Celebrate Women's History

This week, Black History Month will come to a close and Women's History Month will begin. Students notice when their history is recognized only during heritage months, so in this edition of The Moment, we're sharing a reminder that it's vital to teach all our history year-round, along with resources to celebrate two trailblazing Black women in your classroom.

Be inspired by an exceptional group of women in this collection of videos and web-exclusive features from trusted public media partners. Each of the features below is a window into a documentary or program about Black women who have made a special mark on their communities and the World. The features will connect you directly to the website of a PBS partner where it can be viewed in full or allow you to watch a preview directly within the collection below. Get started now! Explore Inspirational Women with PBS.

In a powerful speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, Oprah Winfrey framed the #MeToo movement as the latest episode in a long history of women’s resistance to sexual harassment and violence. Her speech was also notable for emphasizing the activism of racially and economically marginalized women, including Recy Taylor, who died in 2017 at the age of 98. Taylor’s determination to seek justice for her rape in Jim Crow-era Alabama set the stage for the civil rights movement and in many ways, today’s modern #MeToo movement. The Me Too campaign was created in 2007 by Tarana Burke, a Black woman following in the footsteps of Recy Taylor and Rosa Parks.

Use the following Teaching Idea as an entry point into Taylor’s story and the long history of Black women’s activism against sexual violence and harassment.

From Facing History.

Search for women's history with Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

The trouble with Women’s History Month—with all these special months—is that they encourage people to think that problems have been solved. 

Happy Women's History Month! Women around the world are—and have been—at the forefront of campaigns for human rights and environmental justice. In this edition of The Moment, you'll find resources for teaching about women's leadership and contributions all year. From Teaching Tolerance.

The legendary Alice Walker has made her mark on the fabric of this country through her activism, poetry and writing. In Walker's work, she challenges the complexity of the Black woman's experience in America. Not only does she speak out against the patriarchy, but she also confronts the silencing of Black voices by white women. While the world may know her mainly for creative writing, she is also the creator of "womanism."  From blavity.com.

Be inspired by an exceptional group of women in this collection of videos and web-exclusive features from trusted public media partners. Each of the features below is a window into a documentary or program about Black women who have made a special mark on their communities and the World. The features will connect you directly to the website of a PBS partner where it can be viewed in full or allow you to watch a preview directly within the collection below. Get started now! Explore Inspirational Women with PBS.

Women’s History Month is a crucial time to remind the nation and the world of women’s important work and the barriers that exist to full gender equality.

A series of teaching activities from the Zinn Education Project. All ages.

Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution is an online history exhibit which highlights the collective action and individual achievements of women from the 1940s to the present, and explores the power and complexity of gender consciousness in modern American life. This exhibit includes biographical information, video clips, timelines and a plethora of other information for teachers and students. 

Teachers should decide which of this content is appropriate for their school community as some of the content is mature in nature.

The National Women's History Museum shares educator resources, many of which support their online exhibits, such as:  Women in the Olympics, The Women of NASA and On the March.  Teachers can explore resources such lesson plans, biographies, posters, primary sources, and search by topic, theme, or resource type. The National Women’s History Museum currently raises awareness and honors women’s diverse experiences and achievements through its online museum, educational programs, scholarship and research. 

Lessons, activities, and more to honor the contributions of women to society. All grades.

The Anti-Defamation League shares lesson plans and other educational resources to bring Women’s History Month to classrooms and schools.

Sojourner Truth's speech and correlating student tasks are presented here in this collection by Voices of our Democracy. The Voices of Democracy website provides curricular units and lesson plans that focus on significant speeches in U.S. History.  It is a joint project between the University of Maryland and Penn State University. 

The National Archive shares historical documents created during the mid-19th century in support of women's suffrage and the 19th amendment. Included is the script of Failure is Impossible, a 1995 play that brought to life both the facts and the emotions of the momentous struggle for voting rights. The story was told through the voices of Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Frances Gage, Clara Barton, and Carrie Chapman Catt, among others.

This lesson is the fourth in a series called Expanding Voting Rights. The overall goal of the series is for students to explore the complicated history of voting rights in the United States. Two characteristics of that history stand out: First, in fits and starts, more and more Americans have gained the right to vote. Second, over time, the federal government's role in securing these rights has expanded considerably. Shared by Teaching Tolerance.

This short comparative analysis activity involves comparing and contrasting two images of marches for freedom--a 1917 march of suffragists and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom by civil rights leaders. Students will consider the similarities and differences between these two images and hypothesize what major differences these photos might imply about the two social reform movements. Shared by DocsTeach. 

The Teacher's Corner section of the Alexander Street Press website shares over a hundred lesson ideas and twelve Document-Based Question units.  Some of the lesson plans refer to resources that are only available on the subscription website available from Alexander Street Press.

A series of news articles about gender discrimination. These articles can offer concrete examples of how gender inequality still exists, despite the changes inspired by the women's rights movement. Shared by PBS.