In November 1916, four years before the Nineteenth
Amendment guaranteed the right of women to vote,
Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman
elected to the United States Congress. During the first half
of the twentieth century, Rankin served two nonconsecutive
terms in the House which coincided with World War I and
World War II. While she may be best known for her votes
to keep America out of those conflicts, Rankin was also
a tireless activist who worked to expand voting rights for
women, to ensure better working conditions for laborers
across America, and to improve health care for women and
infants. Ultimately, she was a pathbreaker. “I may be the
first woman member of Congress,” Rankin observed in
1917. “But I won’t be the last.”1
Jeannette Pickering Rankin was born on June 11, 1880,
to John and Olive Rankin at Grant Creek Ranch near
Missoula, in what was then the Montana Territory. She
was the first of seven children—six girls and one boy—in a
prosperous family. Her father, John Rankin, was a rancher
and builder who had come to Montana from Canada. Her
mother, Olive Pickering, had moved from New Hampshire
to teach before marrying John Rankin and becoming a
housewife. Jeannette attended Montana State University in Missoula (now the University of Montana), and graduated
in 1902 with a degree in biology. She taught for a bit after
college, and eventually apprenticed herself to a Missoula
seamstress. During a trip to San Francisco to visit an uncle
shortly after her father’s death in 1904, Rankin started
volunteering at the Telegraph Hill settlement house. With
a new interest in social work, Rankin applied and was
accepted to the New York School of Philanthropy (now the
Columbia University School of Social Work), graduating in
1909. From New York, she moved to Spokane, Washington,
took a job helping children in need, and started taking
classes in the social sciences with the goal of becoming a
reform advocate.2
Rankin’s career in politics began as a student volunteer
with a local women’s suffrage campaign in Washington
State, preparing for a referendum on voting rights. In
1910, Washington became the fifth state to adopt women’s
suffrage, and Rankin’s work on the campaign led to a job
as a field secretary with the National American Woman
Suffrage Association (NAWSA).3 While visiting Montana in
late 1910, Rankin learned that a women’s suffrage resolution
was about to be introduced in the state legislature. During
a trip to the state house, however, Rankin discovered that the voting rights resolution was in fact part of an elaborate
hoax. Rankin ended up convincing a lawmaker to introduce
the resolution anyway, and in February 1911 she became
the first woman to address the Montana legislature when
she testified in support of women’s suffrage. Her efforts
singlehandedly convinced much of the Montana house
to support the measure, reviving the state’s long-dormant
suffrage movement.4
For the next two years the NAWSA sent Rankin to areas
where the need for organizational support was greatest. As
a field secretary, she visited as many as 15 states—including
Ohio, Florida, Delaware, Michigan, and Washington, DC.
She organized immigrant women workers in Manhattan’s
garment district after a fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory killed 146 people.5 And Rankin coordinated
suffrage groups in rural California; when the California
referendum passed, the winning margin came from those
rural communities.6 All the while, Rankin continued to
lead the suffrage campaign back home in Montana. In
January 1913, the state legislature passed a women’s suffrage
measure and following a public referendum in November
1914, women’s suffrage became law in Montana.7
On July 13, 1916, Rankin, fresh off the suffrage victory,
declared her candidacy as a Republican for one of Montana’s
two At-Large House seats. By 1916 women in states across
the American West had won the right to vote, and Rankin
was one of many women running for office that year.
Much of the country’s attention focused on Kansas, where
close to 300 women were running for office at every level
of government.8 In fact, few people outside of Montana
even knew of Rankin’s candidacy. The Anaconda Copper
Company, the largest employer in Montana, owned most
of the newspapers in the state and deliberately ignored
Rankin’s campaign.9
Rankin, however, proved doubters wrong. Her platform
supported a number of prominent issues during the
Progressive Era—including nationwide suffrage, child
welfare legislation, and the prohibition of alcohol.10 With
wide name recognition, financial support from her brother
Wellington, and unparalleled experience organizing
supporters and getting out the vote, she won the Republican
primary in August by more than 7,000 votes.11
Rankin’s campaign style relied on the retail politics she
had learned as a suffrage activist, meeting with individual
voters and speaking to small groups across the state. Her
campaign focused on domestic issues, and Rankin—a longtime pacifist—never backed down from her opposition
to American intervention in the Great War, the devastating
contest that had been raging in Europe since 1914.12 After
one of Montana’s two Democratic House incumbents
announced he would not seek re-election, Rankin
strategically courted Republican men and Democratic
women in the general election.13
Because Montana was so sparsely populated, election
results trickled in over three days. But in early November
1916, news arrived that Rankin had become the first
woman in American history to win a seat in Congress.
Although she trailed the frontrunner, Democratic
Representative John Morgan Evans, by 7,600 votes, Rankin
secured the second At-Large seat by topping the third-place
candidate—another Democrat—by 6,000 votes.
“I knew the women would stand by me. The women
worked splendidly, and I am sure they feel that the results
have been worth the effort,” Rankin said in a statement.
“I am deeply conscious of the responsibility, and it is
wonderful to have the opportunity to be the first woman
to sit in Congress. I will not only represent the women of
Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have
plenty of work cut out for me.”14
In the wake of Rankin’s victory, a wave of press
descended on Montana and put the Congresswoman-elect
under a microscope. Reporters asked about her clothes and
her recipes and debated the color of her hair.15 Rankin was
also bombarded with requests for product endorsements,
photographs, and marriage proposals.16
After her election, Rankin arranged with a New York
speaker’s bureau to give a national lecture series earning
$500 per speech—the equivalent of $11,000 per speech
in 2020.17 But her plans were cut short when President
Woodrow Wilson called Congress into session eight months
early to address Germany’s submarine warfare and its attacks
on American merchant ships.18
On the morning of April 2, 1917, the day the 65th
Congress (1917–1919) was set to convene, prominent
women’s suffrage organizations hosted a breakfast in
Rankin’s honor at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington,
DC. Suffrage leaders of all generations crowded into the
ballroom to celebrate Rankin’s accomplishment and to
try and repair old divisions. “I want you to know how
much I feel this responsibility,” Rankin said. “There will
be many times when I shall make mistakes, and it means a
great deal to me to know that I have your encouragement and support.” A 25-car motorcade then took Rankin to
the NAWSA’s headquarters where she spoke to an excited
crowd. Shortly afterwards, Rankin’s Montana colleague John
Evans escorted her into the House Chamber.19
As the first woman to serve in the House, Rankin was
held to impossible standards and expectations. Ellen M.
Slayden, for instance, the wife of Texas Representative
James Luther Slayden, observed Rankin on her first day
in the House and described the scene in her diary. When
one Congressman after another went up to greet Rankin,
“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.”20
When Rankin and Evans were sworn in by Speaker
Champ Clark of Missouri, the chamber broke out in
sustained applause. Before the House recessed for the
afternoon, Rankin introduced her first bill: H.J. Res. 3, the
Susan B. Anthony amendment which would guarantee and
protect women’s suffrage in the Constitution.21
That 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.”
Three days later, the House opened debate on the war
resolution. Rankin’s colleagues in the suffrage movement
urged her to be cautious, afraid that her antiwar beliefs
would make the cause seem unpatriotic. Rankin sat out the
debate and chose to listen, a decision she later regretted.
22
But Rankin was not alone: House Majority Leader Claude
Kitchin of North Carolina and Frederick Albert Britten of
Illinois, a major military supporter, both announced their
opposition. When Rankin returned to her office, she found
her staff arguing with her brother, Wellington, who wanted
her to vote for the war.
Early on April 6 the war resolution came up for a
vote. Sitting in the House Chamber, Rankin waited until
the second roll call was called before she voted. Former
Speaker Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois approached her.
“Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote,” Cannon
said. “You represent the womanhood of the country in
the American Congress. I shall not advise you how to
vote, but you should vote one way or another—as your conscience dictates.”23 When the reading clerk called the
names of those who missed the first roll call, Rankin
inadvertently violated House Rules when she responded
with a brief speech. “I want to stand by my country, but
I cannot vote for war,” she told the House. “I vote no.”24
The final tally was 373 votes for the war resolution and
50 against. The correspondence Rankin received from
her constituents back home ran heavily against U.S.
intervention in the war, but the Helena Independent likened
her to “a dagger in the hands of the German propagandists,
a dupe of the Kaiser, a member of the Hun army in the
United States, and a crying schoolgirl.”25 The NAWSA also
distanced itself from Rankin: “Miss Rankin was not voting
for the suffragists of the nation—she represents Montana.”26
Despite her opposition to the war, Rankin worked to
ensure that America’s troops had what they needed to
fight. As the country rapidly mobilized, officials looked to
Montana for its abundant coal and copper deposits. But
when 168 miners were killed in a fire at a mine owned by
the Anaconda Copper Mining Company in Butte, Montana,
in June 1917, the workforce went on strike. After two
months of failed mediation, Rankin denounced Anaconda
on the House Floor and again in Butte for its dangerous
working conditions and its refusal to negotiate with the
Metal Mine Workers’ Union.27 When a labor organizer was
lynched in Montana in early August, federal troops arrived
to protect the mines. Rankin concluded that to maintain
the war effort the U.S. government had to seize control of
the mines, and she introduced legislation authorizing the
President to do so.28 Testifying before the House Mines
and Mining Committee she described the extent to which
the Anaconda Company dominated Montana politics
and avoided regulation. “They own the State,” she noted.
“They own the Government. They own the press.”29 While
Congress failed to act on Rankin’s proposals, her fearless
stand against the Anaconda Company gained her more
support among working-class voters and reinforced the
enmity of the state’s most powerful corporation.30
The war in Europe also had a profound effect on how
Rankin worked to put her women’s suffrage amendment
before the House. In late April 1917 she testified before
the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee, and that fall
she endorsed California Representative John Edward
Raker’s proposal for a House Committee on Woman
Suffrage that would allow suffrage measures to bypass
the Judiciary Committee which had traditionally killed voting rights legislation. Rankin was named Ranking
Member of the new Suffrage Committee when it was
established on September 24, 1917, and after it reported
out a constitutional amendment on woman suffrage in
January 1918, Rankin opened debate on the House Floor
and served as a manager.31 “How shall we answer their
challenge, gentlemen,” she asked. “How shall we explain to
them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that
voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses
to give this small measure of democracy to the women of
our country?”32 The resolution, which required a two-thirds
vote in favor, narrowly passed the House 274 to 136 (with
17 Members not voting) amid the cheers of women in the
galleries—the first time a women’s suffrage measure had
passed either chamber of Congress—though it later died in
the Senate. A year later, however, Congress passed the same
suffrage resolution by overwhelming margins. After it was
sent to the states, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified
and added to the Constitution in August 1920. Women had
won the right to vote nationally.33
Rankin’s efforts on behalf of America’s workers were not
limited to the mines back home. In 1917 a constituent’s
letter alerted Rankin to poor conditions at the Bureau of
Engraving and Printing in the Treasury Department in
Washington, DC; the Bureau employed a large number of
women who were often required to work 16-hour shifts.
Rankin investigated the situation herself, visiting the Bureau
with a fellow Member of Congress. Pretending to be a
constituent of the Member, Rankin observed the women
working while Treasury officials concentrated on the other
Member. Rankin described what she saw as “nerve-racking,”
and hired Elizabeth Watson, a muckraking investigator, to
study the Bureau’s treatment of its staff in greater detail.
Watson reported that the Bureau’s female employees
performed physically demanding and often dangerous labor
over long hours while being subjected to verbal and physical
harassment by male managers. Rankin publicized the
report and met with President Wilson about the findings.
As a result, Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo called
a special committee to investigate Rankin’s report. After
nearly 200 women showed up to testify to their working
conditions, Secretary McAdoo immediately instituted eight-hour
workdays at the Bureau.34
In late 1917, the Montana legislature replaced the state’s
At-Large House seats with two congressional districts,
one in eastern Montana and another in the west. Both Rankin and the Democratic incumbent John Evans lived
in the western district where voters historically favored the
Democratic Party. Although the redistricting bill had been
offered in the statehouse before Rankin had even been
sworn in to the House, she suspected politics had influenced
the new district boundaries.35 “There are more ways of
keeping women out of Congress than denying them the
ballot,” she said in February 1918.36
Rather than run for re-election to the House, however,
Rankin announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate
in July 1918.37 Under the slogan “Win the War First,”
Rankin promised to help the Wilson administration “more
efficiently prosecute the war.”38 In a major blow to her
campaign, Montana’s powerful Nonpartisan League—which
advocated to limit the power of banks and corporations—
called on its members to vote in the Democratic primary,
rather than the GOP primary. Despite efforts to recruit
women voters, Rankin lost the August 27 Republican
primary by less than 2,000 votes. In a twist, however,
Rankin won the nomination of the National Party, an
obscure third party, with 127 write-in votes and remained
in the race. “If Miss R. had any party to back her she would
be dangerous,” Montana’s incumbent Senator Thomas James
Walsh said, clearly relieved.39 On Election Day, Rankin
finished third with a fifth of the total vote.40
After leaving the House, Rankin remained active in
the causes she had long championed. She attended the
Women’s International Conference for Permanent Peace in
Switzerland in 1919 and joined the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom.41 Shortly after Rankin
returned to the United States, Florence Kelley of the
National Consumers’ League hired her to lobby Congress
for social welfare legislation, especially the Sheppard–Towner bill, a version of which Rankin herself had first
introduced in the 65th Congress. The bill, which became
law in 1921, sought to improve hygiene education in order
to reduce the mortality rate among infants and mothers in
the United States.42
In 1924, after resigning from the Consumers’ League,
Rankin moved to Athens, Georgia, which was closer to
Washington, DC, than Montana, and where she found
her neighbors more tolerant of her vote against America’s
entry into World War I. She designed a one-room house,
and went without electricity, running water, or telephone
service. As her circle of Georgia acquaintances grew each
summer, Rankin eventually organized a study group on antiwar foreign policy. By 1928 the group had grown into
the Georgia Peace Society.43
In the 1930s, Rankin took a job as the congressional
lobbyist for the National Council for the Prevention of
War (NCPW). This kept her on the road, speaking at
events and testifying before House and Senate committees.
And at one point, she helped publicize the findings from
Senator Gerald Prentice Nye’s investigation into prominent
arms manufacturers—“merchants of death,” Nye called
them—who critics blamed for dragging America into World
War I, and who seemed ready to draw the United States
into another global conflict.44 By 1939 financial issues at
the NCPW and Rankin’s growing opposition to President
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign policy led her to resign.45
The looming crisis of World War II brought Rankin back
to Capitol Hill. She returned home and in 1940 challenged
first-term Representative Jacob Thorkelson, an outspoken
anti-Semite, in the Republican primary for a seat in the
House from Montana’s western district.46 After winning the
primary, Rankin faced former Democratic Representative
Jerry Joseph O’Connell in the general election.47 She
received endorsements from eminent progressives, including
Senator Robert Marion LaFollette Jr. of Wisconsin and
Mayor Fiorello Henry La Guardia of New York City.48
And on Election Day, Rankin defeated O’Connell with
54 percent of the vote.49 “No one will pay any attention to
me this time,” she predicted, almost a quarter century after
her first victory. “There is nothing unusual about a woman
being elected.”50
Unlike her initial term, when Rankin entered the 77th
Congress (1941–1943) she served in the House alongside
six other women, including veterans Mary T. Norton of
New Jersey and Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts.51
Before the Congress ended two more women won special
elections to the House.
Rankin was assigned to the Public Lands and Insular
Affairs Committees which dealt with policies important to
her western constituency. But the main debate in Congress
concerned America’s involvement in the war raging in
Europe.52 During deliberations over the Lend–Lease Bill
to supply the Allied war effort, she offered an unsuccessful
amendment in February 1941 requiring specific
congressional approval for sending U.S. troops abroad. “If
Britain needs our material today,” she asked, “will she later
need our men?”53 In May Rankin introduced a resolution
condemning any effort “to send the armed forces of the United States to fight in any place outside the Western
Hemisphere or insular possessions of the United States.”54
In the fall, a close vote in the House on a measure President
Roosevelt had sought allowing American merchant ships
to be armed demonstrated that Rankin’s more isolationist
position had traction in Congress.55
Rankin was on the way to a speaking engagement in
Detroit on December 7, 1941, when she learned that the
Japanese military had attacked the U.S. naval base in Pearl
Harbor. She returned to Washington the next morning,
determined to oppose America’s participation in the war.
That day, December 8, after President Roosevelt asked
a Joint Session of Congress to declare war on Japan, the
House opened debate about America’s intervention.56
Rankin repeatedly sought recognition, but Speaker Sam
Rayburn of Texas declared her out of order and other
Members called for her to sit down. Still others approached
her on the floor, trying to convince her to either vote for
the war or abstain altogether.57 During the roll call, Rankin
voted no amid what the Associated Press described as “a
chorus of hisses and boos.”58 On the floor, Rankin stated
“As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone
else.”59 The war resolution passed the House 388 to 1.
Rankin’s no vote sparked immediate and intense
condemnation. As reporters and Members crowded around
her on the floor, Rankin huddled in a phonebooth in the
Republican cloakroom before police officers escorted her to
her office.60 Friends and relatives reached out with concern
and disappointment. “Montana is 110 percent against you,”
her brother Wellington said over the phone.61 “I voted
my convictions and redeemed my campaign pledges,” she
told her constituents.62 In private, she told friends, “I have
nothing left but my integrity.”63 Having taken her stance,
Rankin voted “present” two days later when the House
declared war on Germany and Italy.64 She quickly found
that her colleagues and the press simply ignored her. For the
remainder of the term, Rankin limited herself to issues of
wartime fraud and the protection of free speech. She did not
run for re-election in 1942.65
After Congress, Rankin divided her time between her
ranch in Montana and her cabin in Georgia. She eventually
resumed speaking engagements and grew increasingly
concerned that America was exploiting underdeveloped
countries overseas. Drawn by the nonviolent protest
tactics of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Rankin traveled abroad,
including to India. During the Vietnam War, in January 1968, she led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a 5,000-person
protest march on Washington where she presented a
peace petition to House Speaker John W. McCormack of
Massachusetts. In 1970 the House celebrated her ninetieth
birthday with a reception and dinner. And in 1972 the
National Organization for Women named Rankin the
“World’s outstanding living feminist.” At the time of her
death, on May 18, 1973, in Carmel, California, Rankin
was considering another run for the House to protest the
Vietnam War.66
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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