Teaching Suffrage: She's Good Enough

Sheet Music : "She's Good Enough to be your Baby's Mother and She's Good Enough to Vote with You." Lyric by Alfred Bryan. Music By Herman Paley.

Ann Lewis Women's Suffrage Collection,

Created in collaboration with the Hard History Project.

Grade Level

This activity is designed for sixth through eighth grade (ages 11-14)

Objectives

Students will:

• recognize unfairness on the individual level (e.g., speech) and injustice at the institutional or systemic level (e.g., discrimination.)
• identify figures, groups, events, and philosophies around the world.
• express empathy when people are excluded or mistreated and concern when they themselves experience unfair treatment.
• make principled decisions about when and how to take a stand against unfair treatment in their everyday lives and will do so despite negative peer or group pressure.
• plan and carry out collective action for change in the world and will evaluate what strategies are most effective.

Guiding Question

How is popular culture used to engage audiences and change people's minds?

Postcard : Votes for Women; She's good enough for me! 1915

Emily Hall Chamberlain, artist. National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company. from the Ann Lewis Suffrage Collection

Suffrage in Popular Culture

To win support for their cause, suffragists needed to change Americans' ideas of what political women look like. According to popular culture, political women rejected domestic life in favor of politics. Women who wanted to vote and to be involved in public life seemed to threaten the nation’s values and traditions. Artists, editors, authors, publishers, and printers who held these views created cartoons that mocked the reformers. They reflected and defined the ways that Americans viewed female activists.

Suffragists learned the power of these images and developed visual campaigns to counter them. In this postcard from 1915, part of a series published by the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company, artist Emily Hall Chamberlain uses a cartoon of cute children to calm fears about women voting. The boy in the illustration is dressed as Uncle Sam, a popular character that is a symbol of American patriotism. The boy holds the shoulders of a girl dressed in a yellow flowered gown and looks admiringly at her. Yellow was a color often used by the suffragists and associated with the cause of women's rights. The girl holds a bouquet of flowers. Her hair is pulled up on top of her head with curls framing her face. These details emphasize her femininity. She looks sweet and unthreatening. (Compare this image with the girls in the "Militant Suffragists" postcard in another lesson.)

Above the picture of the two children are the words "Votes for Women" and underneath is the caption, "She's good enough for me!"

"He's Good Enough for Me..." 1904 cartoon by Homer Davenport

Prints and Photographs division. Library of Congress. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record?libID=o282104. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University.

Who is "Good Enough?"

The Emily Hall Chamberlain cartoon is modeled after another image that Americans in the early 1900s would have recognized. This cartoon by Homer Davenport shows Uncle Sam patting President Theodore Roosevelt on the back, endorsing him for a second term as President. The illustration first appeared in the newspaper The New York Daily Mail, but it was widely reprinted on billboards, posters, postcards, and handbills. So people who saw the "Votes for Women" cartoon made the connection between the campaigns for Roosevelt's re-election and for women's suffrage.

Think About It

• What do you think the first cartoon is saying about women who want to vote? Why do you think the suffragists used an image associated with Theodore Roosevelt's re-election campaign?
• What are some of the issues that Americans are talking about today? How is popular culture used to influence public perception?
• Have you ever become more interested in an issue because of something you saw or heard in popular culture? Think about movies, music, videos, advertisements and other ways that you encounter art. How did it get your attention? Did it change your mind?
  

Vocabulary

campaign: an organized course of action to achieve a goal
endorse: declare public approval or support
handbill: a small printed advertisement or notice distributed by hand
mock: make fun of or ridicule in a mean way
popular culture: the arts, music, and ideas enjoyed by ordinary people in a society
suffrage: the right to vote
suffragist: someone who works for the right to vote, especially for women

Additional Resources

NPS Links
From Mannish Radicals to Feminist Heroes: Suffragists in Popular Culture by Allison K. Lange
Nina Allender article
'Why We Oppose Pockes for Women" Suffrage in 60 Seconds video about a satirical poem by Alice Duer Miller
Other resources
"Bad Romance: Women's Suffrage" video from Soomo Learning
"Norway is Beating Us in Electric Vehicles" General Motors Electric Vehicles Ad
Logic: "1-800-273-8255" song to raise awareness about suicide prevention