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Copy of RI.CS.6 On Woman's Rights to the Suffrage (9/2/2025)

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12 questions
“On Woman’s Right to the Suffrage,” Susan B. Anthony
The following passage is from a speech Susan B. Anthony, suffragette and advocate of civil rights for women, gave in 1873 after being arrested for voting. She was given a fine of $100 but never paid it. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted women the right to vote. Read the passage. Then, answer the question(s).

(1) FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS:—I stand before you to-night under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.…
(2) It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people—women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government—the ballot.
(3) For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post factolaw, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are for ever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor.
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Part A Which excerpt from the speech is an example of antithesis?

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How does the antithesis in Part A support Anthony’s argument?

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Part A What phrases from the speech are examples of emotionally charged language?

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Part B How does Anthony most likely hope for her audience to respond to the emotionally charged language from Part A?

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Part A Which sentence from the passage most clearly demonstrates Anthony’s use of parallelism?

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Part B How does the parallelism in Part A most clearly support Anthony’s point of view?

from “Day of Affirmation" Address, Robert F. Kennedy, June 6, 1966
Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of President John F. Kennedy, served as the nation’s attorney general and as a senator from New York. He gave the speech from which this excerpt is taken in South Africa in 1966. Read the passage. Then, answer the question(s).

(1) It is a revolutionary world that we all live in. And thus as I have said in Latin America, and in Asia, and in Europe, and in my own country, the United States, it is the young people who must take the lead. Thus you and your young compatriots everywhere have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. . . .

(2) [The] road is strewn with many dangers. First is the danger of futility, the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills, against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence.
(3) Yet many of the world’s great movements of thought and action have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World1, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. Give me a place to stand, said Archimedes2, and I will move the world. These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total, all of these acts will be written in the history of this generation. . . .
(4) Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny of ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. . . .
(5) And the third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. It is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world, which yields most painfully to change.
(6) Aristotle3tells us, at the Olympic Games, it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned but those who enter the lists. So too in the life of the honorable and the good, it is they who act rightly who win the prize. I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.
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1 A young monk . . . who discovered the New World Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a leader in the movement to split from the Catholic Church. Alexander the Great (356 BCE–323 BCE) created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Saint Joan of Arc (1412–1431) was considered a hero in France for leading French troops against the British in the Hundred Years’ War. Christopher Columbus (c. 1451–1506) was an Italian explorer who crossed the Atlantic four times.
2Archimedes (c. 287 BCE–211 BCE) ancient Greek mathematician.
3 Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE) ancient Greek philosopher.
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Part A Which of the following excerpts is an analogy?

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Part B How does the analogy in Part A help Kennedy reinforce his point?

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Part A What detail from Kennedy’s speech is an example of an allusion?

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Part B Why does Kennedy include the allusion or allusions from Part A in his speech?

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According to Kennedy, which of the following lead to social change? Choose two options.

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Which excerpt from the passage is the clearest example of parallelism?