Wiki Wanderings: Jeanette Rankin

[primeideal]

On this date in 1917, Jeanette Rankin became the first woman to hold federal office in the United States, as a House member from Montana. The 19th Amendment had not yet been passed; Rankin would be on a Committee for Woman's Suffrage and, in 1918, vote for a House resolution supporting the amendment (it was defeated by the Senate, and re-passed in 1919).

Rankin was one of fifty representatives to vote against the United States' entrance into World War I. She was elected again in 1940, and was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

She was quoted as saying "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." This was one of many anti-war quotes in a Kommersant montage criticizing war in general from last week, since they can't talk directly about the Ukraine invasion.

From Wikipedia:

Although her legacy rests almost entirely on her pacifism, Rankin told the Montana Constitutional Convention in 1972 that she would have preferred otherwise. "If I am remembered for no other act", she said, "I want to be remembered as the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote."