Born on June 11, 1880, Jeanette Rankin of Montana earned a permanent place in political history as a fierce pacifist and the very first woman ever elected to the United States House of Representatives. Serving her first term from 1917 to 1919, iyears before the nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote nationwide, she was one of 50 representatives to vote against America’s entry into World War I. Decades later, during a second term spanning 1941 to 1943, she stood in absolute, historic isolation on December 8, 1941, as the only member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Rankin’s lone dissenting vote in 1941 required immense physical and political courage, as an angry mob of politicians and citizens trapped her on the House floor, forcing her to take refuge in a public phone booth until capital police could escort her to her office. She fiercely believed that corruption and war were inherently linked to male-dominated politics, arguing that a true democracy could only achieve lasting peace through total non-violence and the political empowerment of women. Though her anti-war stances effectively destroyed her political career, her unyielding adherence to her pacifist principles turned her into a legendary icon for future generations of American peace activists.
