Jeannette Rankin

Jeannette Rankin (June 11, 1880 - May 18, 1973), first woman in Congress, suffragist and social worker, and the only member of Congress to vote against World War I (1917) and World War II (1941).

Career

Rankin was born on a ranch near Missoula, Montana Territory, the first of seven children born to John Rankin, a rancher and builder, and Olive Pickering, a former schoolteacher. Her parents were well-to-do and prominent in Montana affairs. She never married.

Treated as a son by her father, Rankin attended public schools and graduated from the University of Montana in Missoula in 1902 with a B.S. in biology. On a visit to her brother in Boston in 1904 she was horrified at slum conditions and decided to enter social work. She attended the New York School of Philanthropy (later part of Columbia University) in 1908-1909 school year, and worked in Spokane, Washington. She studied social legislation at the University of Washington, where she became involved in the woman suffrage movement, Echoing Jane Addams, Rankin argued that slum conditions were worsened by women's inability to vote. In 1910 she returned to Montana to work for the Montana Equal Franchise Society. Declaring that she was suspicious of governmental priorities set without female involvement, she argued that voteless women were being taxed without representation. Rankin waa hired as an organizer by the New York Women's Suffrage Party and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). As a field secretary for NAWSA in 1913, Rankin directed a suffrage victory in North Dakota that year. She quit NAWSA in 1914 to return to Montana to help secure passage of woman suffrage there, which was achieved in 1914.

Congress 1916-1918

Rankin ran for one Montana's two at-large congressional seats, to "repay the women of Montana who had worked for suffrage." Rankin's brother, Wellington, managed her campaign; running as a Republican, she won in November, 1916.

The first woman in Congress, Jeannette Rankin took her seat in the emergency session of the Sixty-fifth Congress called by President Woodrow Wilson on Apr. 2, 1917. Her status as the first Congresswoman, plus her youth and energy made her a national celebrity. Her stance on the war became a topic of debate in suffrage circles. Carrie Chapman Catt of NAWSA worried that an antiwar vote would make women seem unpatriotic. Alice Paul of the Woman's Party told her women must stand for peace. In the end, Rankin, although not having identified herself as a pacifist, announced that she could not vote for the war, a position in which she was joined by forty-nine other representatives when the resolution came before the House on Apr. 6, 1917.

Rankin, a Republican, was the ranking minority member of a special committee to draft a woman's suffrage amendment (which was not passed by the Senate until the Sixty-sixth Congress). She sponsored the Robertson-Rankin bill to establish a women's health education program; it later passed as the Sheppard-Towner Act (1921). During the Anaconda Copper Company conflict in Montana, she presented the demands of the far-left International Workers of the World (IWW) to the federal government. In 1917, Rankin exposed the Bureau of Printing and Engraving's abuse of its workers in defiance of eight-hour workday rules. Except for the 1917 Espionage Act, Rankin supported the Wilson administration in its prosecution of the war.

The "Lady from Montana" (a title she despised, preferring "Woman from Montana") was immensely popular. She wrote a weekly syndicated newspaper column and received bags full of mail. Instead or running for reelection in 1918, she ran for the Senate. She lost the Republican primary and lost again in November, running on the National party (a reform coalition) ticket.

1920s and 1930s

Out of office in the 1920s and 1930s, Rankin devoted herself to the pacifist cause, working with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which she helped found in 1919. In November 1920 she became a field secretary for National Consumers' League. Rankin spent four years speaking on women's and children legislation around the United States. In 1924 she worked on her brother’s unsuccessful bid for the Senate.

Congress 1940-42

Rankin returned to Montana in 1940 as an isolationist Republican. Receiving support from other well-known isolationists, she was elected to the Seventy-seventh Congress on Jan. 3, 1941. On the day after Pearl Harbor, December 8, 1941, Speaker Sam Rayburn refused to let Rankin speak against war, and she was jeered as she cast the lone congressional vote against the declaration of war against Japan. Her stand destroyed her political effectiveness and ended her electoral career.

Rankin traveled across the world spreading a feminist, pacifist message. At age 88, she led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a women's coalition, on an anti-Vietnam War march in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 15, 1968. During the early 1970's, Rankin promoted peace, electoral reform, and women's rights through television, newspaper, and magazine interviews. Independent and idealistic,

Bibliography

• Giles, B Kevin. ‘’Flight of the Dove’’ (1980), a laudatory but detailed biography