Jeannette Rankin
Behind the Pearl Harbor production, and some juicy factoids about the unlikely heroine.
I was curious from the start about Jeannette Rankin; the start being when I walked by the building bearing her name at the University of Montana campus.
The information on the plaque got my attention.
1st woman elected to congress. (interesting)
only member of congress to vote against both world wars (very interesting)
Well, I thought. This might be someone I could write about on my blog, and perhaps I could even convince kla.tv that there's a good anti-war angle here, fit for a production. Before contacting Germany, I did a little more research on JR and when I found out about her speech to the 77th congress, dated one year and a day after Pearl Harbor and exactly one year after FDR's Day of Infamy speech, I thought, “Now we're into super-interesting territory! We have to do a piece on her.”
What was so special about the speech? Well, if you've seen the video, you already know; JR called BS on the whole idea that the PH attack was an unprovoked, surprise attack.
Why is this especially meaningful to me and fellow doubters of the official line? Because…
it says that all the proof we needed to show that PH was not unprovoked was available publicly way back in 1942.
it highlights Jeannette Rankin’s bravery, not only for standing alone in her vote against war, but for her audacity in questioning the run-up to the war, a year later, after the country had gone all-in and dissent was extremely unpopular.
it would be like a prominent congressman coming out in November of 1964 to announce in an extended, carefully researched, detailed speech that the official version of the assassination of JFK stinks to high heaven, or another congressman doing the same, one year after 911. Consider how famous JR was. She was the first woman elected to congress. She had a huge following. Her speech was delivered to congress and put in the record but apparently, and unsurprisingly, she was not allowed to stand before congress and give it in person.
as JR says in her speech, PH was the lightning bolt event for the USA. It was the causus belli that solidified America's role as World Ass-Kicker Cop for decades to come. It got us into WW2, and among all the at-best questionable conflicts we've been involved in, we can always look back to WW2 and our triumph there as The Good War. John Wayne made a dozen WW2 flicks, so it must have been justified. JR blows that idea to smithereens.
it vindicates us ‘conspiracy theorists’, who have theorized for years that the US and Britain conspired to pressure Japan into war.
The team in Germany liked the idea too and so we got busy. It's much more work than you might think, putting out a quality production worthy of a local network TV station, technically speaking. One of my early ideas was to get some local academicians in on the act. I contacted a retired professor from the University of Montana in Missoula, Dr. Richard Drake, and he was very helpful and supportive of our project. Rankin wasn't his specialty, but his anti-war credentials were excellent. He wrote a book on Robert LaFollette, a contemporary of JR. Entitled, “The Education of an Anti-Imperialist, it's “a history of one man's journey from reflexive nationalism to courageous dissent”, according to the top reviewer. He also wrote Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism. Also, like me he is a fan of Scott Horton. I've interviewed Horton twice and Professor Drake has met him twice in person, the latest instance when Horton was in town to give a speech at the university.
I was keen to interview Drake, and he was willing, but he unselfishly recommended two other professors at the university who would fit the bill even better, in his opinion. James J. Lopach and Jean A. Luckowski are fellow professors from U of M, and the authors of Jeannette Rankin, a political woman. I contacted professor Lopach and he was unavailable for an interview but he sent me a PDF for a handout on a speech that he and Dr. Luckowski gave in 2019. In the end our production did not include an interview; with limited time before the PH anniversary, all we could produce was the intro and the speech, but that speech had everything the project needed. And a deep dive into Ms. Rankin's life and thinking may have detracted a bit from the power of her Congressional speech, such was her unique and controversial character.
I have highlighted what I think are some interesting tidbits from the handout from Dr. Lopach. If you don't have time to read the entire handout, check out the parts in bold.
Introducing the Jeannette You May Not Know: The Life and Times of Jeannette Rankin
Jim Lopach and Jean Luckowski
League of Women Voters Missoula and Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
November 20, 2019
JR Chronology
1880 – Born in Missoula, 1st of 7 children; Rankin family was talented, ambitious, well educated, aristocratic, arrogant, and tribal
1902 – B.S. from UM; helps father and mother; teaches grade school; Whitehall sexual “slip”; millinery and furniture making; read Jane Addams; trips to east and west coasts
1904-08 – Father dies; acts as surrogate mother (“family claim”); WR the privileged son
1909 – Master’s certificate at New York School of Philanthropy: social science, social engineering, social evolution courses; Greenwich Village influence
1910 – Frustrated with social work in Missoula, Spokane, Seattle; University of Washington speech courses; suffrage work in Washington; speech to Montana legislature
1910-16 – Campaigns for NAWSA in 13 states, with major stints in NY and MT
1914 – Montana suffrage referendum; JR 2nd best-known Montanan; builds election base
1916 – Elected to Congress; in primary, with 26%, defeats “seven mediocre men” (one committed suicide); in general, received 6,354 more votes than 3rd place candidate; worldwide fame, presidential expectations, speech contract and tour
1917 – Votes against WWI (1 of 57); then votes for conscription, war bonds and war against Austria; suffrage amendment defeated in Congress; labor reform efforts in Bureau of Engraving and Printing and during Butte mine disaster
1918 – MT legislature gerrymanders JR’s district; defeated in Senate Republican primary (41%) and in general election as National Party candidate (23%) by Sen. Thomas Walsh; opposed by Republican and suffrage leaders; supported by agriculture and labor radicals
1920s and 1930s – Consumer and peace organizer and lobbyist; lives in rural Georgia; brings libel suit against American Legion; advocates radical economic policies; major influences are Jane Addams (social evolution and waste of war) and Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, 1915 and The Science of Power, 1918 (female essentialism)
1940-41 – Elected to Congress (54%); only vote against war with Japan; praised and condemned; isolated and depressed; escapes WDC by visiting friends in NYC and MT
1942-66 – Bargain with WR to care for mother; winters in Georgia, summers in Montana; travels extensively in U.S. and internationally (7 times to India)
1966 – WR dies; $10M estate - 16 ranches, 629K acres; $75K to JR; bulk to widow
1967 – Modern feminists, Vietnam War protestors, and national media discover JR
1968-72 – Considers running for Congress; campaigns non-stop for her two election reforms; worries about place in history; continues to travel in U.S. and internationally
1973 – Dies in Carmel, CA: “I want to get back to my apartment before the ‘garbage man’ comes”; ashes scattered over Monterey Bay; “I don’t want any goddamn Christian words spoken over my grave”
Common beliefs about JR
1. Identified herself principally with Montana.
2. Was one of the most significant 20th century feminists.
3. Campaigned for suffrage without compromising principle.
4. Elected in 1916 because of the “woman vote.”
5. Voted against WWI because of her pacifism.
6. Lost 1918 election because of her vote against World War I.
7. Advocated a principled and coherent pacifism.
8. Lived an impoverished personal life out of necessity.
9. Sacrificed marriage and a family because of her causes.
10. Was a mainstream Progressive.
Reality about JR (with supporting quotations, some paraphrased)
1. JR’s father and mother shaped her distinctive personality.
John Rankin “was suited to the frontier. He was a large, strong, red-bearded, and bullheaded man always ready to fight.” (p. 17, JR book) “Seems that I have too many irons in the fire. I am swamped with work all the time and I have no time to call my life my own. I get nearly wild some times.” (18) “He especially encouraged his daughter.” (2)
Olive Rankin “became ‘self-isolated’ and took on the notions that her family should serve her and that visiting should be done in her home.” “Increasingly inert but domineering, always with something wrong but tough, she ruled her children.” (18) “To her, Jeannette was an unresponsive problem child.” (2)
2. JR identified with East Coast values more than Montana values.
JR: “Go! Go! Go! It makes no difference where just at the first opportunity go!” (3) Just before she died she wrote to a friend, “I’d love to call and say I am on my way to New York.” (208)
Edna Rankin: “I disliked my experience in Montana so much.” (20) “I remember our Greenwich Village Days.” (45)
Judith Schwarz: “Throughout Greenwich Village, radicalism was in the air. The sexual mores were free love – heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual. The prevailing value system was feminism. The dominant political ideology was socialism.” (45)
Belle Fligelman: “We weren’t Communists but we knew there should be a change in government. It was that general attitude that made them call us ‘Reds.’” (139) Katharine Anthony: “I don’t think it is bad for you to spend some time in the Rockies and way stations. But after all, the only work for you seems to be here. You’ll want to stay in New York and suck it dry.” (73-4)
3. Suffrage work shaped JR politically and caused her to compromise her principles.
Suffrage leaders and colleagues: “In state after state, her colleagues recognized that her intensity, appearance, voice, and organizing skills were rare political assets.” (80)
“She has worked day and night, heart and soul, for the measure, and always commanded the utmost respect of her opponents.” (84)
JR: “Can’t you use the same laws against them [African-American women] that you do against the Negro men?” (90) “Effective participation by minority voters will be blocked by a flood of traditional American votes from women.” (96)
4. JR’s life was woman-centered ideologically and personally.
JR: “Might it not be that the men who have spent their lives thinking in terms of commercial profit find it hard to adjust themselves to thinking in terms of human needs? Might it not be that a great force that has always been thinking in terms of human needs, and that always will think in terms of human needs, has not been mobilized?” (145)
“After four or five more devastating wars, women will be willing to assert their primitive instincts for the protection of the young and do something about war. There will be so few men to protest because they’re out killing themselves. Why we don’t just shoot those men, I don’t know.” (194) “Marriage for women has meant a parasitic life. You know I don’t believe in marriage.” (50)
Mary O’Neill: “You are the instrument used by a Higher Power through which to disseminate the spiritual force so necessary to the illumination of the ideals for which Womanhood stands. It is the Hour when the hands on the face of Time turn upward for the new Race being founded in this country.”
Belle Fligelman: “There was nothing romantic with Fiorello LaGuardia.” (49)
Louise Rankin Galt: “She liked the company of men because they were more interested in politics, but men themselves never seemed to interest her.” (49)
Harriet Upton: “Now Miss Rankin, I believe you are going because of the beau.” JR’s reply: “No! I am going the other way!” (86)
Harriet Yarrow: “If all the thoughts I’ve had of you since your sweet letter were on paper you would have to take a day off to read them.” (61) “The beast lacks nothing. You are dear, dear.” (61)
Flora Belle Surles: “It was very hard to leave you – living in the glow of your love.” JR: It was very hard to give you up. . . . Thanks for taking such good care of the little red button. (66-7)
Katharine Anthony: “Here’s all my love to you, darling Jeannette. I think of you every day and every night. You are true and solid and enduring, and the part of me that is loyal to you just couldn’t ever cave in.” (73)
5. JR subordinated herself to the wealthy and powerful WR, a man despised by many.
JR: “You are just too wonderful. You give a lift to the spirit as no one else can.” (24)
Early in 1942, WR ordered JR to “come out immediately, start any minute,” to care for their mother. JR obeyed even though it was “going to be a very hard week in Congress.” In 1942, WR summoned her to discuss his Senate campaign, and JR said to a friend: “Wellington phoned me that he wants me in Montana, so it looks as if I would leave this week.” (23-4) When WR ordered JR home five months later to help him campaign, she said: “We all must work, and it looks as if I will leave this week.” (191)
Winfield Page: “I always thought he guided her. That she didn’t move unless he made the decision – the command decision.” (124)
Kevin Giles: “He treated her like a turd, always criticizing her morals and lifestyle.” (24)
WR’s Republican colleague: “In the minds of the public it was not a congressional race, but a race between two sons-of-bitches. Unfortunately the public considered you the bigger of the two.” (37)
JR book: “WR sent his sisters money, bought them cars, gave them legal and investment advice, prepared their taxes, paid for their vacations and medical bills, and financed their annuities and children’s educations. He also preempted their lives. His own needs and desires always came first.” (23)
6. Despite huge obstacles, JR was elected in 1916 because of her personality, campaigning, women’s votes, at-large districting, prohibition, and WR’s role.
Daphne Bugbee: “By the time Wellington returned with water and rags, Jeannette had urinated on a newspaper and cleaned off the mud.” (102)
Tom Haines: “She was one of the ablest campaigners that I ever saw. She would go anywhere – a house of prostitution, a hundred miles up in the mountains.” (126)
JR: “Vote for your local candidate and Jeannette Rankin.” (104)
Great Falls Tribune: “In 33 of the 38 counties approving prohibition, she came in either first or second.” (105)
Confidential source: “WR boasted he spent $20,000 on buying JR’s 1916 election at a dollar a vote.” (105)
7. JR’s 1917 war vote was rooted in feminism, not pacifism.
JR: “Women are a force in life, a factor which must be considered in all problems.” (1914 Woman’s Day speech)
“For the women of the future, I thought I must vote as I did in order to make a protest against war.” (149)
“We are in the war and we must insist upon a victory. The military policy and its activities come first and everything in life must be adjusted to that.” (13)
“Win the war and make the world safe for humanity.” (JR’s 1918 campaign slogan) (122)
Belle Fligelman: “She really didn’t know when she got into the congressional hall which way she was going to vote.” (147-8)
Washington Times: “Her appearance was of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
“Ill with ptomaine poisoning and against the advice of a doctor, she left her sick bed and went to the House floor to vote for war against Austria.” (149)
8. JR was defeated in 1918 because of her labor radicalism (“the poison”), gerrymandering of her congressional district, and suffrage leaders’ opposition.
Lewistown Democrat-News: “We heartily wish that some of the excellent things that she has done might balance her single mistake of lending her support to the I.W.W. leaders at Butte, but we cannot bring ourselves to that state of mind.” (8)
Great Falls Tribune: “Jeannette Rankin represents Montana, and more particularly the I.W.W. element in Montana.” (112)
Sanders County Signal: “Miss Rankin is on the right track. The Industrial Workers of the World are just common laboring people trying to organize. We are all I.W.W. or ought to be, if we are not capitalists.” (113)
Nina Swinnerton: “As for your labor speech about the I.W.W. and other miners, I think it was magnificent! You are the only bright thing these dark days.” (113)
Bill Keeley: “Opponents of your sister gerrymandered the State to defeat her for re-election. They created a 20,000 Republican majority in the eastern part and a 10,000 Democratic majority in the western district.” (108)
Carrie Chapman Catt: “For her sake as well as ours, it is most advisable that she should quit at this stage. If you have any influence with her, I hope you will use it.” (120)
9. JR was elected in 1940 because of her absolute pacifism, “red baiting,” and deal with the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.
JR: “The first time it was suffrage, the second time it was peace. I learned from the first vote. I knew what I was going to do.” (5, 13)
“This Jewish woman wasn’t mad, but she was so emotional about it that somebody came and pulled us apart. They thought we were going to have a fight. . . . I was bent on ensuring that the United States was not going to use violence to stop Hitler.” (187)
America First Speakers Bureau: “You did such a grand job for America First and we are all so proud of you.” (182}
University of Chicago professor: “You have turned the clock back for women. Inflexible principles like yours would put us under the Nazi heel.” (184)
Joan Hoff Wilson: “She endorsed a widely distributed radio script that implied that her opponent Jerry J. O’Connell was associated with the Communist Party.” (128)
Winfield Page: “Jeannette went along with Wellington’s election strategy for her in 1940 and himself in 1942. He promised the Anaconda Company, which was strong for Mike Mansfield, that JR wouldn’t go against Mike in 1942 if the Company would stay out of her 1940 race and back him [Wellington] in 1942.” (130)
10. JR advocated a radical utopianism.
JR: “To take away the marriageable men would force women in selecting husbands to draw upon less desirable classes and types and produce a generation far inferior to the standard set in this country.” (213)
“If the state orphanage became a model of child rearing, the effect of work and play and idleness on character building could be studied 24 hours a day and this store house of information could be used in a scientific course.” (213)
She told Huey Long she “appreciated [his] efforts to redistribute wealth.” She told WR when Huey Long was murdered that she was “grieved and depressed” and saw “nothing but chaos ahead without him.” (199, 216)
She wrote to a constituent: “Our present efforts must be directed toward a peaceful elimination of the profit system.” (216)
She testified before Congress: “You should pay whatever the soldier’s wage is to every one, beginning with the President.” (216)
She supported a 100% tax on war profits; Upton Sinclair’s plan of agricultural socialism; the Soviet system because she thought its citizens controlled its military; Denmark’s “folk schools” to accelerate the social evolutionary process; communal living over “primitive housekeeping customs” (her Roundhouse was based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Applepieville”); government-owned newspapers run by a board of citizens; and ethics over religion because religion was “mind-clouding” and turned believers “into sheep.”
11. In her last years JR traveled extensively, crusaded for her two election reforms, and was lionized, bored, frustrated, and hypocritical.
Ralph Nader: “Her stamina behind these reform ideas [multi-member congressional districts and proportional voting for president] is absolutely staggering.” (207)
Katharine Anthony: “I am not going to allow you to say that you are a futile person. With all that you have accomplished in life you should never let such a thought enter your mind.” (15)
JR: “I’m bored and the result is I’m not well so believe I’ll have to leave here.” (14)
Kevin Giles: “She asked children, ‘Have you ever heard of Jeannette Rankin?’” “She searched for her name in the indexes of new reference, history, and political books.” (16)
Edna Rankin: “She had a peculiar sort of neurosis of wanting to appear poor. She felt that she must advertise that she was desperately poor – when she was NOT.” (221)
Louise Rankin Galt: “Wellington bought JR the Weiglow Ranch to supplement her income. He provided 125 head of cattle for the ranch and managed it with his employees [prisoners paroled to him] from the 71 Ranch.” (218)
Joan Hoff Wilson: “JR contradicted her belittling of capitalism by becoming a shareholder in U.S. corporations. During the Vietnam War she even continued to hold stock in companies that produced modern weapons of war.” (220)
JR’s will: “After JR’s death in 1973, her lawyer placed the value of her estate at $162,000.” (220)
12. JR left a symbolic, not a substantive legacy.
JR: “It’s almost impossible for people to understand what I was in 1917 – a symbol and a representative, not only of women in Montana or in the United States, but of women in all nations and ages.” (133)
Joan Hoff Wilson: “Her vote against World War I became part of her persona and became her identity for the rest of her career.” (171)
JR book: “Despite commitment to labor reform, maternal health, and woman suffrage, her two votes against war are her legislative legacy.” (224)
New York Times: “Given her electric presence, she was eminently suited to symbolize the emergence of women in national politics.” (223)