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Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton Video Clips

Two women. One allegiance. Together they fought for women everywhere, and their strong willpower and sheer determination still ripples through contemporary society. 

Recount the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as they strive to give birth to the women’s movement. Not until their deaths was their shared vision of women’s suffrage realized.

Watch Video Clips | Read the Biography
Explore the PBS LearningMedia Collection of Not for Ourselves Alone

Women’s Suffrage: Suffragettes fought for voting rights for American women, but some people struggled with the social changes that this brought.

Winter Wheat: Suffragettes fought tirelessly for a woman’s right to vote, but it was a difficult endeavor. Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not live to see the laws change, but their efforts made ripples throughout history.

A Great Partnership: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton may have been very different people, but together they formed a great – and complementary – partnership.

Seneca Falls Convention: When Susan B. Anthony introduced the Declaration of Sentiments at the first convention on women’s rights, she prompted a passionate response from the audience.

Unladylike Collection On-Demand

Illuminating the stories of extraordinary American heroines from the early years of feminism, the American Masters —Unladylike2020 Collection is a multimedia series consisting of 26 digital short films featuring courageous, little-known and diverse female trailblazers from the turn of the 20th century.

 These women achieved many firsts, including earning an international pilot’s license, becoming a bank president, founding a hospital, fighting for the desegregation of public spaces, exploring the Arctic, opening a film studio, and singing opera at Carnegie Hall. Presenting history in a bold new way, American Masters —Unladylike2020, produced and directed by Charlotte Mangin, brings these incredible stories back to life through original artwork and animation, rare historical archival footage, and interviews with descendants, historians and accomplished modern women who reflect upon the influence of these pioneers.

The American Masters UNLADYLIKE2020 Project resources include:

  • 26 animated documentary short films profiling women from 100 years ago who changed America and contemporary women who now follow in their footsteps
  • A collection and articles at WNET American Masters Page
  • The PBS LearningMedia Unladylike 2020 Collection: A grades 6-12 U.S. history curriculum with over 70 videos and related resources regarding the Progressive Era women, diverse in profession, race, ethnicity, geographical and class backgrounds, sexual orientation and gender expression, who broke barriers in then-male-dominated fields such as science, business, journalism, exploration, and the arts.
  • The companion Unladylike.com website is a vast interactive website featuring the stories of over 100 diverse and extraordinary women from the turn of the 20th century who broke barriers and achieved tremendous professional heights

Native America in the Classroom

Explore the world created by America’s First Peoples with PBS’ Native America. The four-part series reaches back 15,000 years, revealing massive cities aligned to the stars, unique systems of science and spirituality, and 100 million people connected by social networks spanning two continents.

In this collection, you will find the program in full, along with stand-alone clips and classroom activities. The video clips and associated support materials bring the value of sacred origin stories and the complexity of early Native city planning to life, and culminate in hands-on activities designed to help students better understand both. 

Resources from the program include:

Sacred Origin Stories of 6 Civilizations

Ancient City Planning

Native Government & Early Democracy (Including the Haudenosaunee)

Watch the Full Program Series (4 Parts) from Native American Season 1

Native America Season 2 Resources

About the Native America Series (Season 1) Weaving history and science with living Indigenous traditions, the series brings to life a land of massive cities connected by social networks spanning two continents, with unique and sophisticated systems of science, art and writing. Made with the active participation of Native American communities and filmed in some of the most spectacular locations in the hemisphere, Native America illuminates the splendor of a past whose story has for too long remained untold.

Informed by Native American oral histories have led to a bold new perspective on North and South America – that through social networks spanning two continents ancient people shared a foundational belief system with a diversity of cultural expressions. This and other research is leading to revelations that will forever change how we understand Native America. The series highlights intimate Native American traditions and follows field archaeologists using 21st century tools such as multispectral imaging and DNA analysis to uncover incredible narratives of America’s past, venturing into Amazonian caves containing the Americas’ earliest art and interactive solar calendar, exploring a massive tunnel beneath a pyramid at the center of one of ancient America’s largest cities, and mapping the heavens in celestially aligned cities.

Narrated by Robbie Robertson (Mohawk and member of the famed rock group The Band), each hour of Native America explores Great Nations and reveals cities, sacred stories and history long hidden in plain sight. In what is now America’s Southwest, indigenous people built stone skyscrapers with untold spiritual power and transformed deserts into fertile fields. In upstate New York, warriors renounced war and formed America’s first democracy 500 years before the Declaration of Independence, later inspiring Benjamin Franklin. Just outside Mexico City, the ancient city of Teotihuacan is home to massive pyramids built to align with the sun and moon. On the banks of the Mississippi, rulers also raised a metropolis of pyramids and drew thousands to their new city to worship the sky. And in the American West, nomadic tribes transformed a weapon of conquest — the horse — into a new way of life, turning the tables on European invaders and building a mobile empire.  

Discovering New York Suffrage Stories On-Demand

The 70-year fight for suffrage began in Central and Western New York, an epicenter of reform. Women began their battle for the vote  in the mid-1800s. This part of the upstate region was an epicenter of reform, tackling societal issues like abolition, religion, temperance, and women’s rights. Success depended on many women whose stories are often forgotten.  Watch On-Demand & Access Classroom Resources

Meet Matilda Joslyn Gage, Paulina Wright Davis, Mary Burnett Talbert, and Hester Whitehurst Jeffrey, diverse suffragists who tirelessly navigated religious intolerance, sexism, politics, and racism as they fought for the vote and women’s equality. Learn more at the documentary website.  

Watch the Episode &  Access Classroom Resources & Video Clips

Discovering New York Suffrage Stories PBS LearningMedia Collection

Classroom Uses for Genealogy, History and DNA

WXXI Education has pulled together educational support resources related genealogy, research, history, DNA and storytelling.

PBS LearningMedia Genealogy & Ancestry Resources

Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr Collection: The basic drive to discover who we are and where we come from is at the core of the 10-part PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the 12th series from Professor Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Lessons in this collection are appropriate for 6-12 grade level students. 

Connections Podcast: ‘Finding Your Roots,’ and the challenges African Americans face in tracing ancestry: Discussion with lead genealogist from “Finding Your Roots” about the challenges African Americans face in tracing their ancestries, about resources available in the process, and we hear from two women who found their roots. Listen Here:

  • Nick Sheedy, lead genealogist for “Finding Your Roots,” season seven 
  • Cheryl Wills, award-winning journalist, anchor for Spectrum News NY1, and author of “Emma,” “The Emancipation of Grandpa Sandy Wills,” “Emancipated: My Family’s Fight for Freedom,” and “Die Free – A Heroic Family Tale” 
  • Teej Jenkins, Teej Jenkins, Rochester resident who researched her genealogy with her family. Teej is also a host of WXXI’s Arts in Focus and a producer for WXXI-TV of such series for the City of Rochester as Cultural Expressions and What’s Good Rochester.

Here are a few of our favorite FYR lessons and activities:

Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings: Inspired by the popular PBS series “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” and shot on the campus of Penn State University, “Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings” follows 13 young people in a genetics and genealogy camp as they explore their family history and DNA ancestry with techniques never before used in an educational setting.

  • Download Full Curriculum: Resources include an introduction to genealogical research from prominent genealogists, clips from the show demonstrating how personal stories connect to larger events in history, and brief historical introductions to key people, places, and events in U.S. and World History. Fill out the form at fyrclassroom.org/curriculum/ and you will be forwarded to a Box folder where you can download the full curriculum. 
  • Download At-Home Activities: Here are free eight activities for families and future genealogists to do to begin learning about their own family history. Activities include: family tree, family interviews, family migration, observable traits, DNA extraction, and more!

Faces of America:  What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The lesson plans and media resources based on the series address a wide range of topics including historic waves of immigration, anti-immigrant sentiment, family genealogy, and state-of-the-art genetic research. Through this collection, students will gain a broader perspective of America’s immigrant history (both past and present) and learn what it really means to be an American.

Ken Burns’ The Gene: An Intimate History: This four-hour documentary weaves together science, history, and personal stories to create a historical biography of the human genome. It tells the story of the rapid evolution of genetic science from Gregor Mendel’s groundbreaking experiment in the 19th century to CRISPR, and the hope that newfound powers to alter DNA with pinpoint precision will transform the treatment of some of the world’s most complex and challenging diseases. The series also tackles the daunting ethical challenges that these technologies pose for humankind.

NOVA Cracking Your Genetic Code: What will it mean when most of us can afford to have the information in our DNA—all six billion chemical letters of it—read, stored and available for analysis? NOVA’s Cracking Your Genetic Code reveals that we stand on the verge of such a revolution. But what are the moral dilemmas raised by this new technology? Will it help or hurt us to know the diseases that may lie in our future? What if such information falls into the hands of insurance companies, employers or prospective mates? One thing is for certain: the new era of personalized, gene-based medicine is relevant to everyone, and soon you will be choosing whether to join the ranks of the DNA generation.

Other Historical Resources for Schools

Black History in Two Minutes: It’s Black History delivered in short, lively, fact-packed stories accessible to people of all ages and education levels. It’s fast, accurate U.S. history available in free video podcast recordings describing major historical events and introducing less well-known experiences involving Black Americans. The series is narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Rochester Voices: From the collections of Local History & Genealogy Division of the Rochester Public Library, this interactive, mobile-friendly website is designed to engage a K-12 audience, as well as the general public, in the study of local, state, national, and even global history, by allowing users to explore the stories of Rochesterians who experienced the past first-hand. Combining the features of an online special collections catalog and interpreted digital exhibits with those of an exploratory learning laboratory, this site enables diverse users to interact with unique historical materials in a variety of exciting new ways. The original letters, diaries, interviews, and other primary sources that make up the Rochester Voices digital collections are held in the Local History & Genealogy Division’s special collections and those of its partners.

  • 19th Ward Oral Histories: This oral history collection project was initiated in 2018 by the 19th Ward Community Association (19WCA). The 19WCA is one of the oldest neighborhood associations in the United States, having been established in the 1960s as a response to redlining and blockbusting, with a mission to “create, foster, and maintain a multi-racial community where individual and cultural differences are celebrated and where people share a sense of community.”
  • African American Oral Histories: Dr. James Wright, manager of the Rochester Public Library’s Phillis Wheatley branch, commissioned a project to record the oral histories of African American Rochesterians in the 1970s and early 1980s. The project was designed to highlight the public contributions of African Americans in the greater Rochester area and to make that information available to the community.  The interviewees represent a wide range of occupations, attitudes, and roles in the community, and they discuss a variety of topics from housing discrimination, segregation, and barriers to employment to the importance of community involvement and advances in civil rights.
  • Latino American Oral Histories: In 2011, Dr. Isabel Córdova, Associate Professor in History & Political Science at Nazareth College, initiated a student project to record and preserve the oral histories of Latinos in the Rochester area. Her colleague in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Dr. Hilda Chacon, contributed similar student projects to the collection. Shared with the Rochester Public Library and available here, the Latino Voices collection comprises 66 interviews of Rochesterians with roots in a variety of Latin-American countries, including Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Colombia. 
  • The Frederick Douglass Voice: The Frederick Douglass Voice began publication on October 6, 1933. The newspaper, published by Howard Wilson Coles, was devoted to the activities, aspirations, and ideals of Black people in Rochester and the vicinity. Howard Coles used the newspaper to call attention to critical issues in the Black community. 
  • Classroom Connections: Here you will find a variety of activities and resources designed for students and their teachers. Developed with help from local educators, Rochester Voices follows the Common Core State Standards. The content of this site, which is differentiated by grade level, allows you to examine primary sources and explore humanities themes, while interpretive elements foster thoughtful analysis of these materials.

Genealogy and Local Partner Resources


 Monroe County Library System (MCLS):

The Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County boasts one of the premier collections of local historical and genealogical materials in western New York, while smaller municipal member libraries such as the Ogden Farmers’ Library in Spencerport, the Henrietta Public Library, and the Penfield Public Library have built collections of materials relevant to their particular towns. MCLS libraries have developed collections and finding aids that try to make sense of the past in an effort to better serve local residents as well as visitors who come seeking their roots.Resources including the New York State Vital Records Index, Life Records, City and Suburban Directories, high school and college yearbooks, microfilmed newspapers dating back to 1818, and subscriptions to e-databases are held by the Central Library’s Local History and Genealogy Division, where Rochester Genealogical Society members volunteer as docents some evenings and Saturdays to provide extra assistance to researchers. (not currently during the pandemic) Connect with your local library to locate electronic services licensed for the public that you can use in your genealogy searches. 

To learn more at the Genealogy Resources section of the MCLS website:

OWLL Library System Local History Resources: For Those Living in Livingston, Ontario, Wayne and Wyoming Counties

Rochester Genealogical Society (RGS):

The Rochester Genealogical Society began in 1938 when several people at a meeting of the Rochester Historical Society formed an informal group to preserve their family heritage. The Rochester Genealogical Society became an independent organization in 1977.

The organization sponsors regular educational activities and encourages member-to-member support as well as community awareness of genealogy and family history. Its membership is comprised of people from all walks of life, who freely offer help or guidance to other members and the community whenever asked. Some members also volunteer at the Local History & Genealogy Division of Central Library and local Family History Centers to assist researchers or serve as speakers on particular topics.

Whether you are a well-seasoned genealogist or family historian, or are just starting out, we are confident that you will find your membership in the Rochester Genealogical Society beneficial.

Meeting and Events

Monthly programs are announced with information on the RGS Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NYRocGen, and at the Society web site, nyrgs.org  There are also a writers group, and a DNA interest group.

Other Family Search Sites for the Greater Rochester Area

WXXI Video Spot About Local Search Resources at Monroe County Library System for Conducting Genealogical Research

FamilySearch: FamilySearch is dedicated to preserving important family records and making them freely accessibly online. 

PBS LearningMedia Resources >

Art and Activism Video Short

Check out this CANVAS segment with Rochester artist Shawn Dunwoody that was featured on PBS NewsHour: Brief but Spectacular series

Shawn Dunwoody is a local artist and activist born and raised in Rochester, New York. Early in his career he found success in galleries and at universities. But he’s now returning his focus to his own neighborhood, hoping to ignite conversations through art to create changes in the community. He shares Brief But Spectacular take on bridging communities for our arts and culture series, “CANVAS.”

Transcript here

How can art motivate activism?

PBS LearningMedia Resources

To support instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

Social Studies Education Resources:

WXXI Education has curated a list of useful social studies learning resources (lesson plans, content collections, partner sites, interactives, and printables) for students and educators in grades 6-12.

To support instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

PBS LearningMedia: Social Studies Subject Area – Explore natural phenomena and scientific practices with videos, lesson plans, and interactive tools.

All of the above topic areas are available as PBS LearningMedia Social Studies One-Sheets to share with students and educators. One-sheets include a clickable link and QR code for easy access. 

Favorite Social Studies Collections
There are tons of Social Studies resources available through PBS LearningMedia, here are WXXI Education’s top 5 Social Studies collections:

1. Teaching with Primary Source Inquiry Kits: As the perfect springboard for middle and high school student research projects, TPS Inquiry Kits have five primary sources, mostly from the Library of Congress, and one secondary source. Many of the primary sources are images, maps, audio, or video to support accessibility by students of any reading level. Each kit features three thinking questions to guide students, and web-based tools to help them analyze the historical sources. Explore each inquiry kit, and find the thinking questions under Support Materials.

2. PBS NewsHour | Daily News Story: PBS Newshour Classroom helps teachers and students identify the who, what, when, where, and why-it-matters of major national and international news stories. In partnership with PBS LearningMedia, we are proud to bring you the Daily News Story which takes the best of the PBS NewsHour news program and pairs it with discussion questions, lesson plans, and stories developed specifically for students. The lesson plans and resources help achieve Common Core State Standards goals and cover core academic subject areas ranging from civics and government to world affairs and education.

3. American Masters: American Masters, public television’s award-winning biography series, brings unique originality and perspective to exploring the lives and illuminating the creative journeys of our most enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists and filmmakers – those who have left an indelible impression on our nation’s cultural landscape.

4. The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross: Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recounts the full trajectory of African-American history in his groundbreaking series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. The series explores the evolution of the African-American people, as well as the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies, and religious and social perspectives they developed — forging their own history, culture and society against unimaginable odds. Using video clips from The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, this collection of lesson plans addresses a wide range of themes of the African-American experience from 1500 to the present.

5. Teaching the Vietnam War: This collection of videos and lesson plans can help students explore the social and political dynamics of the Vietnam War. Students will examine why, how, and by whom the Vietnam War was fought, how it affected U.S. citizens at home, and how factors shifted over the course of the war. Students will identify the Vietnam War’s legacy and lasting toll on veterans. This collection includes resources related to The Vietnam War, a ten-part documentary series that aired on PBS September 17-21, 2017. The series represents the latest work from filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and featured archival footage and testimony from nearly 100 witnesses, including American veterans who fought in the war and Americans who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians. 

Annenberg Learner Series – Educator Social Studies Resources

Asian Americans PBS LearningMedia Collection

PBS LearningMedia has a wide range of learning resources for students in grades 7-12th grade, focused on Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage and PBS’s Asian American series including the full Asian Americans series

Asian Americans is a five-hour film series that delivers a bold, fresh perspective on a history that matters today, more than ever. As America becomes more diverse, and more divided, while facing unimaginable challenges, how do we move forward together? Told through intimate and personal lives, the series will cast a new lens on U.S. history and the ongoing role that Asian Americans have played in shaping the nation’s story.

There are videos and three dozen lesson plans based on the Asian American series. Over the coming weeks, you’ll find this collection to include the stories behind the Chinese Exclusion Act, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, Hawai’i as a sovereign nation, Southeast Asian Refugees after the Vietnam War, Filipino American Farmworkers, the fight for civil rights and much more. Keep checking back.

To support conversation and instruction, WXXI Education has pulled together a list of educational resources available through PBS LearningMedia:

    Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage

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