other reforms.

Some women fought for decades for the right to vote. In 1917, Mary O. Stevens, a former Civil War nurse, sent this letter to Rep. Edwin Webb, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which held hearings on women's suffrage. 

There was strong opposition to enfranchising women. This 1917 petition from the Women Voters Anti-Suffrage Party of New York urged the Senate not to pass a federal suffrage amendment giving women the right to vote .

This Congressional resolution, passed in 1919, proposed extending the right to vote to women and became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

This 1920 statement verified that Tennessee had ratified the 19th Amendment. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify, crossing the three-fourths-of-states threshold needed to clinch passage of the amendment.

Teaching Activities

The Women's Rights page on DocsTeach includes document-based teaching activities and primary sources related to women's rights and changing roles in American history – including women's suffrage, political involvement, citizenship rights, roles during the world wars, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and more.

Failure is Impossible  is a play that brings to life the facts and emotions of the momentous struggle for voting rights for women. It was first performed in 1995, as part of commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the 19th amendment at the National Archives. The story is told through the voices of Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Frances Gage, Clara Barton, and Carrie Chapman Catt, among others .  The script is available for educational uses.

Image: Suffrage Parade in New York City, ca. 1912

Additional Background Information

In July 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY. The Seneca Falls Convention produced a list of demands called the Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, it called for broader educational and professional opportunities for women and the right of married women to control their wages and property. After this historic gathering, women’s voting rights became a central issue in the emerging debate about women’s rights in the United States.

Many of the attendees to the convention were also abolitionists whose goals included universal suffrage – the right to vote for all adults. In 1870 this goal was partially realized when the 15th amendment to the Constitution, granting black men the right to vote, was ratified. Woman suffragists' vehement disagreement over supporting the 15th Amendment, however, resulted in a "schism" that split the women's suffrage movement into two new suffrage organizations that focused on different strategies to win women voting rights.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in May of 1869 – they opposed the 15th amendment because it excluded women. In the year following the ratification of the 15th amendment, the NWSA sent a voting rights petition to the Senate and House of Representatives requesting that suffrage rights be extended to women and that women be granted the privilege of being heard on the floor of Congress.

The second national suffrage organization established in 1869 was the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), founded by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The AWSA supported the 15th Amendment and protested the confrontational tactics of the NWSA. The AWSA concentrated on gaining women’s access to the polls at state and local levels, in the belief that victories there would gradually build support for national action on the issue. While a federal woman suffrage amendment was not their priority, an 1871 petition, asking that women in DC and the territories be allowed to vote and hold office, from AWSA leadership to Congress reveals its support for one.

In 1890, the NWSA and AWSA merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). It became the largest woman suffrage organization in the country and led much of the struggle for the vote through 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified. Stanton became its president; Anthony became its vice president; and Stone became chairman of the executive committee. In 1919, one year before women gained the right to vote with the adoption of the 19th amendment, the NAWSA reorganized into the League of Women Voters.

The tactics used by suffragists went beyond petitions and memorials to Congress. Testing another strategy, Susan B. Anthony registered and voted in the 1872 election in Rochester, NY. As planned, she was arrested for "knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully vot[ing] for a representative to the Congress of the United States." She was convicted by the State of New York and fined $100, which she insisted she would never pay. On January 12, 1874, Anthony petitioned Congress, requesting "that the fine imposed upon your petitioner be remitted, as an expression of the sense of this high tribunal that her conviction was unjust."

Wealthy white women were not the only supporters of women's suffrage. Frederick Douglass, formerly enslaved and leader of the abolition movement, was also an advocate. He attended the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. In an editorial published that year in The North Star , the anti-slavery newspaper he published, he wrote, "...in respect to political rights,...there can be no reason in the world for denying to woman the elective franchise,..." By 1877, when he was U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia, Douglass's family was also involved in the movement. His son, Frederick Douglass, Jr.; daughter, Mrs. Nathan Sprague; and son-in-law, Nathan Sprague, all signed a petition to Congress for woman suffrage "...to prohibit the several States from Disfranchising United States Citizens on account of Sex."

A growing number of black women actively supported women's suffrage during this period. They organized women’s clubs across the country to advocate for suffrage, among other reforms. Prominent African American suffragists included Ida B. Wells-Barnett of Chicago, a leading crusader against lynching; Mary Church Terrell, educator and first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW); and Adella Hunt Logan, Tuskegee Institute faculty member, who insisted in articles in The Crisis , a publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), that if white women needed the vote to protect their rights, then black women – victims of racism as well as sexism – needed the ballot even more.

In the second decade of the 20th century, suffragists began staging large and dramatic parades to draw attention to their cause. One of the most consequential demonstrations was a march held in Washington, DC, on March 3, 1913. Though controversial because of the march organizers' attempt to exclude, then segregate, women of color, more than 5,000 suffragists from around the country paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol to the Treasury Building.

Many of the women who had been active in the suffrage movement in the 1860s and 1870s continued their involvement over 50 years later. In 1917, Mary O. Stevens, secretary and press correspondent of the Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War, asked the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to help the cause of woman suffrage by explaining: "My father trained me in my childhood days to expect this right. I have given my help to the agitation, and work[ed] for its coming a good many years."

During World War I, suffragists tried to embarrass President Woodrow Wilson into reversing his opposition and supporting a federal woman suffrage amendment. But in the heated patriotic climate of wartime, such tactics met with hostility and sometimes violence and arrest. Frustrated with the suffrage movement’s leadership, Alice Paul had broken with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to form the National Woman’s Party (NWP). It employed more militant tactics to agitate for the vote.

Most notably, the NWP organized the first White House picket in U.S. history on January 10, 1917. They stood vigil at the White House, demonstrating in silence six days a week for nearly three years. The "Silent Sentinels" let their banners – comparing the President to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany – speak for them. Many of the sentinels were arrested and jailed in deplorable conditions. Some incarcerated women went on hunger strikes and endured forced feedings. The Sentinels' treatment gained greater sympathy for women's suffrage, and the courts later dismissed all charges against them.

When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917 and President Woodrow Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift in favor of the vote for women. There was still strong opposition to enfranchising women, however, as illustrated by petitions from anti-suffrage groups.

Eventually suffragists won the political support necessary for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. For 42 years, the measure had been introduced at every session of Congress, but ignored or voted down. It finally passed Congress in 1919 and went to the states for ratification. In May, the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 304 to 90; two weeks later, the Senate approved it 56 to 25.

Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan were the first states to ratify it. On August 18, 1920, it appeared that Tennessee had ratified the amendment – the result of a change of vote by 24 year-old legislator Harry Burn at the insistence of his elderly mother. But those against the amendment managed to delay official ratification. Anti-suffrage legislators fled the state to avoid a quorum, and their associates held massive anti-suffrage rallies and attempted to convince pro-suffrage legislators to oppose ratification. However, Tennessee reaffirmed its vote and delivered the crucial 36th ratification necessary for final adoption. While decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained, the face of the American electorate had changed forever.

National History Day

Welcome to our National History Day page! Whether you are just getting started picking a topic or need to find resources for your project, this is the right page for you. National History Day is not only about creating a great project, but about learning the process of writing history—finding a topic, doing the research, analyzing the evidence, and coming to a conclusion. The process is just as important as the final product! For that reason, we want to support YOU as you do the work of a historian!  

Aren’t sure how to find a topic? Aren’t sure of the difference between a primary and a secondary source? Aren’t sure how to find resources? Aren’t sure how to come up with a strong thesis? We have answers and suggestions below!

If you’ve read through and clicked on the links on this page and still have questions, we can help. The more research you do, the more help we can provide. Look through these resources and do your own searches – then, if you have specific questions about how to find certain resources or information, we might be able to help you. Email us questions such as “where can I find [X]?” or “Do you have suggestions for sources on [X]”. Don’t email us questions such as “What is the significance of [X]?” “What should I know about [X]?” “Why is [X] important to know about?” “Is [X] a worthwhile topic for History Day?” (It's important for students to find answers through the research and writing process themselves -- remember, the process is as important as the final product!)

What's Your Topic?

Find Your Topic

Explore by the event, topic, or movement your National History Day project focuses on. 

Turning Points in History

What is the theme of National History Day? What are the instructions?  

TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY! To celebrate their 50th anniversary, NHD’s theme will be  Turning Points in History . This year’s theme invites you to consider questions of time and place, cause and effect, change over time, and impact and significance. 

A turning point in history is more than just an important event that happened a long time ago. It is more than a new idea or a particular action taken by an individual. A turning point is an idea, event, or action that directly, or sometimes indirectly, causes change.

Learn more at the NHD website .

How do I find a topic?  

First and foremost, t ry to pick something that interests you ! It’s always good to have a topic that motivates you . Your topic can be a person, a movement, an event , etc.  

When picking a topic, you want to keep in mind three important things:  

• The National History Day theme and instructions
• Number of reliable resources to support your project

When it comes to the theme, think about it this way: i f the NHD theme is on U.S. women, it would not make sense to focus your project on a man.   

  When picking a topic, you want to make sure it’s something you can tackle in your chosen format —the scope. A topic should not be too big nor should it be too small. For example, trying to look at “all of human history” is too big of a topic for NHD, no matter the theme. You will not be able to go into enough detail to make a coherent argument or compelling project if you try to cover too much. Same if you try and focus in too small. If you pick, for example, to focus in on an individual person, thing, or small event, make sure you connect that person/event/thing to a broader context that will demonstrate its significance .   

  You also want to make sure that you can find enough information on your topic. If you can’t find good, reliable , accurate resources then the research process will be much harder an d you won’t be able to produce as strong of a final project. Doing something original is always encouraged, but you need to make sure you can actually complete your project.   

What is the difference between a secondary and a primary source?  

  Great question! Simply explained, Primary Sources are original documents or objects that were created at the time of your study. These can be diaries, government documents, books, photographs, films, newspapers, maps, etc. Secondary Sources are documents written about a topic or time period. They will retell, analyze, or interpret events through examination of primary sources. These can be text books , documentaries, scholarly writing, etc.  

There are some instances in which a traditionally secondary source can be used as a primary source. If, for example, you were looking at the question “How has the teaching of U.S. Slavery in school changed in the 20 th century?” A textbook published in 1950 and another in 2020 would be fantastic primary sources! Both were written at the time and therefore can be used as primary sources, even though they tell and interpret past events.  

If you have more questions about primary vs. secondary sources, please see the following links:  

https://umb.libguides.com/PrimarySources/secondary  

https://www.loc.gov/programs/teachers/getting-started-with-primary-sources/  

What is a thesis statement? How do I write a good one?

A thesis statement is your argument. It should be specific, clear, concise, and compelling. It needs to be an argument , not a statement of fact. When trying to come up with a thesis statement, think about trying to answer “how” or “why” questions, such as “Why is this topic/person/event important?” “How did this topic/person/event a ffect things?” A good thesis statement would be: “The U.S. Woman’s Suffrage Movement is important because...” not “The U.S. Woman’s Suffrage Movement happened.” The second is a statement of fact and it does not help answer the questions of “how” or “why” and it cannot be disputed.  

If you want more help, see the following links:  

https://www.evansville.edu/writingcenter/downloads/thesis.pdf  

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/thesis_statement_tips.html  

How do I find resources?  

A quick google search can be a good place to start. If you search for “Sojourner Truth,” you will get a lot of results. Not all of them are going to be useful or reputable, but you will get a lot that are. The footnotes on Wikipedia pages may link to reputable sources , but absolutely do not cite Wikipedia itself as a secondary source!!!! Anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, which means you do not know if the information is verified or accurate.

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Women’s History Museum, the public libraries, and museums all have great lists of resources for you to start with. They also have a lot of primary sources (many of them are digitized) that you can use!  

The Library of Congress created a guide specifically for teen researchers who want to use their digital or print materials. Check it out here .

Please look at our Resources Page for more help getting started.  

Can I interview NWHM staff?  

Because the National History Day Rule Book discourages participants from interviewing historians, the NWHM staff will not provide interviews.  

How do I figure out if a website is a good source?  

Websites can be tricky, and you have to make sure you are pulling information from good sources. The websites of museums, archives, libraries, and academic institutions are all safe to use. Look for websites ending with .org, . edu , or .gov. Even though these sources are generally safe to use , you should still double check! 

If you are looking at the website of an institution or person you do not know, be careful. Make sure you look for citations (footnotes, endnotes, works cited page s ) to see where the website writer is getting their information. If you don’t see citations, be wary of the website. Make sure you look for the writer—are they named? What else can you find out about them? Are they an expert on this topic? If you can’t find a writer, be wary of the website. 

If you cannot understand what the source is saying—whether it’s the language, the vocabulary, or poor writing—don’t use it!

A perfect example is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a reliable, reputable, or accurate secondary source!!! Anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, which means they can add or delete any information regardless of accuracy. You do not know who is adding or deleting the information or why they are adding or deleting information from the page. Wikipedia is only useful for the footnotes at the bottom of the page or if you are using it as a primary source.  

If you have more questions, visit this link .

Biographies

Mary Church Terrell

Gloria Steinem

Lilian St. Cyr (“Red Wing”)

Find What You Need

Explore all of the resources the National Women’s History Museum has created. There are lesson plans, biographies, posters, primary sources, and more. You can search by topic, theme, or resource type. 

Check Out Past Projects!

When Compromise is Unacceptable

The 1977 National Women's Conference

Margaret Chase Smith

Janay Fischer-Carter

Alice Mayer and Annalise Taller

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