She was a representative - the first female representative in American history - from a state that wasn't even a state when she was born just outside of Missoula, in the Montana Territory, in 1880. Jeanette Rankin was born to John - a Canadian rancher/builder - and Olive, who had moved herself 3/4 of the way across the country to teach school in Montana before marrying John and settling in as a housewife to take care of their soon-to-be seven children, of which Jeanette was the oldest. Montana's statehood, and entry into the Union, was nine years away when Jeanette was born.
In an effort to make sure that the state university was located in Missoula, the city leaders made a deal with Helena - 100 miles to its east - that Missoula would back Helena's push to be the state capital (opposing Anaconda, 100 miles to Missoula's southeast) in exchange for Helena's backing on the university issue. It worked. Montana State University - now the University of Montana - opened its doors in 1895. Jeanette graduated with a degree in biology seven years later.
From there Jeanette Rankin criss-crossed the country. When John Rankin passed away in 1904, Jeanette visited an uncle in California and began volunteering at the Telegraph Hill Settlement House, the first of its kind in San Francisco, but modeled after Jane Addams' groundbreaking Hull House in Chicago, which made an effort to assist immigrants living in the United States. San Francisco had a large number of immigrants in need of help (thanks, in part, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), and so the settlement house formula of providing education services to children as well as health services for their families was followed by Telegraph Hill. Eventually they expanded to include a kitchen, garden, gymnasium, library, and an operating room. Telegraph Hill would launch the first school nurse program on the west coast.
Armed with an interest in social work, Jeanette graduated from - the now-Columbia University School of Social Work in 1909. Jeanette again traversed the country, this time to Spokane, Washington to help needy children, and found herself as a student volunteer on a women's suffrage campaign. Washington State would end up becoming the fifth state to allow women to vote, and Rankin ended up working as a field secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), whose previous presidents included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Carrie Chapman Catt.
NAWSA's strategy was hard but simple: getting enough states to give women the right to vote would force the federal government to act. In late 1910, Rankin found that her home state of Montana was about to introduce a women's suffrage resolution. The resolution was a hoax in some capacity, however, but Rankin was able to convince a state legislator to introduce the resolution, anyway. In February 1911 Rankin testified in support of women's suffrage, becoming the first woman to address the Montana legislature in the process. Her testimony likely swung the majority of the Montana House of Representatives to support women's suffrage, which the state adopted in 1914.
Rankin spent much of the next two years organizing support through NAWSA where it was most needed, visiting 15 states from Delaware to Florida. She organized immigrant workers in Manhattan's Garment District after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and ultimately helped win basic workplace safety regulations. With plenty of political experience came an opportunity: the women's suffrage brought women the right to hold office.
In 1916, when over 300 women were running for office in Kansas alone, Rankin declared her candidacy for one of Montana's two congressional seats. You may be asking yourself, "Self, how could she do this?" And I simply respond, "Women had the right to vote in Montana, which means women had the right to hold office."
Rankin's campaign was managed by her brother Wellington, a Harvard grad and Rhodes Scholar who settled into public life as a lawyer who specialized in industrial accident cases, a niche that brought him into conflict with many of the state's largest corporations, like the Anaconda Copper Company, the largest employer in the state. Oh, the Anaconda Copper Company just so happened to own most of the state's newspapers, and completely ignored Rankin's campaign. It didn't work.
Rankin, who campaigned on many popular Progressive Party issues: nationwide suffrage, child welfare laws, and Prohibition, was the first woman to hold national office, the first female member of Congress. She would say in a statement after her election was official:
"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."
The 19th Amendment was still over two years away from being introduced.
Rankin's first day in office was April 2, 1917 and the House of Representatives paused for "sustained applause" when Rankin was sworn in. The day began, however, with a breakfast for Rankin hosted by both NAWSA and it's more militant faction, the National Women's Party led by Alice Paul - a rare show of unity between the two groups.
President Woodrow Wilson convened Congress eight months early to consider the United States' response to Germany's resumption of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. However, just before the House adjourned for the afternoon, Rankin introduced the Susan B. Anthony amendment, guaranteeing women's suffrage in the Constitution. Her historic first day brought another first: the first woman to call for a constitutional amendment from the floor of Congress.
But of course this wasn't why Wilson brought Congress back. Later in the evening President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany to "make the world safe for democracy." Rankin was in a bind: she needed support for the suffrage movement, but voting against war - even as a lifelong pacifist - might cause support for suffrage to suffer.
Ultimately, Rankin and 49 other congressmen - including House Majority Leader Claude Kitchin (D-NC) and Extremely Pro-Military congressman Albert Britten (R-IL) voted against war, as well. 49 of the 56 No War votes in the House and Senate, however, were from Midwestern or Western states, so Rankin's vote was in line with the geography. But 373 representatives voted in favor (after the Senate passed the war resolution 82-6 two days earlier), and so with Wilson's signature, the United States went to war against the German Empire. NAWSA distanced themselves from Rankin, issuing a statement that read, "Miss Rankin was not voting [on war] for the suffragists of the nation - she represents Montana." The Helena Independent (please do remember how many of Montana's newspapers were mouthpieces for the Anaconda Company) wrote that Rankin was "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."
In 1918 Rankin opened debate on the House floor regarding what would eventually become the 19th Amendment - giving women the right to vote - by addressing her colleagues, "How shall we answer their challenge, gentlemen? 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 them this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?" That bill failed, but Rankin noted that she was "the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote."
And here's what's important about the 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment didn't really, if we're picking nits, give women the right to vote. Women already had the right to vote in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, obviously Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and Washington. That's 20 of the 48 states. What the 19th Amendment did do was tell the other 28 states they could not deny women the right to vote.
Rankin was busy supporting miners' rights back home in Montana (where a large amount of Montana's natural resources benefitted the War effort) and earning the already-established hatred of the Anaconda Copper Company. She also personally investigated poor treatment of female workers at the U.S. Treasury Department, which resulted in the immediate institution of an eight-hour work day.
Redistricting shenanigans in Montana led Rankin to not run for re-election in the House, and instead focus on a bid in the Senate. However, the extremely powerful Nonpartisan League, who opposed Big Banks and corporations, encouraged its members to vote in the Democratic primary, not the Republican one - a massive blow to Rankin's chances, which saw her lose the Republican primary by fewer than 2,000 votes.
After traveling the world and the United States for much of the 1920s, Rankin moved to northeast Georgia where she designed a house with no electricity, running water, or telephone. Again, a lifelong pacifist, Rankin responded to the unfolding events in Europe by becoming a lobbyist for the National Council for the Prevention of War. She publicized Senator Nye's (R-ND) investigation into arms manufacturers and their role in bringing America into World War 1. Rankin resigned after the Great Depression took its toll on the NCPW's finances, as well as her increasing opposition to FDR's stance on the likelihood of joining World War 2.
The looming crisis in Europe sent Rankin back home to Montana, where she ran against Jacob Thorkelson, a first-term Norwegian-born doctor who was a noted fascist and anti-Semite that would read selections from Sir Oswald Mosley into the Congressional Record. Mosley, a World War 1 veteran, was elected to Parliament at 22 years old and would eventually come to really appreciate the efforts of Benito Mussolini in Italy, and establish the British Union of Fascists. Thorkelson was A Problem that Rankin easily handled in the Republican primary.
Facing long-time Montana politician Jerry Joseph O'Connell in 1940, Rankin won endorsements from progressives such as Robert LaFollette and Fiorello LaGuardia. Rankin won the election with 54% of the vote - almost 25 years after her first election to Congress. What to do about Europe was the main topic House floor. When the Lend-Lease Bill (allowing the United States to let Britain and France borrow or rent war materials to fight Germany) was up for debate in February 1941 - ten months prior to Pearl Harbor - Rankin spoke from the floor and asked, "If Britain needs our material today, will she later need our men?" Her amendment to require congressional approval before sending American troops abroad failed.
On December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - Rankin was on her way to Detroit when she learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and arrived in Washington on the morning of December 8 preparing to oppose American action in World War 2. When Roosevelt asked a Joint Session of Congress for a declaration of war on Japan, debate opened in the House of Representatives.
Rankin "repeatedly sought recognition," but with her reputation going before her, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn - still the longest-serving Speaker of the House - refused to let her speak. Other representatives asked her to either vote for war or to not vote at all, in order to maintain solidarity. "A chorus of hisses and boos" rained down on Rankin as she stated from the floor, "As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else." She voted no. The resolution to declare war on Japan passed 388-1.
She faced immediate condemnation. Police officers had to escort Rankin to her office. Rankin's former campaign manager brother Wellington told her over the phone, "Montana is 110 percent against you." Two days later, when Congress voted to declare war on Germany and Italy, Rankin simply voted "Present." The anger and indignation towards Rankin quickly turned to universal indifference. She focused on free speech issues and wartime fraud, and did not run for re-election in 1942.
The rest of her life was spent between Montana and Georgia, with trips to India - inspired by Gandhi. She led yet another protest against war - Rankin was nothing if not consistent - in Washington DC in 1968 against the Vietnam War, delivering a peace petition to the Speaker of the House. Two years later, Rankin was given a reception and a dinner in honor of her 90th birthday, and in 1972 Rankin was named the "World's Most Outstanding Feminist" by the National Organization for Women. Jeanette Rankin passed away in 1973, pondering yet another run for the House of Representatives. The year prior to her passing, a reporter asked if she would live her life all over again, to which she replied, yes "but this time I'd be nastier."
