Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)
Jeannette Rankin, social worker, suffrage activist, and pacifist, in 1916 became the first woman elected to the United States Congress (House of Representatives). In 1913 Rankin took over the well-organized Montana Equal Suffrage Association campaign to win a state suffrage amendment. The campaign was successful and gave Rankin the additional constituency of newly enfranchised women when she declared herself a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1916. She ran as a Republican in the contest for Montana’s two at-large representatives to Congress. She campaigned as a woman candidate who emphasized issues of importance to women’s groups including world peace and equal pay, but also cultivated labor, and farmers through her support of an eight-hour day, the end of child labor, and pro-Western water policies. Running second in the field, she benefited from the at-large election that allowed multiple winners. She was said to be the first woman in the world elected to a national legislative body. Immediately after her election to the 65 th Congress she became, by some accounts, the best known woman in the world and was spoken of as a possible presidential candidate.
Immediately after entering Congress Rankin became one of 57 members to cast a vote in opposition to President Woodrow Wilson’s call for a declaration of war. The country’s pre-occupation with World War I diminished her ability to lobby domestic reform legislation during her two-year term, although she did introduce a bill in support of a national woman suffrage amendment. Rankin’s position on radical labor issues and the gerrymandering of her at-large district diminished her chance of re-election to the House of Representatives. Instead, in July 1918, she announced as a candidate in Montana’s Republican Senate primary. When she failed to win the nomination, Rankin ran as the candidate of the National Party, again seeking to interest a coalition of labor, agriculture, and women. In this campaign, as in 1916, she failed to win the support of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) or its leader Carrie Chapman Catt, who believed that Montana’s Senator Thomas Walsh could better serve the cause of woman suffrage. She lost her bid to become a national senator, but she and Anne Martin of Nevada made history in 1918 as the first women to campaign for the U.S. Senate.
In 1940 Rankin capped decades of anti-war activism by again running successfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. After taking her seat, she cast the sole vote against bringing the United States into World War II. She later said that her second term “ended for all practical purposes the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor…[and her vote] made her a reviled figure.” (Lopach & Luckowski at 13)
Party Affiliation:
Republican Party (1916 campaign); National Party (Independent) (1918 campaign); Republican (1940 campaign)
Photograph:
Resources:
James Lopach and Jean Luckowski, Jeannette Rankin: A Political Woman (2005)
Ronald Schaffer. “Jeannette Rankin: Progressive Isolationist.” 1959. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University.
Norma Smith, Jeannette Rankin: America’s Conscience ( Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2002)
Joan Hoff Wilson, “’Peace Is a Woman’s Job…’ – Jeannette Rankin and American Foreign Policy: The Origins of Her Pacifism.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 30 (Winter 1980): 28-41.
________________, “’Peace Is a Woman’s Job…’ –Jeannette Rankin and American Foreign Policy: Her Lifework as a Pacifist.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 30 (Spring 1980): 38-53.
Personal and family papers are located at the Montana Historical Society. In addition, see Jeannette Rankin Papers at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; and the Records of the National Council for Prevention of War, at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
[Additional Notes]:
Rankin was the eldest of seven children born to a Montana ranching family. She and her brother Wellington Rankin, the second child and only son, shared a lifelong passion for winning elective office. His money, political knowledge, and psychological support proved to be critical in her victories, along with her talent as a speechmaker and enthusiasm for campaigning.
Rankin’s biographers differ in evaluating the course of her life and contributions after 1918. She worked as a field secretary and lobbyist throughout the 1920s and 1930s, first for the Women’s Peace Party, and later, the National Consumers’ League, the Women’s Peace Union, and the National Council for the Prevention of War. Her colleagues included Jane Addams and Florence Kelley.
Unlike Belva Lockwood, Rankin believed that women would cast their votes as a bloc. This was often not the case and a source of disappointment to her. She was particularly critical of women’s failure to come together in support of peace candidates and peace policies. Nevertheless, in her late eighties Rankin led several thousand women in a protest against the war in Vietnam.