[Peace-discuss] On being nice (2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

Jeannette Rankin, the only person in Congress to vote against US entry
into World War I and World War II, was asked late in life what in her life
she would change.  She replied, "If I had my life to live over, I would do
it all again, but this time I would be nastier."

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Rankin (1880-1973) was the first American woman elected to Congress
(November 6, 1916); she was a suffragist, a peace activist, and a social
reformer.

"Jeannette Pickering Rankin was born on June 11, 1880.  Her father, John
Rankin, was a rancher and lumber merchant and her mother, Olive Pickering,
a former schoolteacher. She spent her first years on the ranch, then moved
with the family to Missoula where she attended public school. She was the
oldest of eleven children.

"Jeannette Rankin attended Montana State University at Missoula and
graduated in 1902 with a bachelor of science degree in biology.  She was a
schoolteacher, seamstress and studied furniture design -- looking for some
work to which she could commit herself. When her father died in 1902, he
left money to Rankin, paid out over her lifetime.

"On a long trip to Boston in 1904 to visit with her brother at Harvard and
with other relatives, she was inspired by slum conditions to take up the
new field of social work. She became a resident in a San Francisco
Settlement House for four months, then entered the New York School of
Philanthropy (later, to become the Columbia School of Social Work). She
returned to the west to become a social worker in Spokane, Washington, in
a children's home. Social work did not, however, hold her interest long -
she only lasted a few weeks at the children's home.

"Next, Rankin studied at the University of Washington in Seattle and
became involved in the woman suffrage movement in 1910.  Visiting Montana,
Rankin became the first woman to speak before the Montana legislature,
where she surprised the spectators and legislators alike with her speaking
ability. She organized and spoke for the Equal Franchise Society.

"Rankin then moved to New York, and continued her work on behalf of
women's rights.  During these years, she began her lifelong relationship
with Katherine Anthony. She went to work for the New York Woman Suffrage
Party and in 1912 she became the field secretary of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association.  Rankin and Anthony were among the thousands
of suffragists at the 1913 suffrage march in Washington, D.C., before the
inauguration of Woodrow Wilson.

"Jeannette Rankin returned to Montana to help organize the successful
Montana suffrage campaign in 1914.  To do so, she gave up her position
with the NAWSA.

"As war in Europe loomed, Jeannette Rankin turned her attention to work
for peace, and in 1916, ran for one of the two seats in Congress from
Montana as a Republican.  Her brother served as campaign manager and
helped finance the campaign. Jeannette Rankin won, though the papers first
reported that she lost the election -- and Jeannette Rankin thus became
the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, and the first woman elected
to a national legislature in any western democracy.

"Rankin used her fame and notoriety in this "famous first" position to
work for peace and women's rights and against child labor, and to write a
weekly newspaper column.

"Only four days after taking office, Jeannette Rankin made history in yet
another way: she voted against U.S. entry into World War I.  She violated
protocol by speaking during the roll call before casting her vote,
announcing "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war."
Some of her colleagues in NAWSA -- notably Carrie Chapman Catt --
criticized her vote as opening the suffrage cause to criticism as
impractical and sentimental.

"Rankin did vote, later in her term, for several pro-war measures, as well
as working for the political reforms including civil liberties, suffrage,
birth control, equal pay and child welfare.  In 1917, she opened the
congressional debate on the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which passed the
House in 1917 and the Senate in 1918, to become the 19th Amendment after
it was ratified by the states.

"But Rankin's first anti-war vote sealed her political fate. When she was
gerrymandered out of her district, she ran for the Senate, lost the
primary, launched a third party race, and lost overwhelmingly.

"Jeannette Rankin continued after the war ended to work for peace through
the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and also began
work for the National Consumers' League. She worked, at the same time, on
the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"After a brief return to Montana to help her brother run -- unsuccessfully
-- for the Senate, she moved to a farm in Georgia. She returned to Montana
every summer, her legal residence.

"From her base in Georgia, Jeannette Rankin became Field Secretary of the
WILPF and lobbied for peace. When she left the WILPF she formed the
Georgia Peace Society.  She lobbied for the Women's Peace Union, working
for an antiwar constitutional amendment.  She left the Peace Union, and
began working with the National Council for the Prevention of War. She
also lobbied for American cooperation with the World Court and for labor
reforms and an end to child labor.

"In 1935, when a college in Georgia offered her the position of Peace
Chair, she was accused of being a Communist, and ended up filing a libel
suit against the Macon newspaper.  The court eventually declared her, as
she said, "a nice lady."

"In the first half of 1937, she spoke in 10 states, giving 93 speeches for
peace. She supported the America First Committee, but decided that
lobbying was not the most effective way to work for peace.  By 1939, she
had returned to Montana and was running for Congress again, supporting a
strong but neutral America in yet another time of impending war.

"Elected with a small plurality, Jeannette Rankin arrived in Washington in
January as one of six women in the House, two in the Senate. When, after
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress voted to declare
war against Japan, Jeannette Rankin once again voted "no" to war.  She
also, once again, violated long tradition and spoke before her roll call
vote, this time saying "As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send
anyone else" as she voted alone against the war resolution. She was
denounced by the press and her colleagues, and barely escaped an angry
mob. She believed that Roosevelt had deliberately provoked the attack on
Pearl Harbor.

"In 1943, Rankin went back to Montana rather than run for Congress again
(and surely be defeated).  She took care of her mother and traveled
worldwide, including to India and Turkey, promoting peace, and tried to
found a woman's commune on her Georgia farm. In 1968, she led more than
five thousand women in a protest in Washington, DC, demanding the U.S.
withdraw from Vietnam, heading up the group calling itself the Jeannette
Rankin Brigade.  She was active in the antiwar movement, often invited to
speak or honored by the young antiwar activists and feminists.

"Jeannette Rankin died in 1973 in California."

<http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_jeannette_rankin.htm>

  ==============================================================
  C. G. Estabrook
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
  office: 217.244.4105 mobile: 217.369.5471 home: 217.359.9466
  <www.carlforcongress.org>
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