19th Amendment Part 1

Lesson of the day

19th Amendment Part 1 (Grades 8-12)

Listen: You can hear the episode here (Apple podcasts) on YouTube, or on our website. Feel free to take notes on our Graphic Organizer!

Watch or Read: We are all bound up together

One of the most powerful speeches delivered in support of rights for all women was that of abolitionist, poet, and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

This speech, We Are All Bound Up Together, argues for both suffrage and desegregation. It was given in May of 1866 at the 11th National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York. You can read the speech here, or watch it performed above by Ariana DeBose. After you read or watch, consider the following questions:

1. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper speaks of refusing to give up her seat on a streetcar, nearly a hundred years before Rosa Parks did the same. Harper was a prominent writer and activist, and her correspondence with John Brown was read by thousands. Why do you think she chose that particular story to share with the convention audience?

2. Harper says, “since the Dred Scott decision, I have sometimes said I thought the nation had touched bottom.” Is there a time in recent American history where you have felt the same?

3. What is Harper’s argument for why segregation is an issue inseparable from Women’s Rights?