Tag Archives: American pacifists

‘Pink Wave’ of 2018 started with the first woman, a Montanan, elected to Congress

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By Kevin S. Giles

(Details in this story come from my book, One Woman Against War: The Jeannette Rankin Story, which examines the life and times of a historical figure whose involvement in American politics spanned 60 years.)

What a difference a century (and two years) makes.

When Montana’s Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to Congress, she broke a gender barrier that had frustrated American women since before the Civil War.

History shows that Rankin’s remarkable election to the US House of Representatives in 1916 didn’t unleash an immediate flood of female candidates hoping to achieve the same thing. Through the 1920s, after the Nineteenth Amendment gave all American women the right to vote, relatively few women went to Congress. (Not until 1924 were indigenous people granted the right to vote.)

Now look, in 2018.

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First congresswoman Jeannette Rankin was an early opponent of the Electoral College

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Kevin S. Giles, a native of Deer Lodge, Mont., authored the biography, One Woman Against War: The Jeannette Rankin Story. It tells of the pacifist convictions of the first woman elected to Congress. Her campaign came just two years after Montana legislators gave women the right to vote. This essay first appeared on lastbestnews.com, a Montana independent news site.

By Kevin S. Giles

Imagine being the first woman elected to Congress, taking a seat in the US House amid a sea of men on the eve of President Wilson’s appeal to declare war on Germany.

Jeannette Rankin voted no.

Imagine being elected a second time to Congress while Hitler’s Germany rampaged through Europe. Then came Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt asked for a war declaration against Japan.

Again, Rankin voted no.

BUY! One Woman Against War

Rankin, of Montana, became a full-fledged pacifist between the world wars. She believed she was voting the will of her constituents back home, which was partly true, but she also objected to government’s close ties to corporations that profited from war.

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From Kevin S. Giles: What I said about my original Jeannette Rankin biography

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Photo shows author Kevin S. Giles

This is how I looked at the time I published the first edition of my Jeannette Rankin, entitled “Flight of the Dove.” The second edition is renamed “One Woman Against War: the Jeannette Rankin Story.”

These are my actual quotes that I pulled from newspaper and broadcast interviews after I published the original Flight of the Dove. I would say much the same thing today about my new edition, which I retitled, One Woman Against War, but add this: “Pacifists like Jeannette Rankin perpetually live in the shadow of war, devoting their entire lives to shining sunlight on the prospect of peace.”

¶ “Why was she so terribly lonely?”

¶ “My parents have been great, too, always being interested in the book and telling everybody about it. They thought maybe I was a little too radical in college, but never once have they criticized me for writing about a woman who was considered radical in her time.”

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How it all began: A suffragist, an inspiration and a biography about Jeannette Rankin

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Photo shows Montana suffragist

Suffragist Belle Fligelman Winestine was the inspiration for Flight of the Dove, the Jeannette Rankin biography written by Kevin S. Giles. He published a new and expanded edition in October 2016, entitled One Woman Against War. This photo was taken at a book signing ceremony at the Montana Historical Society. Photo by Gene Fischer

(Today we’re going back to tell about my original biography of Jeannette Rankin, Flight of the Dove. This story, which appeared in the Missoulian many years ago, explains how I got started researching Rankin’s life and writing the first book. The roots of my new and expanded edition, One Woman Against War, can be traced to when I met Belle Fligelman Winestine, an early Montana suffragist. – Kevin S. Giles)

By Deirdre McNamer.

Life is sometimes like that. Two events come together in an uncanny way and you suddenly find yourself on a whole new tack.

For Helena newsman Kevin Giles, the coincidence took place one day in October 1976. Giles, who was editor of the Independent Record’s lifestyle section, had just interviewed Belle Fligelman Winestine, a tiny, fiery octogenarian who had been a leader in the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s.

Winestine had also served as administrative secretary to Montana Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin in 1917, and she convinced Giles that the really INTERESTING story would be an account of Rankin’s life and work.

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