Students Participate in 19th Amendment Centennial Research Campaign

American Studies Class Photo

SUNY Old Westbury students enrolled in the American Studies course "History of U.S. Women" joined a nationwide crowdsourcing campaign to help document the lives of suffrage leaders.

In the effort for the Online Biographical Dictionary of the NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920, the students contributed to the campaign with hundreds of college students and local historical society members in celebrating the centennial of the nineteenth amendment by developing short biographical sketches of local leaders' lives and political commitments. Over 3,000 suffrage leaders have been researched nationwide, drawn from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Jocelyn Gage and and Ida Harper’s six volume History of Woman Suffrage (1881-1922). 

Last year, Professor Carol Quirke led the course, which contributed fifteen sketches of women from Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. This year, students in her class researched suffrage leaders in Maine, including the wife of the man responsible for inventing ear muffs. 

The students' genealogical and primary source research was supported by the Library’s Christa DeVirgilio, director of the Honors College, Anthony DeLuca, historian Thomas Dublin (SUNY Binghamton, emerita), and members of the Maine Historical Society.  Students’ work will be published in the Online Biographical Dictionary of the NAWSA Suffragists, which is connected to the Women of the Social Movement database published by Alexander Street Publishing which Old Westbury subscribes to.  

Participating students included D’Andra Barksdale, Agnelli Bruno, Brandon Johnson, Brianna Knibbs, Lanise Paige, Niko Nantsis, Teesha Puri, Mikayla Renton, Julia Richards, Demi Spirou, and Avia Yoseffi.

 
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American Studies