The Morrill Majority

"I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no."
April 6, 1917

These are the words of Jeanette Rankin of Montana, the first woman elected to Congress, voting against the entry of the United States into World War One.  Rankin was one of 50 Members of Congress who voted aginst war.  What is amazing is that she cast this courageous vote on only her fourth day in Congress.  What is even more amazing is that she was the first woman in Congress while most women didn't even have the right to vote until 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.

A Republican, she was elected on a platform that called for universal suffrage, citizenship for women independent from their husbands, support for unions, maternal and children's health, opposition to war and support of women's reproductive freedom. In 1918, sheran for U.S. Senate from Montana, but was unable to gain the Republican nomination.  In the 1920's and 30's she served as a citizen lobbyist, fighting for working people, and more specifically for women's and children's health.

She was a founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the founding Vice President of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She won a Congressional seat again in 1940.  Once agian, in her first year in office she voted against war.  This time she was the only Member of Congress to vote against World War II.  Her anti-war stance was so vilified that she didn't stand for re-election.

She dedicated the rest of her life to prevnting war and working for justice.

Some Rankin quotes:

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake"

"Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy."

“We're half the people; we should be half the Congress”

"As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else."

"There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense."

www.jrpc.org  Jeanette Rankin Peace Center

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Matilda Joslyn Gage, feminist and abolitionist was born on this date in 1826. Gage was a major force in the liberation of women and in the abolition of slavery, arguing that all people deserved freedom as natural rights.  Gage was one of the founders of the National Woman  Suffrage Association.

Although our country makes great professions in regard to general liberty, yet the right to particular liberty, natural equality, and personal independence, of two great portions of this country, is treated, from custom, with the greatest contempt; and color in the one instance, and sex in the other, are brought as reasons why they should be so derided; and the mere mention of such, natural rights is frowned upon, as tending to promote sedition and anarchy…

We need not expect the concessions demanded by women will be peaceably granted; there will be a long moral warfare, before the citadel yields; in the meantime, let us take possession of the outposts.  The public must be aroused to a full sense of the justice of our claims.  Beside the duty of educating our children, so as to make the path of right, easy to their feet, is that of discussion, newspaper articles, petitions: all great reforms are gradual.  Fear not any attempt to frown down the revolution already commenced; nothing is a more fertile aid of reform, than an attempt to check it; work on.

“Work sows the seed:

Even the rock may yield its flower:
No lot so hard, but human power,
Exerted to one end and aim,
May conquer fate, and capture fame!
Press on!

Pause not in fear:
Preach no desponding, servile view---
What ever thou will’st thy WILL may do.

Work on, and win!
Shall light from nature’s depth arise,
And thou, who mind can grasp the skies,
Sit down with fate, and idly rail!--
No--ONWARD! Let the Truth prevail!”

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On this day is 1972, Congress sent the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution to the states for ratification. It failed, falling short of the three-fourths (38 states) approval needed.  The ERA would have given all Americans equal standing, regardless of gender.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to equal rights for men and women.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:
Article--
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This article shall take effect 2 years after the date of ratification.

The ERA is not dead.  It has been introduced in both chambers of Congress.  For more information, go to:

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/

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