Jeannette Rankin

By Tom Kirvan

A little-known figure in political history, Jeannette Rankin played a pioneering role, becoming the first woman to serve in Congress on March 4, 1917.

Born in 1880, Rankin took office as a representative of Montana, traditionally one of the least populated states in the U.S. The eldest of six children, Rankin was an alumna of the University of Montana, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology. She explored careers in teaching, furniture design, and social work before beginning her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement. Thanks in part to her advocacy efforts, in 1914, Montana became the seventh state to grant women the right to vote. Two years later, she ran for Congress on a platform emphasizing her support of suffrage, social welfare programs, and prohibition.

As a member of Congress, Rankin also became a proponent of pacifism in American foreign policy, objecting to U.S. involvement in World War I, declaring “the greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic.” During a second term in office in 1941, she was the only member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jeannette Rankin*

Rankin, who died in 1973 at age 92, was also a champion of civil rights, and was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920, serving as vice president. Her brother, Wellington, became Montana’s attorney general and later served as a justice on the Montana Supreme Court. Her sister, Edna, became the first Montana-born woman to pass the state’s bar exam.

Active in various political causes for more than six decades, Rankin was a polished public speaker, delivering such gems as:

“Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn’t make sense not to use both.”
“We’re half the people; we should be half the Congress.”
“You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.”
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”

*Cuerden, A. (1917). Jeannette Rankin. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print