In 1916, Montana voters sent Jeannette Rankin of Missoula to the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the first woman elected to Congress, four years before the 19th Amendment guaranteed women the vote nationwide. Montana had granted women suffrage in 1914, a campaign Rankin helped lead.
Two votes
Days after she took office in 1917, Rankin was one of 50 House members who voted against declaring war on Germany. She later ran for the Senate and lost.
She returned to the House after the 1940 election. On Dec. 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, she cast the only vote in Congress against declaring war on Japan. That made her the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both world wars. She did not seek re-election in 1942.
Legacy
Rankin remained a pacifist and activist for the rest of her life and died in 1973. A statue of her stands in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall collection, and another is in the Montana State Capitol.
For more background, see our explainers on Senate leader Mike Mansfield, how ballot initiatives work in Montana, and Montana’s 1972 Constitution. Find more stories in our People & Profiles section.
Sources
- U.S. House History, Art & Archives, ‘RANKIN, Jeannette’: https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/
- Montana Historical Society: https://mhs.mt.gov/