The six lessons below are from the Alabama Department of Archives and History:
Lesson 1: A Map Can Tell a Story
The need for a new constitution to replace the 1875 "Redeemer Constitution" was sought by Alabamians with a variety of reform agendas, but the major issue came down to denying the vote to blacks in an effort to promote "honest elections."

Lesson 2: Petticoat Power!
With the defeat of their suffrage proposal in 1901, the women's suffrage club died. It would be reborn in 1910, but with little success over the next decade. Alabama women gained the right to vote only in 1920 when the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the states (not including Alabama).

Lesson 3: We have no member who can speak
Black Alabamians knew full well that the state Constitution was being redrawn in 1901 largely to restrict voting to "the intelligent and the virtuous." Among the four separate petitions addressed to the constitutional convention from black citizens was one forwarded with a cover letter by Booker T. Washington, perhaps the most renowned African American in the country.

Lesson 4: An Opposite View
Among other objectives, students pretend to be  Booker T. Washington, and have just read Senator Milner's pamphlet. They write a letter to Sen. Milner explaining the need for equal suffrage.

Lesson 5: Voting after the Alabama Constitution of 1901
Discuss the limitations of suffrage as written in the 1901 constitution.  Compare and contrast voting qualifications and rights from the Jim Crow era and those of the present.

Lesson 6: Fact versus Opinion
In this last lesson form the unit on Alabama's Constitutional Convention of 1901, student's will distinguish between fact and fiction in a one day selection of the Official Proceedings of the Alabama 1901 Constitution.

American Variety Stage
Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920. The American Variety Stage is a multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920.

Jim Crow
This web site explores segregation from the end of the Civil War to the onset of the Civil Rights Movement and uses interactive features that enables visitors to learn more about the history of Jim Crow in the United States and the real-life crusaders of the period who fought against it.
 

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