Jeanette Rankin, First Woman Elected to Congress, Voted Against Both WWI and WWII, Dies at Age 93
Jeanette Rankin, Republican from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress, died on this day at age 93.
Rankin was elected on November 7, 1916 and took her seat on Congress in March 1917. (The dates for swearing in both the president and members of Congress was moved to January in the 1930s.)
One month after taking her seat on Congress, on April 6, 1917 she voted against U.S. entry into World War I. She had tears in her eyes as she cast her vote, one of only 50 members of the House of Representatives to vote no. Reportedly, several male members of the House who voted no also cried when they voted, but Rankin was the only one whose tears were widely reported in the media. Because of her vote, and the wave of public hysteria against opponents of the war, Rankin was defeated for re-election in 1918.
Before being elected to Congress, Rankin had been an active suffragist, working with the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in support of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote in federal elections. In February 1911 she was the first woman ever to speak before the Montana legislature, arguing in support of women’s suffrage.
In 1940, twenty-two years after being defeated for re-election to Congress, she was again elected to the House of Representatives. In her first year, on the day after Pearl Harbor, she was the only member of the House to vote against U.S. entry into World War II. She holds the distinction of being the only member of Congress to vote against entry into both world wars. After her vote, there was so much anger directed at her that she took shelter in a telephone booth. Because of her vote, she was not re-elected in 1942.
When the women’s rights movement revived in the 1960s and 1970s, the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, named in her honor, organized a march on Washington on January 15, 1968 to support women’s rights.
Rankin on April 6, 1917: “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.”
Rankin on December 8, 1942: “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”
Learn more: James J. Lopach and Jean A. Luckowski, Jeannette Rankin: A Political Woman (2005)
Learn more about Jeanette Rankin here