In this unit, students will develop knowledgeable and well-reasoned points of view on the history of voting rights in the United States.
Image Source: “The First Vote” in Harper’s Weekly, November 16, 1867 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC01733.09, p721)
Grades: 7-12
Class Time: 1-2 Weeks
Today, voting is the fundamental right of American citizens, for it is the guardian of every other right in American society. However, the right to vote was not conceived of as an “inalienable” attribute of citizenship by the nation’s founders; it was often viewed as a privilege restricted to groups of Americans with specific economic, gender, racial, or social characteristics and qualifications.
The framers of the US Constitution left the right to determine suffrage eligibility to the states, not the federal government. The history of voting rights has not been a smooth, uninterrupted train of progress toward universal suffrage. Suffrage has expanded and contracted throughout our nation’s history, with periods of exclusion and inclusion for different groups of people.
The County Election by George C. Bingham, published by Goupil & Co., New York, 1854 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC04074)
This unit traces the history of voting rights in the United States.
This unit is adapted from the units above for grades 7–8.
Students will learn about the history, purpose, and function of the Electoral College.
Students will learn about the long struggle for women’s suffrage from Abigail Adams to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute has worked with AllSides.com to pull up current articles* in the news media related to this topic written from different perspectives. Students can use these articles to develop their understanding of how history has shaped current events. Click on “Latest News” to see a range of articles from left, center, and right perspectives.
*The articles shown here update regularly, so if you find articles you are particularly interested in sharing with your students, keep track of the links to the original publications.
