Jeannette Rankin Silvia Eliserio Nuñez
Jeannette was one of the first in the u.s. Congress she in the Republican Party.She was born June 11, 1880 Missoula county,Montana she was in the and died May 18, 1973. She graduated from the university of Montanain in 1902. After trying elementary schoolteaching occupations she studied social work at the New York school of philanthropy but found this profession also insufficiency rewarding. In 1902 she entered the university of Washington where she joined the state suffrage organization. For the next four years, she traveled back and forth across the continent, speaking and lobbying for women’s right to vote. She was the moving force behind the organization that secured Montana women the franchise in 1914.
Two years latter she was elected to congress on the Republican ticket soon after taking her seat she cast an anguished vote against the declararatiun of war an the Germany stating I want to stand by my country ,but I cannot vote for war. During her term she supported the federal woman suffrage amendment, measures to protect women workers, mothers, and children, and efforts to abolish prostitution near army camps. She voted for Prohibition and against the Espionage Act of 1917 and sought to end a strike in a copper field owned by the Anaconda company, the dominant political and economic power in Montana, by having the federal government nationalize the mine.
Ten years later, Rankin left the National Council and was again elected to Congress, where she opposed conscription, Lend-Lease, and the repeal of neutrality laws. In December 1941 she cast the only vote against the declaration of war on Japan. After her term ended, she traveled between her homes in Montana and Georgia. Deeply interested in the nonviolent methods of Mohandas K. Gandhi and in the liberation of third world peoples, she made several visits to India. She captured the attention of the public for the last time in 1968 by leading the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, some five thousand feminists, pacifists, radicals, students, and others, to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against the Vietnam War.
