Overview

This lesson builds learning resources around a Smithsonian Sidedoor podcast episode (season 5, episode 12), "Votes for Hawaiians." The episode explores Hawaii's late independent and early territorial history 1820-1920, the contest for women's suffrage there, and racial and gender barriers to voting rights in America. Key individuals introduced are Emma Nakuina (1847-1929) and Wilhelmina Dowsett (1861-1929).

This lesson offers students the chance to use different kinds of sources - a podcast episode, a silent video, a political cartoon, the text of a law, and a modern news story - and analyze them interactively to answer critical thinking questions. Students should listen to the podcast in two parts and answer content-specific questions, then reflect on guiding questions specified for each class. Students may work with sources individually, but small group discussion of questions is encouraged.

Guiding questions

• How did Hawaiian women face 'double discrimination'?
• What stereotypes did suffragists in Hawaii need to overcome?
• How is Hawaii's legal status today a legacy of women's suffrage struggle there?

Time 3 classes

Related resources

• Smithsonian Magazine article by Nora McGreevy, "How the 19th Amendment Complicated the Status and Role of Women in Hawai’i"
• Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative article by Ashleigh Coren and Sara Cohen, " Eight Women's Voting History Stories You May Not Know"

If you are going to read just one book

• Finish the Fight!: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote, by Veronica Chambers

Glossary of key terms

• suffrage - the right to vote for candidates for public office, a fundamental element of democratic government
• suffragists - advocates for the right to vote
• missionaries - individuals sponsored by a church or other religious organization to live among and convert other people to share their beliefs; a list of missionaries to Hawaii is here
• oligarchy - a small, unelected group of individuals who control a country
• annexation - acquisition of one country's territory by another
• Jim Crow - an informal term for race-segregation laws in the United States from the 1880s through 1950s