Jeannette Rankin

Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) became the first woman to hold a high government office in the United States when, in 1916, she was elected to the United States Congress from the state of Montana. After winning her House seat in 1916, she said, "I may be the first woman member of Congress but I won’t be the last." She also was elected in 1940.

Rankin's two terms in Congress coincided with U.S. entry into both World Wars. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of 56 members of Congress (including 50 in the House) who voted against entry into World War I in 1917, and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Life and career

Early life and suffrage movement

Rankin was born on June 11, 1880 near Missoula, Montana, nine years before the territory became a state, to schoolteacher Olive Pickering and Scottish-Canadian immigrant carpenter and rancher John Rankin. She was the eldest of six children, including five girls (one of whom died in childhood) and one brother, Wellington, who would become the state's attorney general, and later, an associate justice of the Montana Supreme Court.