The Original Dove in Congress

To the Editor: 
This March once again affords the opportunity to cele­brate Women’s History Month.
Thanks to the fortitude of the Montana-born Congress­woman Jeannette Rankin, women finally got represented in national politics in 1916. Jeannette was a woman’s suffragist and pacifist even before women got the right to vote. She never underestimated the violence of the war machine. Woodrow Wilson was elected as president in the same election as Jeannette.
Jeannette voted against both World War I and World War II. After Pearl Harbor with her brother, Wellington, as a family male support, Jeannette was the only dissenting vote against war. She said, “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”
Jeannette respected Gandhi, Ralph Nader, and worked for peace with a former Methodist minister, Frederick J. Libby. In 1971, Jeannette was awarded the first Susan B. Anthony Hall of Fame membership by the National Organization of Women.
Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, said of Jeannette, “If aging is the erosion of one’s ideals, then Jeannette Rankin is young forever.”
Mrs. Martin Luther King spoke of Jeannette as an endur­ance symbol for peace. Ms. Rankin was plagued by charges from the American Legion that she was a communist. They felt that she was subversive. She was frequently in poverty. Jeannette died in her sleep in 1973 at the young age of 92.