• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Writing Prompts About Women's Suffrage

From a tea table in 1848 to the first ballots of 1920, each prompt with a dated event under it.

Writing Prompts About Women's Suffrage

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  1. Even at Seneca Falls people argue about asking for the vote; write the two sides as two friends walking home to supper.Fact: in July 1848 a heated debate sprang up at the convention over women's right to vote; the resolution was kept.
  2. For many women the first vote did not come in 1920; write a first vote that had to wait, on the day it finally came.Fact: after 1920, decades of struggle remained to include African American and other minority women in the vote.
  3. The White House picket lasts through three winters; write the banner pole's account of who has held it.Fact: the White House picket begun on January 10, 1917, did not stop until June 4, 1919.

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All 60 prompts

A march 15

  • A grandmother who went to her first suffrage meeting as a girl marches at seventy; write her afternoon. Fact: women active for suffrage in the 1860s and 1870s were still involved over 50 years later.
  • A group from a university marches in the Washington suffrage parade; write a student's letter home the night before. Fact: a group from Howard University took part in the parade of March 3, 1913.
  • A group of women walks from New York City to Washington to join the suffrage march; write the diary for day nine. Fact: the suffrage hike of 1913 from New York City to Washington, DC, covered 230 miles in 17 days.
  • A herald on a white horse rides near the front of the Washington march; write the parade from the saddle of the horse behind hers. Fact: the procession of March 3, 1913, was led by a grand marshal, followed by a herald on a white horse.
  • A visitor comes to Washington to see a president sworn in and finds a suffrage march filling the avenue a day early; write his afternoon. Fact: the procession was held on Monday, March 3, 1913, the day before a presidential inauguration.
  • Count the 1913 suffrage march the way a marshal with a clipboard would, float by float and band by band. Fact: by one count the procession of March 3, 1913, had 26 floats, 10 bands, 6 golden chariots and 200 marshals.
  • Marchers in a New York parade carry placards covered in signatures; write the day one woman added her name. Fact: in 1917 suffragists paraded in New York City with placards bearing the signatures of more than a million women.
  • Nurses march behind a float of nurses in the Washington suffrage parade; write one nurse's reasons, as she tells them to the woman beside her. Fact: the march of March 3, 1913, had a float depicting nurses, followed by a marching group of nurses.
  • On the steps of the Treasury Building, women in costume act out a pageant while the suffrage march goes by; write it as a child in the cast. Fact: at the Treasury Building a pageant of allegorical tableaux was acted out during the 1913 parade.
  • Some marchers of 1913 are told to walk at the back because of their race; write a marcher from their state who makes room in her own row. Fact: the organizers of the march of March 3, 1913, tried to exclude, then segregate, women of color.
  • State by state the marchers walk behind their own signs; write the delegation from a state where women can already vote. Fact: by 1912, the year before the Washington march, nine western states had adopted woman suffrage.
  • The suffrage march is over and the hall is full; write the rally at the end of the day as someone whose feet hurt. Fact: the last act of March 3, 1913, was a rally at Memorial Continental Hall.
  • Write a suffrage parade in New York City as a shop girl watching from the curb on her lunch break, deciding whether to step off it. Fact: in the 1910s suffragists began staging large and dramatic parades to draw attention to their cause.
  • Write the 1913 suffrage march in Washington as a trumpet player in one of its bands. Fact: on March 3, 1913, more than 5,000 suffragists paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.
  • Write the first morning of a suffrage hike to Albany, as one of the crowd who came to wave and ended up walking. Fact: on December 16, 1912, about 500 women gathered in the Bronx and about 200 started to walk north to Albany.

A banner 15

  • A banner at the White House gate asks the president how long women must wait; write the gatekeeper who reads it every morning. Fact: a banner of the picket that began in 1917 read: Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?
  • A newspaper cartoonist is told to draw the suffrage pickets as a joke and cannot quite do it; write his afternoon at the drawing board. Fact: the treatment of the pickets who stood from 1917 gained greater sympathy for women's suffrage.
  • A nurse of the Civil War writes to Congress that she has waited for the vote since childhood; write a letter of thanks from a girl who read about it. Fact: in 1917 a former Civil War nurse wrote to a House committee that her father had raised her to expect this right.
  • A petition is a banner made of names; write a woman going door to door with one for the vote. Fact: residents of the District of Columbia signed an 1878 petition to Congress in favor of woman suffrage.
  • A women's club sends Congress a resolution for the vote in place of a banner; write the meeting where the wording is argued over. Fact: in a 1916 resolution a union of Black women's clubs in Rhode Island asked Congress for a suffrage amendment.
  • The banner at the head of the 1913 suffrage march reads Forward into Light; write what a girl on the curb decides it means. Fact: the herald's banner on March 3, 1913, proclaimed Forward into Light.
  • More than two thousand women take a turn at the White House gate; write one who came by train to hold a suffrage banner for a single day. Fact: over 2,000 women took part in the White House picket that began on January 10, 1917.
  • Opponents carry signs too. Write a suffrage parade day as a woman holding a sign against the vote. Fact: a 1917 petition from an anti-suffrage party of New York women urged the Senate not to pass the amendment.
  • Purple, white and gold: write a girl choosing suffrage ribbon in those three colors, and what the shopkeeper says. Fact: the White House pickets of 1917 all wore purple, white and gold sashes, their party's colors.
  • Sew the letters onto a banner the night before the first White House picket; write the talk in the sewing room. Fact: the first White House picket in U.S. history began on January 10, 1917.
  • The suffrage pickets do not speak; their banners do. Write a passerby's argument with a banner that cannot answer back. Fact: from January 1917 the Silent Sentinels stood in silence at the White House six days a week.
  • The White House picket lasts through three winters; write the banner pole's account of who has held it. Fact: the White House picket begun on January 10, 1917, did not stop until June 4, 1919.
  • Women ask in writing to be heard on the floor of Congress; write the clerk who opens the suffrage petition and reads the names. Fact: an 1871 petition asked Congress to extend suffrage to women and to hear women on the floor of Congress.
  • Write a suffrage banner's whole life: cut, sewn, carried, rained on, folded away, found by a great-granddaughter. Fact: the amendment the banners asked for was first introduced in Congress in 1878 and ratified on August 18, 1920.
  • Yellow roses for the vote and red roses against it: write the statehouse doors in Tennessee as the florist's delivery boy. Fact: in Tennessee in August 1920 supporters of the amendment handed out yellow roses and opponents red ones.

An argument at the table 15

  • A family reads the Declaration of Sentiments aloud at supper; write who laughs, who goes quiet and who asks to hear a line again. Fact: the declaration of 1848 changed a famous line to say that all men and women are created equal.
  • A mahogany tea table is where a declaration of women's rights was first drafted; write the table's memory of that Sunday. Fact: a tea table was used on July 16, 1848, to compose much of the first draft of the Declaration of Sentiments.
  • A president changes his mind about votes for women; write a family that has argued over it for years, on the day the newspaper says so. Fact: in 1918 the president changed his position and supported a suffrage amendment.
  • A woman votes years before the law lets her and is fined a hundred dollars; write the argument at her neighbors' table that night. Fact: a woman who registered and voted in Rochester, New York, in 1872 was arrested, convicted and fined $100.
  • An aunt who is against votes for women and a niece who is for them share one teapot; write the afternoon neither gives way. Fact: anti-suffrage forces organized as early as 1870, when an association against the vote formed in Washington.
  • At Seneca Falls the men's names go in a separate list under the women's; write a couple's argument over where a husband's signature belongs. Fact: in July 1848 the declaration was signed in two sections, women first: 68 women and 32 men.
  • Even at Seneca Falls people argue about asking for the vote; write the two sides as two friends walking home to supper. Fact: in July 1848 a heated debate sprang up at the convention over women's right to vote; the resolution was kept.
  • Fifty-six to twenty-five for votes for women in the Senate: write the telephone call a senator's wife makes to her mother that evening. Fact: on June 4, 1919, the Senate approved the amendment 56 to 25.
  • The House passes the suffrage amendment with 304 votes for it; write the supper table of a representative who voted no. Fact: on May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment with 304 votes in favor.
  • In a Tennessee boardinghouse lawmakers for and against the suffrage amendment eat at one table; write the passing of the salt. Fact: on August 18, 1920, a 24-year-old Tennessee legislator changed his vote at his mother's insistence.
  • Only women are invited to the first day at Seneca Falls; write the breakfast at which a husband learns he must wait until tomorrow. Fact: only women were invited to the first day, July 19, 1848; men could come on the second.
  • Opponents of the suffrage amendment leave the state so the vote cannot be made official; write a lawmaker's kitchen on the night he packs. Fact: after the vote of August 18, 1920, anti-suffrage legislators fled Tennessee to avoid a quorum.
  • The suffrage movement itself splits in two over an amendment; write two sisters who join different sides. Fact: in 1869 disagreement over the 15th Amendment split the movement into two new suffrage organizations.
  • The two sides of the suffrage movement join again in 1890; write the dinner where two sisters who chose different sides sit at one table. Fact: in 1890 the two national woman suffrage associations merged into one.
  • Year after year Congress ignores the suffrage amendment or votes it down; write a congressman's dinner on the night his own daughter asks him why. Fact: for 42 years the measure was introduced at every session of Congress and ignored or voted down, until 1919.

The first vote 15

  • A first-time voter explains the 19th Amendment's one sentence to her small son, who asks what abridged means; write the talk. Fact: the amendment of 1920 bars the United States and every state from denying the vote on account of sex.
  • A great-grandmother was told as a girl that women had once voted and lost it; write her first vote as a return. Fact: by 1807 every state constitution had denied women even limited suffrage.
  • A messenger carries the paper that makes the suffrage amendment official; write his morning. Fact: on August 26, 1920, the Secretary of State certified that the amendment had been ratified.
  • A Montana rancher and his wife ride to the polls in the first election she can vote in, and vote for different people; write the ride home. Fact: Montana granted women the vote in 1914.
  • A suffrage association finishes its work and turns to teaching new voters; write its first lesson on how to mark a ballot. Fact: in 1919 the largest woman suffrage association reorganized into a league of women voters.
  • A woman has voted in Wyoming since she was young; write her Election Day in the year the rest of the country catches up. Fact: Wyoming granted women the right to vote in 1869, the first to do so.
  • Few of the women who began the work lived to vote; write a first ballot cast in memory of one of them. Fact: few early supporters of woman suffrage lived to see the final victory in 1920.
  • For many women the first vote did not come in 1920; write a first vote that had to wait, on the day it finally came. Fact: after 1920, decades of struggle remained to include African American and other minority women in the vote.
  • Montana sends a woman to Congress before most American women can vote; write a girl in Montana hearing the news. Fact: in 1916 Montana elected the first woman in Congress.
  • New York's women win the vote; write a first ballot cast in a city schoolhouse, as the janitor who set up the booths. Fact: New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917.
  • Tennessee makes thirty-six and women's votes are won; write the church bell ringer who is told to ring for it and is not sure he wants to. Fact: on August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify, the three-fourths the amendment needed.
  • Three states hurry to be first to ratify the suffrage amendment; write a clerk in one statehouse who is sent running with the paper. Fact: after Congress passed the amendment in 1919, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan were the first states to ratify it.
  • Women can vote on the West Coast now; write a polling place where the line is suddenly twice as long. Fact: Washington granted women the vote in 1910 and California in 1911.
  • Write a woman's first vote as the ballot box would tell it: the same slot, a different hand. Fact: the 19th Amendment went into effect on August 18, 1920.
  • Write a woman's first vote in Colorado or Idaho, as the clerk who hands her the ballot. Fact: Colorado granted women the vote in 1893 and Idaho in 1896.

How it works

Each writing prompt about women's suffrage is told from the edge of the event: by a trumpet player, a gatekeeper, a bell ringer, a janitor setting up the booths. No suffragist or politician is named, and nobody writes as one.

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The argument at the table

Fifteen prompts are set at home, where the question was argued from 1848 to 1920: a husband left behind on the women-only first day at Seneca Falls, an aunt and a niece with one teapot, a congressman asked why by his own daughter.

Where the dates come from

Two pages of the U.S. National Archives and seven Wikipedia articles: March 3, 1913, for the march in Washington; January 10, 1917, for the first White House picket; June 4, 1919, for the Senate's vote.

  • Pick the narrator first. One march is three stories: from a saddle, from the curb, from inside the band.
  • Let someone at the table change their mind slowly, or not at all.

Questions and answers

What is a good writing prompt about women's suffrage?

Yellow roses for the vote and red roses against it: write the statehouse doors in Tennessee as the florist's delivery boy. In August 1920 both sides handed out roses there.

Is there a writing prompt for women's suffrage that shows the other side?

Several. One is a parade day as a woman holding a sign against the vote: a 1917 petition from an anti-suffrage party of New York women urged the Senate not to pass the amendment.

How long did the fight for women's suffrage take?

The first women's rights convention met at Seneca Falls in July 1848. The amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878 and was ratified on August 18, 1920, when Tennessee became the 36th state to agree.

What happened at Seneca Falls in 1848?

A two-day convention on women's rights, on July 19 and 20. Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed its Declaration of Sentiments, and after a heated debate the resolution asking for the vote was kept.

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