This collection brings together EDSITEment and Smithsonian resources to support the initial research into a project for National History Day 2020, "Breaking Barriers in History."

These resources—including photographs, objects, portraits, lesson plans, and articles—explore how women during the 19th and 20th centuries organized, petitioned, marched, and spoke out for the removal of barriers to full voting rights for women. While the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, the extent to which this law led to equity for all women remains a point of debate. Resources address how groups and individuals sought to bring attention to the disenfranchisement of women, highlight the often overlooked perspectives and actions of women of color during the suffrage movement, and offer insight into the legacy of the suffrage movement on the larger fights for women’s and civil rights. The second resource of this collection contains questions to help with the analysis of a chosen topic alongside photograph, document, artwork, portrait, and object resources. 

By no means is this collection comprehensive; instead, it provides a launching point for further research.

This collection was created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access.

Share your National History Day collections and let us know what you think! Write to us on Twitter: @EDSITEment and @SmithsonianLab, #NHD2020. If you publish a collection on your National History Day topic, be sure to enter #NHD2020 in the description!

Tags: voting, protest, African American, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, Belva Ann Lockwood, Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune, Anna Julia Cooper, Jeannette Pickering Rankin, Victoria Woodhull, Wyoming, Suffragette, Suffragist, Fannie Lou Hamer, Felisa Rincón de Gautier, Zitkala-Ša, Susette LaFlesche Tibbles, Alice Paul, ERA, civil rights, women’s rights, Edith Mayo, protest, boycott, twentieth century, 20th, #NHD