Jeanette Rankin: A Hero For Women

Jeanette Rankin was interested in architecture and furniture design.  But those careers weren't open to women then, so when she left the University of Montana with a degree in biology she did work as a teacher, seamstress, and social worker.  Having raised six younger siblings left her with marriage, not on the mind, never mind the many proposals.

At age thirty she fought to get women the right to vote in Montana. Four years later in 1914, they did.  Then she decided to try for a seat for herself--in Congress.   No one thought she had a chance. A woman in Congress?  But her sisters helped with the campaign and her well connected and wealthy brother Wellington was her manager and trusted advisor.  She beat seven men, by 6,000 votes or more to win her seat as a Republican representing Montana.

In Washington, she couldn't let petty problems such as a lack of women's restrooms or a man hitting on her get in her way. So she sat next to the oldest men there to avoid any improper behavior.  She became one of fifty-one unpopular Congressmen who voted against World War I. On her sixth day in office she had found her passion. Pacifism.

She didn't believe she could win her seat back in a Democratically controlled section of the state that had been drawn up and told she now represented so she ran for Senate.  She narrowly came in second place for the Republican Primary but was accused of taking bribes by them.  So she got good and pissed off enough to run for Senate in the national election as a third-party ticket just to prove her honesty.  She came in third but made her point.

She decided to continue her fight for World Peace.  Then at the ripe old age of sixty, she won a seat in Congress again.  When Franklin went to Congress a second time she beat three men to do it and demanded they declare war on Japan they voted 388-1. The one was Rankin who said, "As a woman I can't go to war and I refuse to send someone else."  She was the only person to vote "No" against both World Wars.  It cost her her career in politics.

She spent the rest of her life traveling around lecturing on world peace and visiting India where she fell in love with Gandhi.  She lived cheaply in rural Georgia and made friends of the children of the neighborhood with whom she shared the stories of her life.  In 1968 she led a march on Washington of five thousand women dressed in black against the Vietnam War.  She died peacefully at age ninety-two still thinking of a third term.  She is best known for being the woman who introduced the Nineteenth Amendment in Congress and battled hard for it to be passed and then ratified and put into law on August 18, 1920.