My National History Day project topic is Susan Brownell Anthony and her tragedy of

supporting the 15th amendment and the triumph of leading women’s suffrage, which led to

the19th amendment. I chose this topic because equality is important to me and I was curious

about how women got their rights. I knew very little about Anthony, just the basics. As a young

woman, I feel responsible to be informed about how women in American history made this

country into what it is today.

A majority of my research for this project came from the internet. Two very helpful

sources were the Library of Congress and ABC-CLIO. Library of Congress contained the legal

documents I used and multiple primary sources such as newspaper clippings. ABC-CLIO had

illustrations and political cartoons from the movements. ABC-CLIO also had summarized pages

which helped explain and gave me the big picture.

A difficulty I had in producing my project was not summarizing information. Since I

have researched and know well about my topic, I wasn’t sure how to put it all together. To me,

the information I gave was easy to understand and simple enough to make the connection to my

thesis. I had a hard time finding data in charts or graphs, I didn’t know what to look for. I

realized I could show which states had suffrage or didn’t, before and after Anthony’s triumph.

Susan B. Anthony fits into this year’s NHD theme because her actions had failures and

successes. When she tragically supported the 15th amendment, she thought it was the correct

thing to do, realizing it was excluding women. Then she triumphantly led women’s suffrage.

This topic is important because Anthony’s actions back in the late 1800s helped many people in

the future fight for what they believe in. People saw how she took things into control and

demanded her rights for all women around her.