The year was 1916 and women were still unable to vote across most of the United States. Even so, Jeannette Rankin of Montana would become the first woman to be elected to the United States Congress!
Rankin was born in what was then the Montana Territory as the first child of seven in an affluent family. After graduating from college in 1902, she worked as a teacher and a seamstress before developing a love for social work. She graduated from the New York School of Philanthropy (now the Columbia University School of Social Work) in 1909 and moved to Spokane, Washington, working with children, never losing sight of her goal to create social reform.
After volunteering and advocating for a woman’s right to vote in Washington state (the fifth state to allow women’s suffrage in 1910), Rankin became a field secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Learning that a resolution in Montana was about to be introduced, she returned to Montana and testified in front of the Montana Legislature in February of 1911, becoming the first woman to do so, and convinced many members of the Montana House to support suffrage.
For several years she traveled the country for NAWSA and organized support for the suffrage movement, even playing a role in organizing immigrant female workers in Manhattan’s garment district after a fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killed 146 people. However, she never lost sight of the fight in her home state of Montana and in January 1913, the state legislature passed a women’s suffrage measure. By November 1914, after a public referendum, women’s suffrage became the law in Montana.
Motivated by the victory in Montana, and many other states across the American West, Rankin declared her candidacy for one of the two At-Large House seats in Montana in July of 1916. She wasn’t alone! In Western states that year, hundreds of women were running for offices at every level of government, including close to 300 in Kansas alone. In all the excitement, Rankin’s campaign was mostly overlooked. Even in Montana, the Anaconda Copper Company, owner of most of the newspapers and the largest employer in Montana, ignored Rankin.
Undeterred and inspired by her platform that included national women’s suffrage, children’s welfare legislation, and prohibition of alcohol, Rankin took her message directly to the people, courting Republicans and Democratic women. In November of 1916, it was officially declared that Jeannette Rankin came in second in the election (behind Democratic Representative John Morgan Evans, by 7,600 votes), securing the second At-Large seat and becoming the first woman in American history to win a seat in Congress!
After excessive media attention that bordered on hysteria, on April 2, 1917 Rankin arrived to work in Washington DC as the 65th Congress convened. Ellen M. Slayden, the wife of the Texas Representative, recorded in her diary her observations of Rankin greeting her fellow members of the house, writing, “I rejoiced to see that she met each one with a . . . frank smile and shook hands cordially and unaffectedly,” Slayden wrote. “It would have been sickening if she had smirked or giggled or been coquettish; worse still if she had been masculine and hail-fellowish. She was just a sensible young woman going about her business. When her name was called the House cheered and rose, so that she had to rise and bow . . . which she did with entire self-possession.”
Rankin did not waste time and on her first day introduced her first bill, H.J. Res. 3, the Susan B. Anthony amendment which would guarantee and protect women’s suffrage in the Constitution. However, that very evening at a Joint Session in the House Chamber, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany in order to “make the world safe for democracy.” As a noted pacifist, Rankin made a statement before her vote, saying, "I wish to stand for my country, but I cannot vote for war." She was one of only 50 votes against entering WWI.
Over the course of her term, she carried on her original advocacy for women and children’s rights. As a founding member of the Committee on Woman Suffrage, she opened the debate on a woman’s right to vote by pointing out the hypocrisy in not passing the resolution, stating, “How shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?” Although her passion for suffrage enabled the amendment securing a woman’s voting rights to pass in the House in 1918, it died in the Senate. However, a similar resolution, later the 19th Amendment, would pass both chambers in 1919, after Rankin left office.
After not being reelected in 1918, possibly as a result of her opposition to the war, she continued to advocate for causes she believed in, including becoming a lobbyist for the National Council for the Prevention of War. In 1940, she was once again elected to represent Montana in Congress (now one of seven women serving in the House) but continued to stand strong in her pacifist beliefs. She was the lone vote against entering WWII after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, making her the only person in Congress to have voted against US involvement in both World Wars. She said, “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.” After facing immense backlash, she decided not to run in 1942 and left politics, but not activism.
She continued to promote non-violent means of resolution and was inspired by the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi. In 1968 during the Vietnam War, she led 5,000 people in a peace march in Washington DC, calling themselves the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, to present an anti-war petition to Speaker of the House John W. McCormack. In 1972, NOW (the National Organization for Women) named her the “World’s Outstanding Living Feminist”. A fighter to the end, she passed away in May of 1973 and it is believed she was once again considering campaigning for a seat in the House to directly protest the Vietnam War.
Impressively, and regardless of any agreement on her political views, Jeannette Rankin was not afraid to make her voice heard in an arena that had previously been limited to only men. She stood on her own principles to the very end. Having never married and leaving no children to carry on her fight, her estate was donated to help "mature, unemployed women workers."
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