AHA Today

The HerStory Scrapbook

AHA Staff | Mar 17, 2010

HerStory ScrapbookThis year marks the 23rd anniversary of National Women’s History Month and the 90th anniversary of the 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote. The New York Times has thousands of articles, editorials, and letters documenting both advocates of and opponents to the women’s suffrage movement.

The HerStory Scrapbook makes accessible pieces from the New York Times during “the final four years of the women’s suffrage campaign,” many centering on both the National American Woman Suffrage Association, founded in 1890 by Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony and headed by Carrie Chapman Catt, and the National Woman’s Party, founded in 1916 by Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, the latter of whom also headed the Party. The site explains, “After a struggle that spanned more than 50 years, it takes the extraordinary organizational skills of Carrie Chapman Catt and the indefatigable courage of Alice Paul to win suffrage for women across America in time for the 1920 presidential election.”

Because the site mimics a scrapbook, users can navigate through the timeline associated with the women’s suffrage movement, framed with primary resources from the New York Times. Before delving into newspaper clippings from the heart of the movement, the site supplies background information starting with the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention in 1848 and continuing to through the 1917 political battlefront. Similarly, the prolog covers common goals, different tactics, the 1916 election campaign, election results, and starting again, which shows how Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt upped their efforts. From here, users can explore newspaper clippings by year: 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, as well as the epilog, spanning clippings from 1921-77.

One final feature of the site is the HerStory 360° Challenge, celebrating 90 women in 90 days for the 90th anniversary of the 19th amendment. On January 1, 2010, this challenge began sharing stories from the women who sacrificed and fought for their right to vote with daily questions. The best part of this challenge is that it not only supplies the correct answer one day following the original question, but it also offers primary sources to accompany each answer, linking to Google books, the Library of Congress, newspaper clippings, and other web sites, to name but a few. You can also follow HerStory 360° on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.


Tags: AHA Today Women, Gender, Sexuality


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