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Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States

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Roberta J. Dunbar, women's club leader and activist of Rhode Island, has an entry in the Online Biographical Dictionary;[1] "most suffrage histories would not include someone like Dunbar."[2]

The Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States is a free-access resource of approximately 3,700 biographies of people associated with the campaign for a woman's right to vote in public elections in the United States. Published by the journal Women and Social Movements, hosted by Alexander Street, and edited by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar, the biographies were created by volunteers.[3]

The corpus focuses on suffragists from three main groups:

Suggested by historian Jill Zahniser and modeled, in part, on the work of Elizabeth Crawford on British suffragists,[5] the project was started in 2015 with an eye toward completion by the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[6] The listings were drawn from a database of women arrested at a White House protest, African-American women who had published writing on the topic of suffrage, names unearthed through original research during the course of the first biographical investigations, and 2,700 names drawn from volume six of The History of Woman Suffrage (1922).[5] The original goal circa 2017[6] of approximately 3,200 biographies was exceeded by 500 as of 2023.[3]

Publication began in 2017[5] and was largely complete as of December 2022, with further supplements published roughly every six months.[7] There are 72 (originally 99) outstanding names—dubbed the Impossibles—from the histories of women's suffrage in the United States that the researchers have not been able to conclusively identify.[8]

As one Rhode Island historian and project state coordinator put it, "Dublin and Sklar designed the project as a work of social history, meaning that the entries would focus on the ordinary, and usually unknown, members of the movement, instead of celebrated leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Alice Paul."[2] Volunteer contributors have included professors, teachers, school administrators, librarians, community members, local historians, high school students, undergrads, graduate students, and genealogists.[2][5][8] Faculty at Rosemont in Pennsylvania included creation of biographies for the Dictionary as coursework: "Students in historical research methods were each assigned two suffragists with an option to take on a third biography. Honors students in the history of gender were assigned three biographies. One student participated in both courses and thus completed six biographies. Graduate student Katherine Pettine not only edited the biographies but completed six of her own."[9] A high school class in Massachusetts, and faculty and undergraduate students from Rhode Island College were among the contributors of biographies for suffragists from the Ocean State.[2] A University of Delaware academic and students "found additional black women suffragists in Wilmington" and those names and biographies were added to the database.[5]

Comparison of the biographies of the three main groups of suffragists found that the NWP-affiliated activists were generally younger and newer to political work. Black activists were generally also involved in broader "racial uplift" projects and most had long histories of involvement with the black women's club movement. New York-based NAWSA members, overwhelmingly white, had an average of 16 years of political or community involvement.[5]

References

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  1. ^ Valletta, Michelle M. (2018), Dublin, Thomas; Sklar, Kathryn Kish (eds.), "Biographical Sketch of Roberta J. Dunbar", Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, vol. Part II: Black Women Suffragists, Alexandria, Virginia: Alexander Street Press, archived from the original on 2023-02-22, retrieved 2023-02-22
  2. ^ a b c d Miller, Elisa (2020-11-30). "Uncovering the Lives of Ordinary Rhode Island Suffragists". Newport History. 93 (282). ISSN 0028-8918. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  3. ^ a b "Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States". Alexander Street Documents. Archived from the original on 2023-01-31. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  4. ^ Dublin, Thomas (October 2020). "A Crowdsourcing Approach to Revitalizing Scholarship on Black Women Suffragists". The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 19 (4): 575–590. doi:10.1017/S1537781420000328. ISSN 1537-7814. S2CID 225168274. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Dublin, Thomas (2017). "Crowdsourcing as a Tool for Studying the Woman Suffrage Movement". New York History. 98 (3/4): 465–474. ISSN 0146-437X. JSTOR 26905072. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  6. ^ a b "Call for Volunteers to Research and Write Biographical Sketches of Women Suffrage Activists". Western Association of Women Historians. 2017-09-03. Archived from the original on 2023-02-22. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  7. ^ Fauxsmith, Jennifer. "Research Guides: Women's Suffrage: Research Tips". guides.library.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on 2023-02-22. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  8. ^ a b "Impossibles | Alexander Street Documents". documents.alexanderstreet.com. Archived from the original on 2023-01-31. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  9. ^ Moravec, Michelle; Pettine, Katherine; Smalley, Hope (2020). "Stunts and Sensationalism: The Pennsylvania Progressive Era Campaign for Women's Suffrage". Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. 87 (4): 631–656. doi:10.5325/pennhistory.87.4.0631. ISSN 2153-2109. S2CID 226583598.
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