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

Inspired by her early hero Jane Addams and supported by the suffrage movement, Rankin became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress in 1916—and the only member to vote against declaring war on Japan in 1941 after 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 said.

A Republican Representative from Montana, Rankin has been called “America's conscience.” She voted against U.S. participation in both World Wars, explaining, “Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.”

Deeply committed to peace, she traveled the world, visited India several times, and met Mahatma Gandhi. At age 87, she led the Jeanette Rankin Brigade—over 5,000 women—in a Washington protest against the Vietnam War, calling it “the ruthless slaughter.”

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

Rankin believed women had the power to end war: “Ten thousand boys have died in Vietnam. I predict that if 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war—even if it meant going to jail. You cannot have wars without the women.”

A lifelong advocate for women's rights and suffrage, she told Newsweek in 1966: “We're half the people; we should be half the Congress.”