13th State to Ratify | Montana | Jane Deschner, Artist
Her Flag Artist, Jane Deschner
Montana’s Jeannette Rankin was active in the national suffrage movement and helped secure Montana women the vote in 1914. She joined the U.S. House of Representatives in 1917 as the first woman ever in either chamber of Congress.
The long photograph in this stripe is a group portrait of the Sixty-fifth U.S. Congress in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Rankin is shown highlighted in the center. Her swearing-in made front-page news in the Washington Post.She was the only woman to cast a vote for the Women’s Suffrage Amendment when it came up in the House in 1918. The House passed it, but it failed the Senate twice. Unfortunately Rankin wasn’t reelected to the 66th Congress when it did pass. Strongly opposed to war, she was the only Member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both World War I and World War II. (She was re-elected to Congress for one more term in 1940.)
Jeannette Rankin famously said, “If I had my life to live over, I would do it all again, but this time I would be nastier.”