Jeanette Pickering Rankin, the first woman to ever be elected to the U.S. Congress, was born on June 11, 1880, near Missoula, Montana. She spent her early years living on her family's ranch, but then later moved into the city of Missoula. It was there that she went to public school and then graduated from the University of Montana in 1902 with a science degree in biology. After she graduated, Rankin worked as a school teacher, a seamstress, and also studied furniture design. She was trying to find a career that she could commit herself to for a long period of time. In 1904, however, when she went to Boston to visit her brother who was attending Harvard at the time, she was touched by seeing the slums there and decided to take up a career as a social worker. Rankin started as a social worker at a children's home in Spokane, Washington, but the job did not hold her interest very long; she quit within a few weeks.

She decided after that to be involved in women's suffrage. Rankin moved to Seattle and attended the University of Washington to further her education in suffrage. She became involved in the women's suffrage movement in 1910. She was also the first woman to ever make a speech in front of the Montana legislature. While Rankin was working for the New York Women's Suffrage Party in 1912, she became the secretary of the National American Women Suffrage Association. In 1916, she ran for a seat in Congress. Jeanette Rankin won the election, making her the first woman to hold a seat in Congress and the first woman to be elected to a national legislature from any western democratic system.

After Rankin's term was up, she decided that she would go home and take care of her mother instead of running for the position again. She also traveled worldwide, and was very active in human rights, leading many protests against WWI. Jeanette Rankin died in California in 1973.

"I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no."

~Jeanette Rankin, Congressional speech, 1917

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