Jeannette Pickering Rankin

Jeannette Rankin was born on June 11, 1880 in Missoula, Montana. She was a suffragist, a peace activist, a reformer and the first American woman elected to Congress. She became involved in the woman suffrage movement in 1910. Visiting Montana, she became the first woman to speak before the Montana legislature, where she surprised the spectators and legislators alike with her speaking ability. She organized and spoke for the Equal Franchise Society.

Rankin then moved to New York, and continued her work on behalf of women's rights. She went to work for the New York Woman Suffrage Party and in 1912 she became the field secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was among the thousands of suffragists at the 1913 suffrage march in Washington, D.C., before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson. She returned to Montana to help organize the successful Montana suffrage campaign in 1914.

As war in Europe loomed, Rankin turned her attention to work for peace, and in 1916, ran for one of the two seats in Congress from Montana as a Republican. Though the papers first reported that she lost the election, Rankin won and thus became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, and the first woman elected to a national legislature in any western democracy.

Rankin used her fame and notoriety in this "famous first" position to work for peace, women's rights, against child labor, and to write a weekly newspaper column. Only four days after taking office, she made history in yet another way: she voted against U.S. entry into World War I. She violated protocol by speaking during the roll call before casting her vote, announcing, "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war." Some of her colleagues criticized her vote as opening the suffrage cause to criticism as impractical and sentimental.

Rankin worked for many political reforms including civil liberties, suffrage, birth control, equal pay and child welfare. In 1917, she opened the congressional debate on the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which passed the House in 1917 and the Senate in 1918, to become the 19th Amendment after it was ratified by the states.

Rankin continued after the war ended to work for peace through the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the National Consumers' League and the American Civil Liberties Union. When she left the WILPF she formed the Georgia Peace Society. She lobbied for the Women's Peace Union, working for an antiwar constitutional amendment. She left the Peace Union, and began working with the National Council for the Prevention of War. She also lobbied for American cooperation with the World Court, for labor reforms and an end to child labor.

In the first half of 1937, she spoke in 10 states, giving 93 speeches for peace. She supported the America First Committee, but decided that lobbying was not the most effective way to work for peace. By 1939, she had returned to Montana and was running for Congress again, supporting a strong but neutral America in yet another time of impending war.

Elected with a small plurality, Jeannette Rankin arrived in Washington in January as one of six women in the House and two in the Senate. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress voted to declare war against Japan. Rankin once again voted "no" to war. She also, once again, violated long tradition and spoke before her roll call vote, this time saying "As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else" as she voted alone against the war resolution. She was denounced by the press and her colleagues, and barely escaped an angry mob.

In 1968, she led more than five thousand women in a protest in Washington, DC, demanding the U.S. withdraw from Vietnam. Her life was truly spent promoting understanding, tolerance, and mutual respect among people based on the philosophy of nonviolence. Her courage and dedication is an inspiration to all.

Next >>