Jeannette Rankin took her seat in Congress this week in 1917, and she was the only female to vote for the 19th Amendment (also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment) which gave U.S. women the right to vote.
She was born in 1880 near Missoula, Montana and was elected to Congress in 1916. Certainly a forward thinker, she recognized that she "may be the first woman in Congress but will not be the last."
She firmly believed in pacificism, and was the only member of Congress to vote against both World War I and World War II. Her advocacy for the anti-war efforts continued even into her late 80's when, in January 1968, she established the Jeannette Rankin Brigade and helped bring more than 5,000 marchers to the nation's capital to protest the Vietnam War.
