June 17, 2020 • 39 mins
Years before the United States ratified the 19th amendment, a woman from Montana had already infiltrated Capitol Hill. Jeannette Rankin rose through the ranks of the women’s suffrage movement, bringing an electric energy to every town she visited. Her activism earned her a place on the ballot in 1916, and she landed a seat as a congressional representative for Montana - the first woman to ever achieve this distinction in the United States. As a congressperson, Jeannette became an integral part of 20th century US history from voting against entering World War I, to battling for women’s suffrage on the floor of congress, to making herself known as a pacifist again during World War II and later, the Vietnam War.
At the end of the episode, Jo is joined by Stephanie Schriock, the president of Emily’s List, to discuss why representation matters now more than ever.
Main Sources
- Jeannette Rankin: A Political Woman. By: James J. Lopach, and Jean A. Luckowski.
- Jeannette Rankin, America’s First Congresswoman, by Peter Aronson
- When Jeannette Said “No”: Montana women’s response to World War I - by Mary Murphy for Montana: The Magazine of Western History
- Suffragists Oral History Project: Jeanette Rankin: Activist for World Peace, Women’s Rights, and Democratic Government - Interviews Conducted by Malca Chall and Hannah Josephson
- Various articles found in the the digital archives of the House of Representatives and the Library of Congress Blog
- Articles from the NY Times in 1916, and United Press and the Suffragist in 1917
- From NPR, The First Woman In Congress: A Crusader For Peace by Whitney Blair Wyckoff and The Lone War Dissenter on All Things Considered from Dec of 2001
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
It was a cold, windy November seven in Montana, a
local woman rode fourteen miles on horseback to cast her
ballot in the nineteen sixteen election. She was eight months pregnant.
She'd later write in a letter that she'd gladly do
it all over again just to be able to vote
for Jeanette Rankin. This woman's vote would be one of
(00:31):
the seventy six thousands that sent Jeanette Rankin too Congress
the following year, one of the votes that made Rankin
the very first woman elected as a United States congressperson.
A wire report from Rankin swearing in could barely contain
the emotion of the day. Men and women in the
galleries pounded hands together and yelled themselves. Horse members did
(00:52):
the same on both sides of the chamber when Miss
Jeanette Rankin, the lady from Montana, entered the hall. Rankin's
had this about the event. I will be the first
woman in Congress, but I will not be the last.
(01:18):
From I Heart Radio and Tribeca Studios, this is fierce.
I can't tie. Yes. Women workers do for their problems.
A podcast about the incredible women who never made it
in your history books and the modern women carrying on
their legacies today. Here's to the ladies, the fair and
the week. I can't file women workers don't mind routine,
(01:41):
repetitive work, and will you make a copy of this? Naturally?
Each week we're bringing you the story of a groundbreaking
woman from the past who made huge contributions to the present,
but whose name still is on the tips of our
tongues for whatever reason, maybe it's because men wrote most
of history. This week Jeanette Rankin. She arrived in the
(02:03):
House of Representatives before women across the country even had
full voting rights. And at the end of this episode,
I'll be speaking to Stephanie Shriach, president of Emily's List,
a group that's recruited and trained thousands of women to
run for office in the United States. Born to a
(02:27):
wealthy family in the pioneering life in Big Sky Country
out of Montana, Jeanette Rankin was a firebrand, an activist,
and a solver of problems from the very start. One
day she happened upon an injured horse on her family's
Missoula ranch. She stitched him up right there with a
threatening needle. She'd regularly fight with. Her father insists that
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their ranch hands deserved a higher wage. Her younger brother, Wellington,
would later observe she was a rebel more or less always.
She was going to be out there fighting, except how
to fight. When she graduated from the University of Montana
with a degree in biology in nineteen o two, most
(03:08):
girls her age were already married, they were already starting families,
but Jeanette was restless. She had tremendous energy, but nowhere
to put it. She wrote in her journal, Go Go Go.
Jeanette's family was incredibly well off. Her father was a
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wealthy rancher and real estate prospector. The rankings were doing
so well they built the first home in Missoula, Montana,
with indoor plumbing and central heat. That meant that Jeanette
had options about how she wanted to live her life.
She had the financial support of her family behind her,
so nineteen Jenette decided to go to New York City.
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It was there that she first experienced slums, poverty, saw
the poor, struggling immigrants living in ungodly conditions. She began
attending look meetings, schooled herself in labor laws. It was
then that she decided on a career as a social worker,
with her family supporting her financially, she enrolled in the
New York School of Philanthropy near Grammercy Park. This was
(04:13):
her awakening. She realized that armed with a career, a
woman could have freedom. Better still, she could see a
life that might please her. And while Jeanette lived in
a prim women's hotel on the Upper East Side, her
days and nights were spent in Greenwich Village with her
new friends, especially a couple Catherine Anthony and Elizabeth Irwin.
(04:35):
They took her to Heterodoxy, a luncheon club for unorthodox woman.
There she met novelists and painters, birth control activists, and
education reformers. Suddenly she wasn't alone. She was amongst other
ambitious women who also wanted to change the world, and
just having that camaraderie encouraged her to think outside the
box of what she was expected to be. Jeanette would
(04:57):
remain close with many of these women for the rest
of her life. The problem was that Janette hated doing
actual social work they spent minding children and changing diapers
was just another version of the life she'd been trying
to avoid. So she moved up the road to Seattle,
where she found a role for herself in the suffrage movement,
(05:18):
fighting for women to gain the right to vote. Ticketing
resulted in police action, and even as President Wilson was
considering the women's appeal, District of Columbia police rolled out
from their station house to take tickets into custody. The
battle for women's suffrage at the time was being fought
on soapboxes and street corners, and Jeanette became the movement's
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top street fighter. Her fellow fighters in the movement remember
her as relentless, tireless Ms frankin his work day and night,
heart and soul. Her tact her general's feminine persuasion, and
her ever ready logic has made many conferts. They center
all over the country, Washington, California, Ohio, New York. The
(05:59):
first time she spent in the floor of the Montana
Legislature on behalf of Suffragism, they gave her a standing ovation.
She told lawmakers, it's beautiful and right that a woman
should nurse her six children through typhoid fever. But it's
also beautiful and right that she should vote for sanitary
measures to prevent that typhoid from spreading. That's an actress
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reading Janette's words. The quotes in this episode were found
in a biography of Rankin written by Peter Aaronson. Rankin
traveled from town to town, once, delivering twenty five speeches
in twenty five subsequent days, sometimes even delivering those speeches
to children. Ask your father's why they won't let your
mother's vote. Here's how one colleague described it. When Miss
(06:44):
Rankin came forward to speak, the air became electrical, young, attractive, energetic,
and glowing with friendliness and racing. Jeanette Rankin commanded attention
as soon as she spoke. She did, She really did.
By the next national election in nineteen sixteen, Jeanette Rankin's
name would be on the ballot to be a United
(07:05):
States Congress person. The primal motive for my seeking a
seat in the National Congress is to further the suffrage
work and to aid in every possible way the movement
for nationwide suffrage, which will not cease until it is won.
Jeanette Rankin announced her candidacy on July eighth, nineteen sixteen.
Her platform included an eight hour work day for women
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and something previously unheard of, child wafferre laws, laws that
would protect the life and health of children. There are
hundreds of men in Congress to care for the nation's
tariffs and foreign policy and irrigation projects, but there isn't
a single woman in Congress to look after the nation's
greatest asset, it's children. The campaign was more grassroots than
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Bernie Sanders. Jeanette placed what she called a capable efficient
woman in every precinct of the state. It was her
version of Tammany Hall. In fact, that's what her machine
was based on, except Jeanette had a waymore area to cover.
Montana is the fourth largest state of the Union. That's
nearly seven thousand Manhattans or three New York states. To
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keep the machine going and ignite all of her capable
efficient women rank and traveled by horseback train and as
much as she could, her favorite way, driving herself alone
in her ford. The nine sixteen election in Montana was unusual.
It was an at large election with no districts. Everyone
got to choose two candidates. That meant the top two
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vote getters would go to Congress. Jeanette was so savvy
because she knew she'd go to Washington if she came
in second. She was able to tell Montana's that she
wasn't there to steal the vote of a man. She
told them to go ahead and vote for the man
that they wanted to vote for. They could give their
second vote to her. On election night, the newspapers took
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their time verifying the outcome. They weren't exactly pleased with
what they'd eventually have to report. At thirty six year
years old, Jeanette Rankin came in second with more than
seventy six thousand votes, six thousand more than the third
place finisher. It was clear Jeanette Rankin was going to Congress.
(09:19):
I'm not nervous about going to Congress. Social work gave
me insight into the needs of babies, children and young adults,
and it is for them that I shall work. Time
for a quick break, we'll be right back. Following that
(09:47):
historic win, on April second, nineteen seventeen, Jeanette Rankin led
a twenty five car motor cadi of suffragists up to
the capital for her swearing in. When she walked through
the doors, the entire House of representatives, all of them
then rose to give her a standing ovation. Newspapers, of course,
diligently covered the election of the first woman to Congress.
(10:08):
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette described her as a gray
eye slander girl with the enthusiasm of a zealot, the
simplicity of a child, and the energy and fire of
a racehorse. The New York Times felt it was important
to tell a story. She danced as well, and makes
her own hats and sows, and has won genuine fame
among her friends with a wonderful lemon meringue pie that
(10:28):
she makes when she hasn't enough other things to do
to keep her busy. Another newspaper referred to her as
the Maid of Missoula. She was just such a curiosity.
She was on the cover of many newspapers around the US.
That's filmmaker Kimberly Read. Read is a documentarian and fellow
Montanon who immersed herself in nearly a year of Jeanette
(10:48):
rank and research. She got married proposals by the droves
through the mail because she was so famous, and it's
really hard to imagine how much ground she was breaking.
Everything was new territory, including what Rankin would wear on
the floor. That day, they had a resolution on the
(11:10):
floor of the U S House saying that men couldn't
wear their hats. First of all, it was very common
for women to wear hats and felt a little bit
naked if you weren't wearing a fancy hat. At the
end of the day, she didn't really want that special permission.
She didn't want to be treated differently, But that meant
she had to get rid of this kind of crutch,
this safety security blanket. And I have no doubt that
(11:34):
she was challenged on a personal level by these even
silly things right by, like taking your hat off. It's
still just immensely brave for her to do what she
was doing, to be the very first and she was
representing half of the US population, more than half of
the people who are in the United States. She had
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an enormous weight on her shoulders. Jeanette Rankin entered Congress
and a tumultuous time. On April second, nine, seventeen, President
Woodrow Wilson called an emergency meeting of Congress to discuss
entering World War One. Inside the White House, President Woodrow
Wilson compared with advisers and signed the proclamation of war
(12:18):
against Drew. It was Jeanette Rankin's very first day in
the capital. Wilson asked Congress to pass the vote swiftly.
The world, he said, must be made safe for democracy.
For Jeanette, her first vote, the first vote by any
woman in Congress, would be on the war in Europe. Now,
Jeanette was an avowed pacifist. She believed wars were based
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on greed and the desire for countries to make money
by selling weapons. Her brother, Wellington begged her not to
vote against the war. He told her to make a
man's vote to save her career. The suffragist didn't want
her to vote against the war either. Carrie Chapman Cat,
the president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, told
her that women's suffrage would never pass if Jeanette voted
(13:02):
against the war. She said, no one would ever trust
a woman in Congress ever again. But Jeanette really believed
that women could and should bring a different way of
thinking the government, and that meant rethinking war as a
way of settling disputes. She conflated her feminism, even though
she didn't call it that at the time, with her pacifism.
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She felt like it was her duty to represent all
of the other women and children that didn't have any representation.
All these mothers and wives who were losing their husbands
and sons in these ridiculous wars. The House role was
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finally called at three am on the morning of April six.
Joe Cannon, the former speaker, told Rankin to vote her conscience, saying,
you represent the womanhood of the countree. But she was
already going to do just that. She rose and spoke,
I want to stand by my country, but I cannot
(14:09):
vote for war. Forty nine men opposed the war that day,
but it was Rankin who was castigated for it. The
Daily Missoulan headline read, ms. Rankin sobbed, I cannot vote
for war. Now. There's absolutely no evidence she cried on
the floor of Congress that day. In fact, the future
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mayor of New York, Fiarella la Guardia, couldn't see if
she'd been crying quote because of the tears in his
own eyes. Meanwhile, Suffrages maudwood Park had been in the
gallery reported that the House Majority leader, Claude Kitchen, wept
openly as he gave his own no vote. That didn't
(14:58):
stop the papers from painting her as a his aercle woman.
The New York Times said her appearance was that of
a woman on the verge of her nervous breakdown. The
Helena Independent made her not just weak but treasonous, calling
her a dagger in the hands of German propagandists and
a crying school girl. The Bozeman Chronicle just said it.
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They claimed she had voted in a fit of female hysteria.
Jeanette later explained herself to the women of the United
States of America, never for one second could I face
the idea that I would send your men to be
killed for no other reason than to save my seat
in Congress. Jeanette would suffer for that vote, but not
(15:40):
before attempting another coup in Congress. In the summer of
nineteen seventeen, Jeanette Rankin took up the mantle of gaining
women the right to vote on the national level. She
took up the lead on the issue in the House.
Both the House and Senate needed to pass a resolution
for there to be a constitutional amendment, and an address
to Congress in January of nine eighteen, Jeanette said, we
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as a nation were born in a land of unparalleled resources,
but something is still lacking. Babies are dying from cold
and hunger, and soldiers have died for lack of a
woolen shirt. Might it not be that men who have
spent their lives thinking in terms of commercial profit find
it hard to adjust themselves to thinking in terms of
(16:21):
human needs. Is it not possible that the women of
the country have something of value to give the nation
at this time? How shall we explain the meaning of
democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to
make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this
small measure of democracy to the women of our country.
(16:43):
The resolution passed the House by two seventy four to
a d thirty six. It failed in the Senate, but
Janette would never recover from her vote against World War One.
While our male colleagues, like the weeping Claude Kitchen, got
sent right back to Congress. Jeanette wasn't really elected. When
she left office at the age of thirty eight, the
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Helena Independent wrote, she has a brilliant future behind her.
Jeanette Rankin came from wealth, but she never liked it
or coveted it. She had that American puritanical streak, the
kind that worries a hot shower might make them soft.
When she left office, she needed to get out from
under the long shadow of her life in Montana, Jeanette
(17:27):
bought a ramshackle farm in rural Georgia, not far from
the state University in Athens. It had no indoor plumbing,
no electricity. In the summer, she returned to her family
ranch in the Big Belt Mountains in Montana. She'd write
about how important these rural places where to her. It
is quite necessary for me to be at home, to
relax and secure courage to go out and face the cold,
(17:50):
stupid world again. Janette never had much of a personal life.
She had many close friendships, but work always came before
any kind of romantic engagements, and Jeanette certainly hadn't retired,
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and the sixty nine year drive by women for the
right to vote is plim acted by this. The first
part of her life's work was completed in nineteen twenty
with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which finally granted
women all over the nation the right to vote. This
was due in large part to her work, but Jeanette's
future the next fifty plus years would be dedicated to peace.
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The work of educating the world for peace is a
woman's job because men are afraid of being classed as
cowards if they oppose war. There's just one problem. Jeanette
wasn't particularly good at making peace with having a boss.
She left more than one piece group in the twenties
and thirties because they muzzled her into being a lobbyist.
And by ninety nine, twenty years after leaving Congress, Jeanette
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Rankin had just about run out of peace organizations to
work for. But she wasn't done. She just had to
do it differently. Her responsibility lies on the shoulders of
one man. By his latest active naked aggression, Hidla has
committed a crime not only against Poland, but against the
whole human rights. With World War two looming, Jeanette fired
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up her old Ford. She began the long drive back
to Montana. She was going to run for Congress again,
but first she had to remind Montana who she was.
If she could pull it off, she really believed she
could keep FDR from declaring a war. She wrote to
a friend in New York, I still feel sure that
he can be bluffed out of going to war if
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the women will do their part. Soon as she arrived
back on Montana, Jeaness started doing her part. Her home
state needed reminding of their old friend in Congress. She'd
chew up unannounced at schools to speak. After all, what
school would deny the children the opportunity to see the
first woman in Congress. Anyway, she remembered that when she
was a kid politician, she used to talk only to
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the boys. They'd say, the boys could be president. Then
they look at the girls and say, maybe someday you'll
be a president's wife. As she put it, I'd say,
now we know the girls can do many things, and
someday we will have a woman president, and they roared
with laughter. Then she said, there aren't jobs just for women.
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Someday one of these young men may be the husband
of a president. As she worked the school circuit, Janette
Rankin also worked her way back into the hearts of
fellow Montana's. She announced her candidacy unless at her old
pre Sainct Captain's and set about winning a second trip
to Congress. And though she was sixty, she marched the
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campaign trail with the energy of a much younger woman.
One observer noted, if she heard of a vote, she
would go up and see them, drive up there, and
it didn't make any difference. About the roads. Jeanette one,
she won't beg She captured a resounding in the general
elect but that wasn't the news it was in nineteen sixteen.
(21:03):
No one will pay any attention to me this time.
There is nothing unusual about a woman being elected this time.
When she reached d C to be sworn in, she
joined seven other women there now. When Jeanette first ran
for Congress in nineteen sixteen, war wasn't our main issue.
It showed up by surprise on her first day of work.
But when she ran in nineteen forty, she ran as
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an anti war candidate. When Montanan Center to Washington in
November of that year, no one doubted her stance. I
am still trying to keep our men from being sacrificed
in the slaughterhouse across the ocean. But then came that
day that would live in for me. Sunday, December seven, Japan,
like its infamous access partners, scout first and declared war afterwards.
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The country's feelings about war shifted swiftly once it was
under attack. Reports to the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor
came in the afternoon. Jeanette was in Detroit when she
heard about the attack on Harbor, but when her sleeper
train reached Pittsburgh around midnight, she jumped off FDR was
going to speak in front of Congress at noon the
next day. If she had any chance of slowing the
war drum, she was going to have to get back
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to d C stat. Jeanette caught the next train at
noon on December eighth, Jeanette was in our seat to
hear the President addressed the Joint Session. The United States
of America was suddenly and deliberately attack. The President's speech
lasted only eight minutes of the Empire of Japan. Jeanette
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knew that meant fifty two minutes of airtime up for grabs,
but none of our colleagues would yield the floor. Jeanette
wasn't the only isolationist, but when it came time to vote,
all the others who had once shared her views recanted.
One said, and I hope there won't be one dissenting vote.
The Senate had voted unanimously for the war, and Republican
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leadership made it clear they wanted the same vote in
the House. They even tried to change the rules to
skipper and roll call. The Jett Rankin wouldn't have it.
At the time, discussion on the floor of Congress was
not supposed to be carried live, but no one had
turned off the feed after the president's address. A network
announcer later provided commentary to guide listeners as Jeanette attempted
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to be recognized, Miss Jet Rankin, trying to get recognized
here she stood in the aisle and raised her hand.
The speaker angrily brought down into the gavel and said,
let there be no objection to the unanimous paste. Then
in the end her vote was simply no. As a woman,
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I cannot go to war, and I refused to send
anyone else. The final vote to one. Yeah. There was
this throng of reporters that cornered her and chased around
the halls of Congress to the point where she had
(24:08):
to take refuge in a telephone booth, and j had
to hang out there until the Capitol police came and
rescued her and escorted her back to her office. A
photo of her trapped in the phone booth appeared in
all the newspapers. The next day. Janet released her statement
to the press. When I cast my only vote against
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the war, I was thinking of the pledges I had
made to the mothers and fathers of Montana that I
would do all in my power to prevent their sons
being slaughtered on foreign battlefields. Her brother Wellington didn't mince
his words. Montana is against you. She knew Wellington disagreed
with her, but it hurt to know that all of Montana,
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all of her country, saw her as an enemy. She
was bombarded with insults. You made an ass out of
yourself trying to be like a man. I hope, but
jack bomb drops on you or head awhole. You dismissed
the bombing as lightly as you would a run in
your stocking. Jeanette was a realistic idealist. She knew there
was no chancefer in public life, not for a long
(25:10):
long time after that, but she had no regrets. Still
a few people recognized that her vote wasn't unpatriotic. Even
if they disagreed with it, which they did, they could
still see it as an act of moral courage. The
Emporia Gazette in Kansas wrote, well, look at Jeannette Rankin.
Probably a hundred men in Congress would like to do
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what she did. Not one of them had the courage
to do it. Another Montanan wrote, in all of history,
no man has done so brave, so commendable a thing. Today,
I feel that you've vindicated womanhood. After leaving Congress a
second time, Jeannette returned to her modest life. She went
back to Georgia, built a new, equally humble farm. She
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traveled the world studying various models of peaceful resistance. When
the Vietnam War broke out began sending thousands of American
boys home and body bags, Janette couldn't stay quiet any longer.
It is unconscionable that ten thousand boys died in Vietnam
this year, and I predict that if ten thous women
had mind enough, they could end the war, if they
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were committed to the task, even if it meant going
to jail. People in American life usually don't get a
second act. She not only got a second act, she
basically had a third act because in the late sixties
and early seventies, many of the women who were involved
in that anti war movement studied Janette rank And in
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all of her pacifist efforts and essentially recruited her to
come out of retirement so that she could lead their movement.
Protesting the war in Vietnam. Rankin was now in her
late eighties, but she wasn't deterred by her age. She
led a march of five thousand women on Washington. They
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called themselves the Janette Rankin Brigade. It was bitter, coal old.
There was a couple inches of snow. They marched from
Union Station to Capitol Hill and they presented a plaque
to the Speaker of the House that was calling for
this pacifist response to Vietnam War. There or five thousand women,
and everybody wore gogga boots, and they're all in the snow,
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and they're all kind of marching and stomping. In two
at the age of the National Organization for Women made
rank In its first inductee into the Susan B. Anthony
Hall of Fame. Rankin was honored with the title of
the World's Outstanding Living Feminist. She left the crowd with this,
women must devote all their energies today in gaining enough
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political offices to influence the direction of government away from
the military industrial complex and toward solving the major social
disgraces that exist in our country. Time for a break.
When we come back, we'll be speaking to Stephanie Shriach.
She's the president of Emily's List and Men who is
(28:00):
very much carrying on Jeanette's legacy today. Since its founding,
Emily's List has helped elect a hundred pro choice Democratic
women to the House, twenty six to the Senate, sixteen
to governors seats, and hundreds more to stay in local
offices around the country. Jeanette Rankin fought long and hard
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for women to get the right to vote, and this
year marks the hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the
nineteenth Amendment. But there's still a long way to go
to see women represented an equal numbers and elected office.
We saw six women run for Democratic nomination, more than
any other time in US history, but by March nineteenth
of this year, none of them remained in the race.
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Yet I'm optimistic there's an army of women out there
working to ensure more women are voted into office. Emily's
List and their president, Stephanie Shriach, are on the front
lines of that army. Emily's List is a nearly thirty
five year old organizations solely committed to electing pro choice
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Democratic women all across the country, up and down the ballot.
So tell me about the first time that you heard
Jeanette Rankins story. I grew up in Montana. I grew
up in Butte, which is the good labor union copper
mining town. And you just didn't grow up in places
like Montana without hearing about the pride of Montana being
(29:26):
the first state in the Union to elect a woman
to the United States Congress. Even though you know, we
learned about her, what we actually knew about her was
so minimal. What she did for the women's suffrage movement,
how engaged she was, what she did in Montana, what
she did for the anti war movement, what she did
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for women all through those years. Like that was not
taught to us as kids in beauty. We just really
learned the top lines. When I think about Jeanette's story,
what I think about the most, what gives me chills
is thinking how brave it was to be a woman
doing what she did in the time that she was doing. Absolutely,
because I do have that feeling deep in my belly
when I think about her. Because you got to try
(30:10):
to put yourself back in what I would call the
wild West of Montana in nineteen sixteen, literally the wild West.
I mean truly the wild West. You know, Montana had
just become a state in eighteen eighty nine, and here's
this fierce woman who found her voice along the way,
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traveling around the United States, coming back home to Montana,
fighting so hard for Montana to give women the right
to vote, but then to think I should run for
office when this had never happened in the entire country.
The women across the country still didn't have the right
to vote. So what that must have been, like, how
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scary that must have been for her, And yet jumping
in and taking that responsibility from the beginning so so seriously,
it really is so moving and still today I just
like to think I get to be part of that,
a little piece of that legacy and that bravery. Is
(31:14):
it easier now, absolutely, is it easier over the last
three decades, completely, But there's still a mindset of what
a leader in this country looks like. You know, what
is that person supposed to be? And of course, particularly
on the executive side, when you're looking at governors and presidents,
(31:35):
you think of an executive leader as a male, and
quite frankly, you think it as a white male. And
having to change that mindset of what a feminine leadership
looks like and that it's powerful and strong is something
that we are always working on here at Emily's List.
And how do you guys do that? What I've said
to so many candidates over the years here is that
(31:59):
you've got to do it your own way. You've got
to figure out who you are, what's your story, how
does your story connect with the voters? And then you
gotta you gotta just be yourself. It doesn't mean you
don't run smart strategic campaigns and you do all the
things you need to do on a campaign setting, but
you just have to fight through it. And yes, you're
(32:20):
going to run into sexism. I'm sorry, it's not going away.
You know, people are gonna ask you, do you have children,
why don't you have children? What are you gonna do
with your children? You you win or lose either direction,
but you just answer the questions. You keep going because
what works at the end of the day is that
after she wins, then the voters in the constituents see
(32:43):
what great leaders these women make. And that's how we
do this, That's how we change minds. We keep winning.
And Janette Rankin for the Congress was the first win,
and we have just every election cycle since added a
few more here and there, and thankfully we all got
to just watch in a historic number of women walk
(33:04):
onto the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
And what that has meant not just to the focus
of what's going on, but the culture of the place.
And that's what we have to change, the culture of
the place. It's still hard. Do women still face a
lot of the challenges that Jeanette faced back then, more
than a hundred years ago. They do face some I
(33:27):
think there's still a question about electability. We've been paying
attention to what's been going on in this presidential election.
Women still have to prove that they're accomplished enough and
can do the job, whereas men tend and I am
stereotyping here, so I always want to be a little careful,
but men tend to just sort of like, of course,
(33:49):
you know how to balance a budget, and you're gonna
be tough on crime. But at the end of the day,
the voters and the American people, they're looking for leaders
who are going to take care of their families, that
are going to focus on making their lives better. As constituents,
so they don't care. Where are we now in terms
(34:10):
of women elected office? So, you know, the United States Congress,
you know, women still only represent you know, just shy
of which is not great. And that puts the United States.
Last time I looked, we were beyond a hundred in
the world, and the percentage of women in our federal
office terrible place to be having women. They're having an
(34:32):
equal number of women there. How does that change culture
in Congress? It starts with changing the debates around policies
that affect the country. And that is on all fronts.
You know, I think so often folks think, oh, women
are gonna come in and they're gonna talk about women's issues.
And I can't tell you how many times Kamala Harris
(34:54):
has a great line. She gets asked all the time,
you know, are you gonna just talk about women's issues,
and she's like, yes, I'm going to talk about the economy,
like exactly, it matters to have those voices represented. And also,
one woman can't carry everybody, So we need women of
diverse backgrounds, races, education, geography to have a truly representative democracy.
(35:16):
And how much did these stories matter? And repeating stories
like Janet Rankins, knowing stories like Janette Rankins, and just
not letting these names be lost to history. Gosh, I
think it's everything. I think it's everything in every culture.
I mean, the importance of storytelling for me and frankly
for Emily's list is how you connect with each other.
(35:40):
And our young women and young men need to know
the the stories of the women who came before us,
who broke down barriers, crashed through ceilings. We've got to
tell these stories. Um, the bravery of Jeanette Rankin and
(36:02):
so so so many others who took huge risks at
potentially great loss for themselves but did it and then
stood up for what they believe. Those those stories are
as powerful today as they were then. And as I
think about, you know, women like Charise David's who ran
(36:24):
in a member of the ho Chunk nation in this
country from Kansas, uh stepping up saying I'm going to
run for Congress, even though no Native American woman had
ever been elected to Congress before in this country until
but I'm going to do it, and I'm gonna tell
(36:45):
my story and our story, and she did. That's what
we've got to keep doing. We're very grateful to our guests,
filmmaker Kimberly Reid and Stephanie Shriach, President of Emily's List.
(37:09):
Fierce is hosted and written by Joe Piazza, produced and
directed by me Anna Stump. Our executive producers are Joe Piazza,
Nikki Etre, Anna Stump, and from Tribeca Studios Le s
r B. Jeanette Rankin is voiced by Emily Stein. Additional
voices provided by Sam Stump, Jane Stump, and Katie Stump.
This episode was edited and soundscaped by Anna Stump, with
(37:29):
additional support from Jacopo Penzo, Mary Do and Josh Fisher.
Our associate producer is Emily Maronoff. Fact checking by Austin Thompson,
researched by Lizzie Jacobs. The Fierce theme song was written
by Hamilton Lighthouser and Anna Stump. Are very sincere thanks
to Mangesh had ticket Or for making this series possible,
Anton Nikki Etre, who just did so much for this
series there's no way to even name it. All sources
(37:51):
for this episode Jeannette Rankin a political woman by James J.
Lopak and Jean A. Lukowski Jeannette Rankin, America's First Congresswoman
by Peter Aaron's and When Jeanette Said No. Montana Women's
Response to World War One by Mary Murphy for Montana,
the Magazine of Western History. Suffragists Oral History Project, Jeannette Rankin,
activist for World Peace, women's rights, and democratic government. Interviews
(38:14):
conducted by Malca Chew and Hannah Josephson. Various articles found
in the digital archives of the House of Representatives and
the Library of Congress. Blog articles from The New York
Times in nineteen sixteen and The United Press and The
Suffragist in seventeen from NPR. The First Woman in Congress,
A Crusader for Peace by Whitney Blair Wycoff, and the
Lone War Dissenter on All Things Considered from December of
(38:35):
two one. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. The BA
It was a cold, windy November seven in Montana, a
local woman rode fourteen miles on horseback to cast her
ballot in the nineteen sixteen election. She was eight months pregnant.
She'd later write in a letter that she'd gladly do
it all over again just to be able to vote
for Jeanette Rankin. This woman's vote would be one of
(00:31):
the seventy six thousands that sent Jeanette Rankin too Congress
the following year, one of the votes that made Rankin
the very first woman elected as a United States congressperson.
A wire report from Rankin swearing in could barely contain
the emotion of the day. Men and women in the
galleries pounded hands together and yelled themselves. Horse members did
(00:52):
the same on both sides of the chamber when Miss
Jeanette Rankin, the lady from Montana, entered the hall. Rankin's
had this about the event. I will be the first
woman in Congress, but I will not be the last.
(01:18):
From I Heart Radio and Tribeca Studios, this is fierce.
I can't tie. Yes. Women workers do for their problems.
A podcast about the incredible women who never made it
in your history books and the modern women carrying on
their legacies today. Here's to the ladies, the fair and
the week. I can't file women workers don't mind routine,
(01:41):
repetitive work, and will you make a copy of this? Naturally?
Each week we're bringing you the story of a groundbreaking
woman from the past who made huge contributions to the present,
but whose name still is on the tips of our
tongues for whatever reason, maybe it's because men wrote most
of history. This week Jeanette Rankin. She arrived in the
(02:03):
House of Representatives before women across the country even had
full voting rights. And at the end of this episode,
I'll be speaking to Stephanie Shriach, president of Emily's List,
a group that's recruited and trained thousands of women to
run for office in the United States. Born to a
(02:27):
wealthy family in the pioneering life in Big Sky Country
out of Montana, Jeanette Rankin was a firebrand, an activist,
and a solver of problems from the very start. One
day she happened upon an injured horse on her family's
Missoula ranch. She stitched him up right there with a
threatening needle. She'd regularly fight with. Her father insists that
(02:47):
their ranch hands deserved a higher wage. Her younger brother, Wellington,
would later observe she was a rebel more or less always.
She was going to be out there fighting, except how
to fight. When she graduated from the University of Montana
with a degree in biology in nineteen o two, most
(03:08):
girls her age were already married, they were already starting families,
but Jeanette was restless. She had tremendous energy, but nowhere
to put it. She wrote in her journal, Go Go Go.
Jeanette's family was incredibly well off. Her father was a
(03:31):
wealthy rancher and real estate prospector. The rankings were doing
so well they built the first home in Missoula, Montana,
with indoor plumbing and central heat. That meant that Jeanette
had options about how she wanted to live her life.
She had the financial support of her family behind her,
so nineteen Jenette decided to go to New York City.
(03:51):
It was there that she first experienced slums, poverty, saw
the poor, struggling immigrants living in ungodly conditions. She began
attending look meetings, schooled herself in labor laws. It was
then that she decided on a career as a social worker,
with her family supporting her financially, she enrolled in the
New York School of Philanthropy near Grammercy Park. This was
(04:13):
her awakening. She realized that armed with a career, a
woman could have freedom. Better still, she could see a
life that might please her. And while Jeanette lived in
a prim women's hotel on the Upper East Side, her
days and nights were spent in Greenwich Village with her
new friends, especially a couple Catherine Anthony and Elizabeth Irwin.
(04:35):
They took her to Heterodoxy, a luncheon club for unorthodox woman.
There she met novelists and painters, birth control activists, and
education reformers. Suddenly she wasn't alone. She was amongst other
ambitious women who also wanted to change the world, and
just having that camaraderie encouraged her to think outside the
box of what she was expected to be. Jeanette would
(04:57):
remain close with many of these women for the rest
of her life. The problem was that Janette hated doing
actual social work they spent minding children and changing diapers
was just another version of the life she'd been trying
to avoid. So she moved up the road to Seattle,
where she found a role for herself in the suffrage movement,
(05:18):
fighting for women to gain the right to vote. Ticketing
resulted in police action, and even as President Wilson was
considering the women's appeal, District of Columbia police rolled out
from their station house to take tickets into custody. The
battle for women's suffrage at the time was being fought
on soapboxes and street corners, and Jeanette became the movement's
(05:38):
top street fighter. Her fellow fighters in the movement remember
her as relentless, tireless Ms frankin his work day and night,
heart and soul. Her tact her general's feminine persuasion, and
her ever ready logic has made many conferts. They center
all over the country, Washington, California, Ohio, New York. The
(05:59):
first time she spent in the floor of the Montana
Legislature on behalf of Suffragism, they gave her a standing ovation.
She told lawmakers, it's beautiful and right that a woman
should nurse her six children through typhoid fever. But it's
also beautiful and right that she should vote for sanitary
measures to prevent that typhoid from spreading. That's an actress
(06:19):
reading Janette's words. The quotes in this episode were found
in a biography of Rankin written by Peter Aaronson. Rankin
traveled from town to town, once, delivering twenty five speeches
in twenty five subsequent days, sometimes even delivering those speeches
to children. Ask your father's why they won't let your
mother's vote. Here's how one colleague described it. When Miss
(06:44):
Rankin came forward to speak, the air became electrical, young, attractive, energetic,
and glowing with friendliness and racing. Jeanette Rankin commanded attention
as soon as she spoke. She did, She really did.
By the next national election in nineteen sixteen, Jeanette Rankin's
name would be on the ballot to be a United
(07:05):
States Congress person. The primal motive for my seeking a
seat in the National Congress is to further the suffrage
work and to aid in every possible way the movement
for nationwide suffrage, which will not cease until it is won.
Jeanette Rankin announced her candidacy on July eighth, nineteen sixteen.
Her platform included an eight hour work day for women
(07:26):
and something previously unheard of, child wafferre laws, laws that
would protect the life and health of children. There are
hundreds of men in Congress to care for the nation's
tariffs and foreign policy and irrigation projects, but there isn't
a single woman in Congress to look after the nation's
greatest asset, it's children. The campaign was more grassroots than
(07:49):
Bernie Sanders. Jeanette placed what she called a capable efficient
woman in every precinct of the state. It was her
version of Tammany Hall. In fact, that's what her machine
was based on, except Jeanette had a waymore area to cover.
Montana is the fourth largest state of the Union. That's
nearly seven thousand Manhattans or three New York states. To
(08:10):
keep the machine going and ignite all of her capable
efficient women rank and traveled by horseback train and as
much as she could, her favorite way, driving herself alone
in her ford. The nine sixteen election in Montana was unusual.
It was an at large election with no districts. Everyone
got to choose two candidates. That meant the top two
(08:30):
vote getters would go to Congress. Jeanette was so savvy
because she knew she'd go to Washington if she came
in second. She was able to tell Montana's that she
wasn't there to steal the vote of a man. She
told them to go ahead and vote for the man
that they wanted to vote for. They could give their
second vote to her. On election night, the newspapers took
(08:52):
their time verifying the outcome. They weren't exactly pleased with
what they'd eventually have to report. At thirty six year
years old, Jeanette Rankin came in second with more than
seventy six thousand votes, six thousand more than the third
place finisher. It was clear Jeanette Rankin was going to Congress.
(09:19):
I'm not nervous about going to Congress. Social work gave
me insight into the needs of babies, children and young adults,
and it is for them that I shall work. Time
for a quick break, we'll be right back. Following that
(09:47):
historic win, on April second, nineteen seventeen, Jeanette Rankin led
a twenty five car motor cadi of suffragists up to
the capital for her swearing in. When she walked through
the doors, the entire House of representatives, all of them
then rose to give her a standing ovation. Newspapers, of course,
diligently covered the election of the first woman to Congress.
(10:08):
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette described her as a gray
eye slander girl with the enthusiasm of a zealot, the
simplicity of a child, and the energy and fire of
a racehorse. The New York Times felt it was important
to tell a story. She danced as well, and makes
her own hats and sows, and has won genuine fame
among her friends with a wonderful lemon meringue pie that
(10:28):
she makes when she hasn't enough other things to do
to keep her busy. Another newspaper referred to her as
the Maid of Missoula. She was just such a curiosity.
She was on the cover of many newspapers around the US.
That's filmmaker Kimberly Read. Read is a documentarian and fellow
Montanon who immersed herself in nearly a year of Jeanette
(10:48):
rank and research. She got married proposals by the droves
through the mail because she was so famous, and it's
really hard to imagine how much ground she was breaking.
Everything was new territory, including what Rankin would wear on
the floor. That day, they had a resolution on the
(11:10):
floor of the U S House saying that men couldn't
wear their hats. First of all, it was very common
for women to wear hats and felt a little bit
naked if you weren't wearing a fancy hat. At the
end of the day, she didn't really want that special permission.
She didn't want to be treated differently, But that meant
she had to get rid of this kind of crutch,
this safety security blanket. And I have no doubt that
(11:34):
she was challenged on a personal level by these even
silly things right by, like taking your hat off. It's
still just immensely brave for her to do what she
was doing, to be the very first and she was
representing half of the US population, more than half of
the people who are in the United States. She had
(11:55):
an enormous weight on her shoulders. Jeanette Rankin entered Congress
and a tumultuous time. On April second, nine, seventeen, President
Woodrow Wilson called an emergency meeting of Congress to discuss
entering World War One. Inside the White House, President Woodrow
Wilson compared with advisers and signed the proclamation of war
(12:18):
against Drew. It was Jeanette Rankin's very first day in
the capital. Wilson asked Congress to pass the vote swiftly.
The world, he said, must be made safe for democracy.
For Jeanette, her first vote, the first vote by any
woman in Congress, would be on the war in Europe. Now,
Jeanette was an avowed pacifist. She believed wars were based
(12:39):
on greed and the desire for countries to make money
by selling weapons. Her brother, Wellington begged her not to
vote against the war. He told her to make a
man's vote to save her career. The suffragist didn't want
her to vote against the war either. Carrie Chapman Cat,
the president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, told
her that women's suffrage would never pass if Jeanette voted
(13:02):
against the war. She said, no one would ever trust
a woman in Congress ever again. But Jeanette really believed
that women could and should bring a different way of
thinking the government, and that meant rethinking war as a
way of settling disputes. She conflated her feminism, even though
she didn't call it that at the time, with her pacifism.
(13:24):
She felt like it was her duty to represent all
of the other women and children that didn't have any representation.
All these mothers and wives who were losing their husbands
and sons in these ridiculous wars. The House role was
(13:49):
finally called at three am on the morning of April six.
Joe Cannon, the former speaker, told Rankin to vote her conscience, saying,
you represent the womanhood of the countree. But she was
already going to do just that. She rose and spoke,
I want to stand by my country, but I cannot
(14:09):
vote for war. Forty nine men opposed the war that day,
but it was Rankin who was castigated for it. The
Daily Missoulan headline read, ms. Rankin sobbed, I cannot vote
for war. Now. There's absolutely no evidence she cried on
the floor of Congress that day. In fact, the future
(14:32):
mayor of New York, Fiarella la Guardia, couldn't see if
she'd been crying quote because of the tears in his
own eyes. Meanwhile, Suffrages maudwood Park had been in the
gallery reported that the House Majority leader, Claude Kitchen, wept
openly as he gave his own no vote. That didn't
(14:58):
stop the papers from painting her as a his aercle woman.
The New York Times said her appearance was that of
a woman on the verge of her nervous breakdown. The
Helena Independent made her not just weak but treasonous, calling
her a dagger in the hands of German propagandists and
a crying school girl. The Bozeman Chronicle just said it.
(15:19):
They claimed she had voted in a fit of female hysteria.
Jeanette later explained herself to the women of the United
States of America, never for one second could I face
the idea that I would send your men to be
killed for no other reason than to save my seat
in Congress. Jeanette would suffer for that vote, but not
(15:40):
before attempting another coup in Congress. In the summer of
nineteen seventeen, Jeanette Rankin took up the mantle of gaining
women the right to vote on the national level. She
took up the lead on the issue in the House.
Both the House and Senate needed to pass a resolution
for there to be a constitutional amendment, and an address
to Congress in January of nine eighteen, Jeanette said, we
(16:01):
as a nation were born in a land of unparalleled resources,
but something is still lacking. Babies are dying from cold
and hunger, and soldiers have died for lack of a
woolen shirt. Might it not be that men who have
spent their lives thinking in terms of commercial profit find
it hard to adjust themselves to thinking in terms of
(16:21):
human needs. Is it not possible that the women of
the country have something of value to give the nation
at this time? How shall we explain the meaning of
democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to
make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this
small measure of democracy to the women of our country.
(16:43):
The resolution passed the House by two seventy four to
a d thirty six. It failed in the Senate, but
Janette would never recover from her vote against World War One.
While our male colleagues, like the weeping Claude Kitchen, got
sent right back to Congress. Jeanette wasn't really elected. When
she left office at the age of thirty eight, the
(17:03):
Helena Independent wrote, she has a brilliant future behind her.
Jeanette Rankin came from wealth, but she never liked it
or coveted it. She had that American puritanical streak, the
kind that worries a hot shower might make them soft.
When she left office, she needed to get out from
under the long shadow of her life in Montana, Jeanette
(17:27):
bought a ramshackle farm in rural Georgia, not far from
the state University in Athens. It had no indoor plumbing,
no electricity. In the summer, she returned to her family
ranch in the Big Belt Mountains in Montana. She'd write
about how important these rural places where to her. It
is quite necessary for me to be at home, to
relax and secure courage to go out and face the cold,
(17:50):
stupid world again. Janette never had much of a personal life.
She had many close friendships, but work always came before
any kind of romantic engagements, and Jeanette certainly hadn't retired,
(18:11):
and the sixty nine year drive by women for the
right to vote is plim acted by this. The first
part of her life's work was completed in nineteen twenty
with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which finally granted
women all over the nation the right to vote. This
was due in large part to her work, but Jeanette's
future the next fifty plus years would be dedicated to peace.
(18:33):
The work of educating the world for peace is a
woman's job because men are afraid of being classed as
cowards if they oppose war. There's just one problem. Jeanette
wasn't particularly good at making peace with having a boss.
She left more than one piece group in the twenties
and thirties because they muzzled her into being a lobbyist.
And by ninety nine, twenty years after leaving Congress, Jeanette
(18:57):
Rankin had just about run out of peace organizations to
work for. But she wasn't done. She just had to
do it differently. Her responsibility lies on the shoulders of
one man. By his latest active naked aggression, Hidla has
committed a crime not only against Poland, but against the
whole human rights. With World War two looming, Jeanette fired
(19:17):
up her old Ford. She began the long drive back
to Montana. She was going to run for Congress again,
but first she had to remind Montana who she was.
If she could pull it off, she really believed she
could keep FDR from declaring a war. She wrote to
a friend in New York, I still feel sure that
he can be bluffed out of going to war if
(19:37):
the women will do their part. Soon as she arrived
back on Montana, Jeaness started doing her part. Her home
state needed reminding of their old friend in Congress. She'd
chew up unannounced at schools to speak. After all, what
school would deny the children the opportunity to see the
first woman in Congress. Anyway, she remembered that when she
was a kid politician, she used to talk only to
(19:58):
the boys. They'd say, the boys could be president. Then
they look at the girls and say, maybe someday you'll
be a president's wife. As she put it, I'd say,
now we know the girls can do many things, and
someday we will have a woman president, and they roared
with laughter. Then she said, there aren't jobs just for women.
(20:21):
Someday one of these young men may be the husband
of a president. As she worked the school circuit, Janette
Rankin also worked her way back into the hearts of
fellow Montana's. She announced her candidacy unless at her old
pre Sainct Captain's and set about winning a second trip
to Congress. And though she was sixty, she marched the
(20:41):
campaign trail with the energy of a much younger woman.
One observer noted, if she heard of a vote, she
would go up and see them, drive up there, and
it didn't make any difference. About the roads. Jeanette one,
she won't beg She captured a resounding in the general
elect but that wasn't the news it was in nineteen sixteen.
(21:03):
No one will pay any attention to me this time.
There is nothing unusual about a woman being elected this time.
When she reached d C to be sworn in, she
joined seven other women there now. When Jeanette first ran
for Congress in nineteen sixteen, war wasn't our main issue.
It showed up by surprise on her first day of work.
But when she ran in nineteen forty, she ran as
(21:25):
an anti war candidate. When Montanan Center to Washington in
November of that year, no one doubted her stance. I
am still trying to keep our men from being sacrificed
in the slaughterhouse across the ocean. But then came that
day that would live in for me. Sunday, December seven, Japan,
like its infamous access partners, scout first and declared war afterwards.
(21:50):
The country's feelings about war shifted swiftly once it was
under attack. Reports to the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor
came in the afternoon. Jeanette was in Detroit when she
heard about the attack on Harbor, but when her sleeper
train reached Pittsburgh around midnight, she jumped off FDR was
going to speak in front of Congress at noon the
next day. If she had any chance of slowing the
war drum, she was going to have to get back
(22:11):
to d C stat. Jeanette caught the next train at
noon on December eighth, Jeanette was in our seat to
hear the President addressed the Joint Session. The United States
of America was suddenly and deliberately attack. The President's speech
lasted only eight minutes of the Empire of Japan. Jeanette
(22:33):
knew that meant fifty two minutes of airtime up for grabs,
but none of our colleagues would yield the floor. Jeanette
wasn't the only isolationist, but when it came time to vote,
all the others who had once shared her views recanted.
One said, and I hope there won't be one dissenting vote.
The Senate had voted unanimously for the war, and Republican
(22:56):
leadership made it clear they wanted the same vote in
the House. They even tried to change the rules to
skipper and roll call. The Jett Rankin wouldn't have it.
At the time, discussion on the floor of Congress was
not supposed to be carried live, but no one had
turned off the feed after the president's address. A network
announcer later provided commentary to guide listeners as Jeanette attempted
(23:19):
to be recognized, Miss Jet Rankin, trying to get recognized
here she stood in the aisle and raised her hand.
The speaker angrily brought down into the gavel and said,
let there be no objection to the unanimous paste. Then
in the end her vote was simply no. As a woman,
(23:45):
I cannot go to war, and I refused to send
anyone else. The final vote to one. Yeah. There was
this throng of reporters that cornered her and chased around
the halls of Congress to the point where she had
(24:08):
to take refuge in a telephone booth, and j had
to hang out there until the Capitol police came and
rescued her and escorted her back to her office. A
photo of her trapped in the phone booth appeared in
all the newspapers. The next day. Janet released her statement
to the press. When I cast my only vote against
(24:28):
the war, I was thinking of the pledges I had
made to the mothers and fathers of Montana that I
would do all in my power to prevent their sons
being slaughtered on foreign battlefields. Her brother Wellington didn't mince
his words. Montana is against you. She knew Wellington disagreed
with her, but it hurt to know that all of Montana,
(24:49):
all of her country, saw her as an enemy. She
was bombarded with insults. You made an ass out of
yourself trying to be like a man. I hope, but
jack bomb drops on you or head awhole. You dismissed
the bombing as lightly as you would a run in
your stocking. Jeanette was a realistic idealist. She knew there
was no chancefer in public life, not for a long
(25:10):
long time after that, but she had no regrets. Still
a few people recognized that her vote wasn't unpatriotic. Even
if they disagreed with it, which they did, they could
still see it as an act of moral courage. The
Emporia Gazette in Kansas wrote, well, look at Jeannette Rankin.
Probably a hundred men in Congress would like to do
(25:30):
what she did. Not one of them had the courage
to do it. Another Montanan wrote, in all of history,
no man has done so brave, so commendable a thing. Today,
I feel that you've vindicated womanhood. After leaving Congress a
second time, Jeannette returned to her modest life. She went
back to Georgia, built a new, equally humble farm. She
(25:53):
traveled the world studying various models of peaceful resistance. When
the Vietnam War broke out began sending thousands of American
boys home and body bags, Janette couldn't stay quiet any longer.
It is unconscionable that ten thousand boys died in Vietnam
this year, and I predict that if ten thous women
had mind enough, they could end the war, if they
(26:16):
were committed to the task, even if it meant going
to jail. People in American life usually don't get a
second act. She not only got a second act, she
basically had a third act because in the late sixties
and early seventies, many of the women who were involved
in that anti war movement studied Janette rank And in
(26:36):
all of her pacifist efforts and essentially recruited her to
come out of retirement so that she could lead their movement.
Protesting the war in Vietnam. Rankin was now in her
late eighties, but she wasn't deterred by her age. She
led a march of five thousand women on Washington. They
(26:56):
called themselves the Janette Rankin Brigade. It was bitter, coal old.
There was a couple inches of snow. They marched from
Union Station to Capitol Hill and they presented a plaque
to the Speaker of the House that was calling for
this pacifist response to Vietnam War. There or five thousand women,
and everybody wore gogga boots, and they're all in the snow,
(27:17):
and they're all kind of marching and stomping. In two
at the age of the National Organization for Women made
rank In its first inductee into the Susan B. Anthony
Hall of Fame. Rankin was honored with the title of
the World's Outstanding Living Feminist. She left the crowd with this,
women must devote all their energies today in gaining enough
(27:39):
political offices to influence the direction of government away from
the military industrial complex and toward solving the major social
disgraces that exist in our country. Time for a break.
When we come back, we'll be speaking to Stephanie Shriach.
She's the president of Emily's List and Men who is
(28:00):
very much carrying on Jeanette's legacy today. Since its founding,
Emily's List has helped elect a hundred pro choice Democratic
women to the House, twenty six to the Senate, sixteen
to governors seats, and hundreds more to stay in local
offices around the country. Jeanette Rankin fought long and hard
(28:20):
for women to get the right to vote, and this
year marks the hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the
nineteenth Amendment. But there's still a long way to go
to see women represented an equal numbers and elected office.
We saw six women run for Democratic nomination, more than
any other time in US history, but by March nineteenth
of this year, none of them remained in the race.
(28:43):
Yet I'm optimistic there's an army of women out there
working to ensure more women are voted into office. Emily's
List and their president, Stephanie Shriach, are on the front
lines of that army. Emily's List is a nearly thirty
five year old organizations solely committed to electing pro choice
(29:04):
Democratic women all across the country, up and down the ballot.
So tell me about the first time that you heard
Jeanette Rankins story. I grew up in Montana. I grew
up in Butte, which is the good labor union copper
mining town. And you just didn't grow up in places
like Montana without hearing about the pride of Montana being
(29:26):
the first state in the Union to elect a woman
to the United States Congress. Even though you know, we
learned about her, what we actually knew about her was
so minimal. What she did for the women's suffrage movement,
how engaged she was, what she did in Montana, what
she did for the anti war movement, what she did
(29:48):
for women all through those years. Like that was not
taught to us as kids in beauty. We just really
learned the top lines. When I think about Jeanette's story,
what I think about the most, what gives me chills
is thinking how brave it was to be a woman
doing what she did in the time that she was doing. Absolutely,
because I do have that feeling deep in my belly
when I think about her. Because you got to try
(30:10):
to put yourself back in what I would call the
wild West of Montana in nineteen sixteen, literally the wild West.
I mean truly the wild West. You know, Montana had
just become a state in eighteen eighty nine, and here's
this fierce woman who found her voice along the way,
(30:32):
traveling around the United States, coming back home to Montana,
fighting so hard for Montana to give women the right
to vote, but then to think I should run for
office when this had never happened in the entire country.
The women across the country still didn't have the right
to vote. So what that must have been, like, how
(30:53):
scary that must have been for her, And yet jumping
in and taking that responsibility from the beginning so so seriously,
it really is so moving and still today I just
like to think I get to be part of that,
a little piece of that legacy and that bravery. Is
(31:14):
it easier now, absolutely, is it easier over the last
three decades, completely, But there's still a mindset of what
a leader in this country looks like. You know, what
is that person supposed to be? And of course, particularly
on the executive side, when you're looking at governors and presidents,
(31:35):
you think of an executive leader as a male, and
quite frankly, you think it as a white male. And
having to change that mindset of what a feminine leadership
looks like and that it's powerful and strong is something
that we are always working on here at Emily's List.
And how do you guys do that? What I've said
to so many candidates over the years here is that
(31:59):
you've got to do it your own way. You've got
to figure out who you are, what's your story, how
does your story connect with the voters? And then you
gotta you gotta just be yourself. It doesn't mean you
don't run smart strategic campaigns and you do all the
things you need to do on a campaign setting, but
you just have to fight through it. And yes, you're
(32:20):
going to run into sexism. I'm sorry, it's not going away.
You know, people are gonna ask you, do you have children,
why don't you have children? What are you gonna do
with your children? You you win or lose either direction,
but you just answer the questions. You keep going because
what works at the end of the day is that
after she wins, then the voters in the constituents see
(32:43):
what great leaders these women make. And that's how we
do this, That's how we change minds. We keep winning.
And Janette Rankin for the Congress was the first win,
and we have just every election cycle since added a
few more here and there, and thankfully we all got
to just watch in a historic number of women walk
(33:04):
onto the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
And what that has meant not just to the focus
of what's going on, but the culture of the place.
And that's what we have to change, the culture of
the place. It's still hard. Do women still face a
lot of the challenges that Jeanette faced back then, more
than a hundred years ago. They do face some I
(33:27):
think there's still a question about electability. We've been paying
attention to what's been going on in this presidential election.
Women still have to prove that they're accomplished enough and
can do the job, whereas men tend and I am
stereotyping here, so I always want to be a little careful,
but men tend to just sort of like, of course,
(33:49):
you know how to balance a budget, and you're gonna
be tough on crime. But at the end of the day,
the voters and the American people, they're looking for leaders
who are going to take care of their families, that
are going to focus on making their lives better. As constituents,
so they don't care. Where are we now in terms
(34:10):
of women elected office? So, you know, the United States Congress,
you know, women still only represent you know, just shy
of which is not great. And that puts the United States.
Last time I looked, we were beyond a hundred in
the world, and the percentage of women in our federal
office terrible place to be having women. They're having an
(34:32):
equal number of women there. How does that change culture
in Congress? It starts with changing the debates around policies
that affect the country. And that is on all fronts.
You know, I think so often folks think, oh, women
are gonna come in and they're gonna talk about women's issues.
And I can't tell you how many times Kamala Harris
(34:54):
has a great line. She gets asked all the time,
you know, are you gonna just talk about women's issues,
and she's like, yes, I'm going to talk about the economy,
like exactly, it matters to have those voices represented. And also,
one woman can't carry everybody, So we need women of
diverse backgrounds, races, education, geography to have a truly representative democracy.
(35:16):
And how much did these stories matter? And repeating stories
like Janet Rankins, knowing stories like Janette Rankins, and just
not letting these names be lost to history. Gosh, I
think it's everything. I think it's everything in every culture.
I mean, the importance of storytelling for me and frankly
for Emily's list is how you connect with each other.
(35:40):
And our young women and young men need to know
the the stories of the women who came before us,
who broke down barriers, crashed through ceilings. We've got to
tell these stories. Um, the bravery of Jeanette Rankin and
(36:02):
so so so many others who took huge risks at
potentially great loss for themselves but did it and then
stood up for what they believe. Those those stories are
as powerful today as they were then. And as I
think about, you know, women like Charise David's who ran
(36:24):
in a member of the ho Chunk nation in this
country from Kansas, uh stepping up saying I'm going to
run for Congress, even though no Native American woman had
ever been elected to Congress before in this country until
but I'm going to do it, and I'm gonna tell
(36:45):
my story and our story, and she did. That's what
we've got to keep doing. We're very grateful to our guests,
filmmaker Kimberly Reid and Stephanie Shriach, President of Emily's List.
(37:09):
Fierce is hosted and written by Joe Piazza, produced and
directed by me Anna Stump. Our executive producers are Joe Piazza,
Nikki Etre, Anna Stump, and from Tribeca Studios Le s
r B. Jeanette Rankin is voiced by Emily Stein. Additional
voices provided by Sam Stump, Jane Stump, and Katie Stump.
This episode was edited and soundscaped by Anna Stump, with
(37:29):
additional support from Jacopo Penzo, Mary Do and Josh Fisher.
Our associate producer is Emily Maronoff. Fact checking by Austin Thompson,
researched by Lizzie Jacobs. The Fierce theme song was written
by Hamilton Lighthouser and Anna Stump. Are very sincere thanks
to Mangesh had ticket Or for making this series possible,
Anton Nikki Etre, who just did so much for this
series there's no way to even name it. All sources
(37:51):
for this episode Jeannette Rankin a political woman by James J.
Lopak and Jean A. Lukowski Jeannette Rankin, America's First Congresswoman
by Peter Aaron's and When Jeanette Said No. Montana Women's
Response to World War One by Mary Murphy for Montana,
the Magazine of Western History. Suffragists Oral History Project, Jeannette Rankin,
activist for World Peace, women's rights, and democratic government. Interviews
(38:14):
conducted by Malca Chew and Hannah Josephson. Various articles found
in the digital archives of the House of Representatives and
the Library of Congress. Blog articles from The New York
Times in nineteen sixteen and The United Press and The
Suffragist in seventeen from NPR. The First Woman in Congress,
A Crusader for Peace by Whitney Blair Wycoff, and the
Lone War Dissenter on All Things Considered from December of
(38:35):
two one. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. The BA
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