The National Statuary Hall is a semicircular room in the U.S. Capitol originally built to host sessions of the House of Representatives (the lower chamber of Congress) but repurposed in 1864 to house statues of prominent historical figures from the country. There are over a hundred statues, including one of Spanish friar Junípero Serra, but only five depict women. One of these is Jeannette Pickering Rankin, remembered in history as a suffragist pioneer, the first woman elected to Congress—and the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. involvement in both World Wars.

Jeannette was born in 1880 in Missoula, a small town in Montana (then still a territory, not yet a state), also known to fans of filmmaker David Lynch as his birthplace. She was the eldest of six siblings—five girls and one boy—children of John, a Scottish-Canadian immigrant, and Olive.

Although her parents worked as a carpenter and a schoolteacher, they lived on a ranch, which required endless daily chores in which the whole family had to participate. Jeannette would later write that, in the last decade of the 19th century, women in that region had to perform the same demanding tasks as men, yet were denied the right to vote and had no political representation.

Jeannette Rankin
University of Montana campus. Credit: Edward Blake / Wikimedia Commons

As can be inferred, she became aware of these issues during her time at university, where she graduated in Biology in 1902 after trying other fields such as dressmaking, furniture design, and teaching, like her mother. However, she ultimately ventured into a new and promising field: social work.

She began her career in San Francisco, where she moved in 1907 after spending three years caring for her family following her father’s death. Confident that she had found her calling, she enrolled in the School of Philanthropy in New York in 1908 and then secured a position as a social worker in Spokane, Washington. Her professional path was becoming defined.

She later relocated to Seattle for further university studies while becoming fully engaged in the women’s suffrage movement. The movement began to see results in 1910, when Washington State passed a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote permanently. It was the fifth state in the U.S. to do so, but efforts were still needed to expand suffrage nationwide. To this end, she returned to New York to organize the New York Woman Suffrage Party, a political group formed by uniting various suffrage organizations to push for women’s voting rights in the state.

Jeannette Rankin
The Women’s Suffrage Parade organized in 1917 by NAWSA. Credit: Feminist Majority Foundation

She also served as a delegate for the NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association), an organization founded in 1890 that grew spectacularly to two million members by 1920, when it transformed into the League of Women Voters. As a delegate, she advocated for women’s voting rights before Congress.

Later, she was appointed national secretary of NAWSA and president of the Montana Women’s Suffrage Association, becoming the first woman to speak before the state legislature with a speech advocating for women’s rights. Her fervent efforts paid off, and in 1914, Montana granted women full suffrage, making it the seventh state to do so.

In practice, she was fully immersed in politics, but her vocation was further shaped by her brother Wellington, the only male among six siblings (or five, to be precise, as one sister had died in childhood). Wellington, who would have a distinguished legal career as state attorney general and Montana Supreme Court justice, was a prominent member of the Republican Party and led and financed Jeannette’s meticulously planned congressional campaign in 1916. She participated in the party’s primaries, gaining unanimous support from all candidates for her platform on social services and women’s suffrage. Ultimately, she won a seat in Congress, marking a historic milestone as the first woman congresswoman.

Jeannette Rankin
Newspaper clipping showing Jeannette Rankin delivering her first speech in Congress. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Her popularity soared to such an extent that it became a humorous anecdote that she received marriage proposals from strangers. But then came the great controversy. Three and a half years into World War I, in the spring of 1917, during an extraordinary session of Congress, President Woodrow Wilson requested authorization to intervene against Germany.

The subsequent debate was heated, and the final voting result favored the proposal, although there were some votes against it. One of these was cast by Jeannette, who later stated: I felt that the first time the first woman had the chance to say no to war, she should say it.

She faced criticism and accusations of disloyalty, even from some suffragists, despite the fact that forty-nine other congressmen and six senators also opposed entering the conflict. Nevertheless, she demonstrated that her opinion did not conflict with her duties by approving the military plan and selling war bonds, all while fulfilling her role as a member of Congress.

Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin during her tenure as a congresswoman. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

That same year, she co-founded a Women’s Suffrage Committee aiming to extend voting rights across the entire country, which had already reached forty states. When Congress reopened in January 1918, her first speech introduced a constitutional amendment to grant universal suffrage to women. The congressmen approved it, but the Senate rejected it—temporarily, as it was ratified in May 1919, becoming the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from denying citizens the right to vote based on sex.

This success was supported by the efforts of women who contributed during the war, as well as demonstrations and strikes organized by the National Woman’s Party. Speaking of strikes, in 1917, Jeannette also attempted to mediate a strike by miners at Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine, a copper excavation where an accidental fire, exacerbated by war production demands, suffocated 168 workers. The situation worsened with the assassination of the union leader by hired gunmen.

The mining companies refused to meet with Jeannette, outright rejecting her legislative proposal to improve harsh working conditions. However, she ultimately succeeded in securing the approval of the eight-hour workday.

Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin in 1939. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

By 1918, her term in Congress was nearing its end, and she realized her chances of re-election were slim, as Montana seemed to lean Democratic. She decided to run for the Senate but, after losing her party’s primaries, ran with the National Party, a breakaway faction of the Socialist Party with a social-democratic orientation. She finished third, eventually stepping away from politics for a time to work with the National Consumers League, where she achieved a ban on child labor and the approval of a social assistance program for women and children.

At the same time, she collaborated with pacifist organizations, founding the Georgia Peace Society in 1928 (she had settled in that state, living on a farm without electricity or running water). The First World War had left a profound impression on her, and pacifist institutions flourished, with the League of Nations being the most notable example.

However, international tensions were once again tilting toward conflict. When her prediction that a Second World War would not occur—erroneously believing that Germany and Italy would be satisfied with small concessions—proved wrong, she advocated for the United States to remain neutral and not even assist its traditional British allies.

Jeannette Rankin
Ships struck in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

This context propelled her back into politics. With the support of Wellington, despite their significant ideological differences, she won a congressional seat again in the 1940 elections. Appointed a member of the Committee on Natural Resources, the pressing issue of the day was U.S. intervention in the war, which came to a head on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Congress voted unanimously to declare war on Japan, with a single dissenting vote—Jeannette’s. Amid the uproar in the chamber, her party colleagues urged her to at least abstain, but she refused.

As a woman, I cannot go to war, she explained, and I refuse to send anyone else. She later reinforced this stance by stating that her party knew her beliefs when they elected her and that she had voted as mothers would have wanted me to vote. Jeannette left the chamber amid jeers and had to take refuge in a phone booth from the onslaught of reporters, ultimately leaving the building escorted by police.

Most of the press was relentless in its criticism of her, though some praised her, if not for her decision, then for the courage to cast a vote many congressmen and senators wished to make. A few days later, when another vote was held to declare war on Germany and Italy, she abstained.

Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette calling for help from the phone booth where she had to take shelter. Credit: U.S. Capitol

Her political career was evidently over, so she did not seek re-election. After the war, she traveled the world, with a particular fondness for India, visiting it seven times and meeting Gandhi, with whom she sympathized over the doctrine of non-violence and supported his independence efforts. Similarly, in the 1960s, despite being in her eighties, she supported Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. Unsurprisingly, she opposed the Vietnam War and participated in the famous 1968 Peace March, leading 5,000 women under the banner of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade.

By then, she was of an advanced age, and her health began to decline. She passed away in Carmel, California, in 1973 at the age of ninety-two. Without descendants, she bequeathed her entire estate to unemployed women, managed by a nonprofit foundation named in her honor, which continues to provide scholarships to low-income women.

After all, she wanted to be remembered for her commitment to the suffragist cause, as the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote. A statue dedicated to her, which can still be seen in the National Statuary Hall, was erected in 1985 and is the work of artist Terry Mimnaugh.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on September 24, 2019: Jeannette Rankin, la primera mujer elegida para el Congreso de EEUU, votó en contra de entrar en las dos guerras mundiales

SOURCES

Corinne Naden, Jeannette Rankin

Mary Murphy, When Jeannette said “No”. Montana womens response to World War I

Norma Smith, Jeannette Rankin, America’s conscience

Mary Barmeyer O’Brien, Jeannette Rankin. Bright star in the big sky

John C. Board, The lady of Montana

Wikipedia, Jeannette Rankin

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