The updated Jeannette Rankin biography, by Kevin S. Giles, starts with her participation in a peace protest at the US Capitol in 1968. She’s was one of America’s best-known pacifists.
(This is selected from the first chapter of One Woman Against War: The Jeannette Rankin Story. A second selection will appear next week. © Kevin S. Giles)
By Kevin S. Giles
It wasn’t a convenient morning. Snow had fallen overnight, filling the streets surrounding the United States Capitol with slush and mud. Several thousand women wearing boots and overcoats gathered around an old woman in the gray light outside Union Station. She stood shivering, hardly resembling a historical figure, at first appearing long past her prime. Eyeglasses loomed over her wrinkled face. The old woman watched the milling crowd while organizers called activists into place, state by state, and handed them protest banners. They would march on the Capitol to protest the war in Vietnam. They would decry the slaughter of young men, profiteering by corporations with fat defense contracts, congressional neglect of social and economic needs at home. They would take to the streets to beseech their government to listen to their grievances. They wanted change. They wanted peace. It all seemed hauntingly familiar to this diminutive octogenarian named Jeannette Rankin.