2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

In November 2015, the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) launched a digital database with suffrage resources called “Crusade for the Vote” (http://www.crusadeforthevote.org) in preparation for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.  The purpose of this project is to demonstrate to educators, especially K-12 teachers, the importance of incorporating women’s political history into the curriculum.  The site also aims to create an ongoing discussion about suffrage in the United States.  Because women’s suffrage seems so normal today, it is often a challenge for teachers to convey the significance of women’s movements for the vote in the past.

To achieve these goals, the site features a history of the suffrage movement and sample lesson plans with references to Common Core Standards.  “Crusade for the Vote” includes primary sources and citations of secondary sources that teachers can use to design their own lessons.  The NWHM continues to add content as new lesson plans are developed and primary sources are digitized.

The panel will include a brief presentation on the ways this website fulfills the NWHM’s mission followed by an interactive exploration of the site’s resources. The majority of our time will be spent discussing the resources available to educators.  We will do a brief exercise with the audience using activities on the site. The goal is to have history teachers--K-12 instructors and history professors alike--engage with this resource and feel comfortable incorporating recent scholarship and the website's primary sources into the classroom.