NWP Digital Collection Educational Resources
The Digital Collection of the National Woman's Party allows students and visitors a first-hand look at the extraordinary documentation of the suffrage and equal rights movements.
The suffrage movement is, no doubt, an important mark in the country's pursuit of equality for all people, and a point in history that deserves more attention. Community programs and school curriculums have concentrated on civics and leadership, but the fight to have a basic, human right (a right to vote) has often been taken for granted. The right to vote has an impact on all of women's rights as it therefore gives women a voice in the formation of law and government.
While many lessons of history focus on leadership and empowerment, the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum positions leadership and empowerment within the story of a political rights movement to enfranchise women. We have the history of the women's movement within our frame and a unique collection of original artifacts documenting the struggle for equality that visitors, both nationally and internationally, can see up-close and personally. The database, as well as the lesson plan and resource links, enable us to further preserve Alice Paul's legacy, the achievement of women's equal rights, and tell the untold and unfinished stories for the benefit of scholars, current and future generations of Americans, and all the world's citizens.
Digital Imaging Website Lesson Example
Introduction: The passage of the 19th Amendment was a legislative milepost, dictating that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex. This right was not merely given to the women of the United States, but was the result of a 70 year battle. For generations, woman suffrage supporters wrote, spoke, lobbied, paraded, and marched to further their cause. But it took a new wave of suffragists to take the movement to the next level, and the movement shifted its focus from education to confrontation. The result was dramatic publicity documenting one of the nation's most significant expressions of nonviolent agitation and civil disobedience, resulting in protest parades, pickets, arrests and imprisonment.
Lesson Description: Students will learn more about the main suffrage organizations and women leaders. Students will go to the Museum and collection website to learn the history of the National Woman's Party and about the techniques used by suffrage organizations to demonstrate their cause.
Recommended Grade Level: 6-8
Instructional Objectives:
- Students will be able to identify the main suffrage organizations and their leaders in the early 1900s.
- Students will be able to describe the major ways that the National Woman's Party protested and lobbied for suffrage and the consequence of their actions.
- Students will be able to contrast and compare the techniques of NAWSA and NWP.
Collections Website Activities:
- Find a photograph of a leader of the National Woman's Party.
- What were the colors of the National Woman's Party?
- What were some slogans used on protest banners?
- What were some of the ways the National Woman's Party demonstrated nonviolently?
- Find a photograph of the women prisoners. Where were they held? Did this stop the protests?
- Find the token/symbol that was given to the women who served time for protesting.
Links to Digital Collections in Women's History
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/
Photos from the Library of Congress from the National Woman's Party
http://womhist.binghamton.edu/
The Women and Social Movements website - organized around 65 document projects with 1900 primary documents.
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/
The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images from Harvard University's library and museum.
http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm4/about.php
Triptych, a digital initiative of the Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore College Libraries, builds on the cooperative model set by TRIPOD, the online catalog that merges the collections of three colleges founded on the Quaker traditions of social conscience and thoughtful citizenship.
http://www.humanities-interactive.org/texas/citizens/
The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas
http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women/wh-digcoll.html
A research guide of digital collections of primary resources in American women's history.
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers is a project dedicated to bringing Eleanor Roosevelt's writings (and radio and television appearances) on democracy and human rights before an audience as diverse as the ones she addressed.
Digital Project Resources
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/cataloging.html
This Library of Congress site offers many resources on planning, digitizing, and cataloging collections.
http://www.loc.gov/z3950/
The Library of Congress gateway page for access to their catalog and those at many other institutions.
http://www.nedcc.org/digital/tofc.htm
A comprehensive document on managing digital imaging projects in museums and libraries from the Northeast Document Preservation Center
http://www.tasi.ac.uk/
A UK-based organization with many useful resources for organization that are undertaking digital conversion projects.
http://www.diglib.org/
The DLF is a consortium of libraries and related agencies that are pioneering the use of electronic information technologies to extend digital collections.