Jeannette Rankin (born June 11, 1880, near Missoula, Montana, U.S.—died May 18, 1973, Carmel, California) was the first woman member of the U.S. Congress, representing Montana in the House of Representatives (1917–19, 1941–43). Rankin was a vigorous feminist and a lifetime pacifist and crusader for social and electoral reform.
Rankin graduated from the University of Montana in 1902. She subsequently attended the New York School of Philanthropy (later the New York, then the Columbia, School of Social Work) before embarking on a career of social work in Seattle, Washington, in 1909. Caught up in the rising tide of sentiment for woman suffrage, she campaigned effectively for the next five years in Washington, California, and Montana on behalf of the cause. In 1914 she became legislative secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and in that same year she led a successful campaign for woman suffrage in her native Montana.
In 1916 Rankin, a Republican, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and after taking office the following year, she became the first woman to hold a seat in either chamber. She introduced the first bill that would have allowed women citizenship independent of their husbands and also supported government-sponsored hygiene instruction in maternity and infancy. Reflecting a deep-seated pacifism, she became an outspoken isolationist and was one of 49 members of Congress to vote against declaring war on Germany in 1917.
With that unpopular vote, Rankin faced certain defeat if she ran for reelection in her redrawn congressional district, which had become heavily Democratic. Thus, in 1918 she sought a seat in the U.S. Senate. After narrowly losing in the Republican primary, she ran as an independent the general election but lost. After the war she became a lobbyist and later returned to social work.
Running on an antiwar platform in 1940, Rankin once again won election to the House. She created a furor as the only legislator to vote against the declaration of war on Japan after the raid on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), effectively terminating her political career with this vote. She did not seek reelection but continued to lecture on various aspects of social reform. She was active in the National Consumers League, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and other reform organizations. Her militant feminism remained unabated as late as the 1960s, when she founded a self-sufficient women’s “cooperative homestead” in Georgia. She also became active again in the peace movement, urging women to demand a halt to the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. On January 15, 1968, at the age of 87, she led 5,000 women, calling themselves the “Jeannette Rankin Brigade,” to the foot of Capitol Hill to demonstrate opposition to the hostilities in Indochina.