The Seneca Falls Convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19 to July 20, 1848, was the first women’s rights convention held in the United States. At that convention, the Declaration of Sentiments was written that outlined demands for women’s equality. This lesson uses video clips to have students understand the important people and events that led to the Declaration of Sentiments and then apply the text of the Declaration to today.
Declaration Revisited: Declaration of Sentiments Podcast
The Declaration of Independence called George III a tyrant. And in 1848, a group of women’s rights activists mirrored our founding document to accuse men of the same crime. Today in our final revisit to the Declaration of Independence, we explore the Declaration of Sentiments, the document at the heart of the women’s suffrage movement.
Our guest is Laura Free, host of the podcast Amended and professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
This short episode includes a one-page Graphic Organizer for students to take notes on while listening, as well as discussion questions on the back side.
Declaration Revisited: Native Americans Podcast
Today is our second revisit to the document that made us a nation. Writer, activist, and Independent presidential candidate Mark Charles lays out the anti-Native American sentiments within it, the doctrines and proclamations from before 1776 that justified “discovery,” and the Supreme Court decisions that continue to cite them all.
This short episode includes a one-page Graphic Organizer for students to take notes on while listening, as well as discussion questions on the back side.
The 19th Amendment: A Woman’s Right to Vote
Voting is the most basic right of a citizen and the most important right in a democracy. When you vote, you are choosing the people who will make the laws. For almost a century and a half of our nation’s history, women were barred from exercising this fundamental right. This film explores the long, difficult struggle for women to win the right to vote. It’s about citizenship, the power of the vote, and why women had to change the Constitution with the 19th Amendment. The film includes primary sources and commentary from historians, legal scholars, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy.
The American Revolution Changes the Status of Women
This short video illustrates how women in post-revolutionary America came to be seen as intellectual beings responsible for fostering civic ideals in their husbands and children. These “republican mothers” were protectors of the public good. Professor Rosemarie Zagarri concludes that the flowering of feminist sentiments originating in the 1770’s reached its fruition in the Seneca Falls Declaration of 1848.