Courageous pacifist and suffragist Jeanette Pickering Rankin (1880–1973) was born in Missoula, Montana.

Inspired by her hero Jane Addams and backed by fellow suffragists, Rankin made history in 1916 as the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She is remembered as the only member to vote against declaring war on Japan in 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go,” she once said.

Called “America’s conscience,” Rankin opposed U.S. involvement in both World Wars. “Small use it will be to save democracy for the race,” she warned, “if we cannot save the race for democracy.”

Dedicated to peace, she traveled globally, meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in India. In 1968, at age 87, she led the Jeanette Rankin Brigade—over 5,000 women protesting the Vietnam War.

“War is evil,” she said. “There is always an alternative.”

Rankin believed deeply in the power of women to end war: “You cannot have wars without the women.”

A lifelong advocate for equality, she told Newsweek in 1966, “We’re half the people; we should be half the Congress.”