Teri Finneman is not a fan of history textbooks that reduce the women’s suffrage movement to a few stories about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. To Finneman, an expert of suffrage history and an associate professor of journalism at the University of Kansas, the history is a rich stew of protest and struggle — one that continues in many ways today.

As November marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, she is hopeful educators will dive more deeply into its history and how it can connect to this year’s election.

“This is a story of sexism, racism and classism,” Finneman, who recently published “Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women's Suffrage,” told Education Dive. “Women were thrown in prison for wanting to vote, were beaten for wanting to vote, and came from all across the country with thousands, if not millions, who worked in individual states.”

But fights over the right to vote continue a century later, offering educators a way to tie the women’s suffrage movement into the 2020 election by exploring themes like those detailed below in K-12 classrooms.

  • Suppression didn't end with suffrage, civil rights movements
  • Women’s March provides lens to view activism
  • An ongoing struggle for Black women in particular
  • Language, and history, repeats itself

Read the full article about teaching women's suffrage history by Lauren Barack at Education Dive.