The Declaration of Independence declared that “All men are created equal”, but most people in the United States did not have full rights of citizenship until almost two hundred years later. Engage students with premade activities from Storyboard That!
In this activity, students will create a storyboard that focuses on a specific event or piece of legislation that expanded voting rights
Storyboard Text
Abigail Adams writes to John Adams
“In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could." - Abigail Adams
First Women's Rights Convention
Wyoming gives women right to vote
"We will stay out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without our women." - Joseph M. Carey, legislator and governor of Wyoming
Suffragettes arrested for voting in NY
19th Amendment Ratified
"Our 'pathway' is straight to the ballot box with no variableness nor shadow of turning."-Elizabeth Cady Stanton
On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband to "remember the lades" as they planned to fight for independence from Great Britain. Sadly, women were not granted equal rights of citizenship when the U.S. won independence.
At the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, the attendees (including Frederick Douglass) adopted a resolution called the 'Declaration of Sentiments', calling for voting rights for women.
On Dec. 10, 1869, 50 years before the 19th Amendment, Wyoming territory became the first to give women suffrage including the right to vote, hold public office, and serve on a jury.
In November 1872, Susan B. Anthony and 15 other women were arrested in Rochester, New York after voting illegally in the presidential election of President Ulysses S. Grant vs. Horace Greeley.
72 years after the first Women's Rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY, women get the right to vote when the 19th Amendment is ratified on August 18, 1920.
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”-Ida B. Wells