Author Explores Complicated Life of Jeannette Rankin
Author: mt43news staff reporter
MT43 News Staff Reporter
At a Lewis and Clark Library book signing event in Helena one Sunday, author Lorissa Rinehart engaged a group of 40 book readers in little-known facts about the first woman in Congress, Jeannette Rankin.
In the book cover insert, Rinehart explains Rankin was born on a ranch near Hamilton, Montana. She knew how to ride a horse, make a fire and read the sky for weather – all skills women knew in the late 1880s when Rankin was growing up. Rankin fought for women’s right to vote in the Suffragette movement of the early 20th Century, but her political life centered around her vision as a pacifist. She was the only person in Congress to vote against both the First World War and World War II. Rankin was a peace activist, a workers’ rights activist and a champion of democratic reform, including everyone’s right to vote. She was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1917 and again in 1941.
When the author began taking questions from the audience, she was delighted and surprised to learn how many people in the audience had personal connections to Jeannette and the Rankin family, including Jeannette's brother Wellington D. Rankin. The Rankin family had several pieces of property in Broadwater County. One particularly well-known ranch house is at the base of Avalanche Gulch and is now protected as a National Historic Register site.
Other connections included people who knew Belle Weinstein, Jeannette Rankin’s campaign manager and a good friend. Contemporaries of Rankin, Weinstein and her sister Freda Fligleman were very active politically in Helena in the mid-1950s and 60s. Their family owned Fligleman’s Department Store on Last Chance Gulch.
Jeannette Rankin’s brother, Wellington, married a Meagher County woman, Louise Galt. His estate passed on to the Galt brothers of White Sulphur Springs and Broadwater County.
Rinehart’s new book is “Winning the Earthquake,” a reference to a quote from Rankin who explained her pacifist standing: “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”
The book is available at the School and Community Library for those interested in checking it out.
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Image 1 Caption: Larissa Rinehart, author of "Winning an Earthquake", at her book signing at the Lewis and Clark Library in Helena.
MT43 News Photo
