Jeannette Rankin: The First Woman to Serve in Congress
When Jeannette Rankin was sworn into office as a Republican congresswoman from Montana on April 2, 1917, she was the sole woman among 434 men in the ultimate boys’ club, the House of Representatives. Rankin’s election was a huge boost to the suffrage movement for women’s voting rights. But despite years of experience overcoming resistance to organizing suffragist groups around the country, nothing could have prepared her for the rough and tumble turmoil that awaited her in Congress.
Jeannette Rankin was born on June 11, 1890, on a ranch in Big Sky country outside Missoula, Montana. Her parents, Olive and John Rankin had seven children and Jeannette was the oldest. Her father, originally from Canada, was a successful builder and businessman. Her mother, described as a free spirit, had moved from New Hampshire in search of adventure. Rankin attended Montana State University, graduating in 1902 with a degree in biology. After college, unsure of what she wanted, she tried different jobs, including teaching and being a seamstress. She got a degree in social work from the New York School of Philanthropy and worked briefly as a social worker for an orphanage in Washington state.
As a well-educated woman of her time, Rankin was aware of the suffrage movement but had not gotten involved until 1910. That year, a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage was up for vote in Washington state. The measure passed after two previous attempts making Washington the fifth state where women could vote in statewide elections. Energized by the victory, Rankin discovered her calling in the suffrage cause. Over the next six years, as a field secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she traveled to 15 states organizing groups and campaigns to get voting rights passed.
In 1916, Montana’s two at-large congressional seats were up for grabs. An experienced grass roots organizer with a record of victories in the suffrage movement, Rankin decided to run for office. By now she was well known for getting women the vote and her campaign focused on that and other progressive issues, including child welfare and prohibition. Rankin won the second most votes to win one of the seats, launching her career in politics.
By 1916, the suffrage movement was no longer considered a radical idea. Women in many Western states already had the right to vote. Male lawmakers out West weren’t necessary more enlightened, but those territories were in desperate need of families as they became states. Having voting rights, they thought, might be one more way to attract women to settle there.
On the morning of Rankin’s swearing-in, she rode in a 25-car motorcade to the Capitol where Montana’s other congressman, John Evans, escorted Rankin onto the House floor.
Sustained applause and curiosity greeted her as she stepped into the chamber and when she took the oath of office. Rankin was now a celebrity. During the campaign, reporters dissected her positions on domestic issues, but now, more of the attention was personal: the color of her hair, what she wore, her favorite recipes, the fact that she was single.
She received requests for speaking engagements, marriage proposals, product endorsements and photographs. Female politicians since Rankin have endured similar sexist scrutiny, but perhaps their curiosity was further aroused by the woman who declared, “I may be the first woman member of Congress, but I won’t be the last.”
Rankin’s first day at work wasn’t only ceremonial. She introduced her first bill: Resolution 3, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment which stated: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Eventually, this language would become the 19th Amendment when it was passed and signed into law three years later.
After presenting the bill, her day still wasn’t over. That evening, she was back in the chamber at a special joint session of Congress, listening to President Woodrow Wilson ask for a declaration of war on Germany “to make the world safe for democracy.”
A “yes” vote would take the United States into World War I. Three days later, as Congress began debating the war resolution, Rankin, a devout pacificist was getting pressured to vote in favor of going to war. Suffragists said a “no” vote from the first woman in Congress might set back the movement. Women would be seen as weak, with no stomach for politics or war. Most of the Congress and the country was leaning towards war and others, including her brother who had managed her election campaign, argued that Rankin’s opposition would be a throwaway vote that could end her political career.
“I want to stand by my country,” Rankin said when her name was called, “but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.” 49 other Congressmen also voted “no,” yet it was Rankin’s vote that made headlines. In newspapers across the country, her judgement was called into question. There were calls for her to resign. Montana’s leading newspaper, 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.” Some suffrage groups who had just pledged their support for her, cancelled meetings and issued statements saying Rankin did not represent the movement on this issue.
Despite the backlash, nine months later, Rankin used the war vote to help make a case for the women’s suffrage bill she had introduced. On the House floor during the debate, she pointedly asked her colleagues, “How shall we explain to them (women) 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?”
Later that month, with women cheering from the galleries, the House voted to pass the bill. It was the first time any women’s suffrage measure had won approval in Congress. But the victory didn’t last when the bill died in the Senate.
Rankin’s antiwar vote was still fresh in voters’ minds when her Congressional term came up for re-election two years later. Montana had re-districted the state and now Rankin was representing a mostly Democratic district. She opted not to run for re-election but instead, declared her candidacy for Senate. When she lost the race, she knew it was time to quit traditional politics.
Over the next two decades, Rankin became an anti-war activist. She attended the International Women’s Conference for Permanent Peace in Switzerland, became a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and traveled across the country speaking out against war. She moved to Georgia, where her speeches were more warmly received. In the 1930s, she was a lobbyist for the National Council for the Prevention of War, testifying before House and Senate committees.
By 1939, with the world on the brink of another war, Rankin decided the peace movement needed to have a seat at the table. In 1940, she returned home to Montana and ran for Congress again on an anti-war platform, winning 54% of the vote. It was 25 years after her first election and there were now half a dozen other women serving in the House. Rankin said, “no one will pay any attention to me this time, there is nothing unusual about a woman being elected.”
But they did pay attention the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. On December 8, 1941, Congress was once more asked to vote on a declaration of war. Rankin was not allowed to speak during the debate and pressured to vote in favor or abstain. When the roll call was finished, the vote was 82-0 in the Senate and 388-1 in House in favor of the resolution. Rankin was alone as she cast the only “no” vote to a chorus of boos and hisses. “As a woman,” she said, “I can’t go to war and I refuse to send anyone else.”
As the press and House members swarmed around her, Rankin left the chamber and hid in a phone booth until police officers could escort her to her office. Rankin paid heavily for her vote. For the remainder of her term, many of her colleagues refused to work with her, the press ignored her and she got backlash from her constituents as well. Again in a repeat of history, she declined to run for re-election at the end of the term.
After two tumultuous terms in Congress, no one would have faulted Jeannette Rankin from retiring permanently from public life. But she never lost her passion for pacificism and never stopped believing in giving peace a chance. In 1968, during the Vietnam War, she led the 5,000 member Jeannette Rankin Brigade in a protest march in Washington D.C.
By her 90th birthday in 1970, political sentiment was turning in her favor. The House, once the bittersweet scene of her historic victory, threw a party in her honor. In 1972, she was called “the world’s outstanding living feminist,” by the National Organization for Women.
Rankin died at 93 on May 18, 1973. At the time, she was reportedly considering another run for the House to protest the Vietnam War.
©2023 Alice Look
Co-founder, Remarkable Women Project.org
Executive Producer, Remarkable Women Project