Today's Today

Happy birthday to an American hero.

Jeannette Rankin, born this day in 1880.

Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was an American politician and women's rights advocate, and the first woman to hold federal office in the United States. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Montana in 1916, and again in 1940. She remains the only woman elected to Congress by Montana.

Each of Rankin's Congressional terms coincided with initiation of U.S. military intervention in each of the two world wars. A lifelong pacifist and a supporter of non-interventionism, she was one of 50 House members, along with six Senators, who opposed the war declaration of 1917, and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

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On December 8, Rankin was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan. Hisses could be heard in the gallery as she cast the vote; several colleagues, including Rep. (later Senator) Everett Dirksen, asked her to change it to make the resolution unanimous—or at very least, to abstain—but she refused. "As a woman I can't go to war," she said, "and I refuse to send anyone else."

After the vote, a crowd of reporters pursued Rankin. She took refuge in a phone booth until Capitol Police arrived to escort her to her office. There, she was inundated with angry telegrams and phone calls, including one from her brother, who said, "Montana is 100 percent against you." Rankin refused to apologize. "Everyone knew that I was opposed to the war, and they elected me," she said. "I voted as the mothers would have had me vote." A wire service photo of Rankin sequestered in the phone booth, calling for assistance, appeared the following day in newspapers across the country.

While her action was widely ridiculed in the press, William Allen White, writing in the Kansas Emporia Gazette, acknowledged her courage in taking it:

Probably a hundred men in Congress would have liked to do what she did. Not one of them had the courage to do it. The Gazette entirely disagrees with the wisdom of her position. But Lord, it was a brave thing! And its bravery someway discounted its folly. When, in a hundred years from now, courage, sheer courage based upon moral indignation is celebrated in this country, the name of Jeannette Rankin, who stood firm in folly for her faith, will be written in monumental bronze, not for what she did, but for the way she did it.

Two days later, a similar war declaration against Germany and Italy came to a vote; Rankin abstained. Her political career effectively over; she did not run for reelection in 1942. Asked years later if she had ever regretted her action, Rankin replied, "Never. If you're against war, you're against war regardless of what happens. It's a wrong method of trying to settle a dispute."

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A member of the Republican Party during the Progressive Era, Rankin was also instrumental in initiating the legislation that eventually became the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting unrestricted voting rights to women. In her victory speech, she recognized the power she held as the only woman able to vote in Congress, saying "I am deeply conscious of the responsibility resting upon me". She championed the causes of women's rights and civil rights throughout a career that spanned more than six decades.