USA Today – Montana Proud – She was elected to Congress before women had the right to vote, blazing a trail that continues today

Before the 19th Amendment guaranteed the right of women to vote, a suffragist social worker from Montana was sworn in on March 4, 1917, as the first woman elected to the United States Congress.

The lifelong pacifist Jeannette Rankin, who campaigned for social and electoral reform, was sworn in on the same Sunday that President Woodrow Wilson took his second oath of office.

“I may be the first woman member of Congress,” Rankin said in 1917. “But I won’t be the last.”

Camille Fine