U.S. Congress Archives - PopHistory.org

Jeannette Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress, assumes office

Year: 1917

Month Day: April 02

Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, takes her seat in the U.S. Capitol as a representative from Montana.

Born on a ranch near Missoula, Montana Territory, in 1880, Rankin was a social worker in the states of Montana and Washington before joining the women’s suffrage movement in 1910. Working with various suffrage groups, she campaigned for the women’s vote on a national level and in 1914 was instrumental in the passage of suffrage legislation in Montana. Two years later, she successfully ran for Congress in Montana on a progressive Republican platform calling for total women’s suffrage, legislation protecting children, and U.S. neutrality in the European war. Following her election as a representative, Rankin’s entrance into Congress was delayed for a month as congressmen discussed whether a woman should be admitted into the House of Representatives.

Finally, on April 2, 1917, she was introduced in Congress as its first female member. The same day, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress and urged a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate voted for war by a wide majority, and on April 6 the vote went to the House. Citing public opinion in Montana and her own pacifist beliefs, Jeannette Rankin was one of only 50 representatives who voted against the American declaration of war. For the remainder of her first term in Congress, she sponsored legislation to aid women and children, and advocated the passage of a federal suffrage amendment.

In 1918, Rankin unsuccessfully ran for a Senate seat, and in 1919 she left Congress to become an important figure in a number of suffrage and pacifist organizations. In 1940, with the U.S. entrance into another world war imminent, she was again elected as a pacifist representative from Montana and, after assuming office, argued vehemently against President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war preparations. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the next day, at Roosevelt’s urging, Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan. Representative Rankin cast the sole dissenting vote. This action created a furor and Rankin declined to seek reelection. After leaving office in 1943, Rankin continued to be an important spokesperson for pacifism and social reform. In 1967, she organized the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, an organization that staged a number of highly publicized protests against the Vietnam War. She died in 1973 at the age of 93.

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Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords injured in shooting rampage

Updated:: Jan 6, 2020
Original:: Dec 5, 2011

Year: 2011

Month Day: January 08

On January 8, 2011, Gabrielle Giffords, a U.S. congresswoman from Arizona, is critically injured when a man goes on a shooting spree during a constituents meeting held by the congresswoman outside a Tucson-area supermarket. Six people died in the attack and another 13, including Giffords, were wounded. The gunman, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was taken into custody at the scene.

Giffords, an Arizona native and Democrat who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006, arrived at the Casas Adobes Safeway store at 10 a.m. on January 8 to host a Congress at Your Corner event. The popular politician, just the third woman from Arizona ever elected to Congress, sat outside at a table, speaking with constituents who had lined up to see her. Ten minutes later, Loughner, an Arizona resident, approached the 40-year-old Giffords and shot her at point-blank range with a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol. He then opened fire on the people standing in line. A short time later, while Loughner attempted to reload his gun, bystanders tackled him and held him until police arrived. Giffords, who was hit with a bullet that fractured her skull and pierced the left side of her brain, was transported to a Tucson hospital. Some early news reports claimed she had not survived the shooting.

Investigators soon discovered evidence at Loughner’s home indicating he had targeted the congresswoman in an assassination plot, and that he had a history of posting anti-government rants on the Internet. It also came to light that in the fall of 2010 Loughner was informed by officials at Tucson’s Pima Community College, where he was a student, that after exhibiting disruptive, bizarre behavior in classes and in the library he would not be allowed to return to school until he got a mental-health clearance. Rather than complying, Loughner dropped out of college.

On January 12, 2011, President Barack Obama spoke at a large public memorial service in Tucson for the victims of the shooting spree. Among the dead were a 9-year-old girl, a 63-year-old federal judge and a 30-year-old member of Giffords’ staff. Later that month, Giffords was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital in Houston, Texas, where she would relearn how to walk and talk. Also in late January, Loughner pleaded not guilty to a series of federal charges against him, including the attempted assassination of a congressional member. In March, he pleaded not guilty to an additional 49 counts stemming from the shootings.

That May, Giffords traveled from the hospital in Houston to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch the launch of the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour, commanded by her husband, astronaut Mark Kelley. The following month, the congresswoman was released from the rehab hospital and began outpatient treatment. On August 1, she made a surprise return to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since she was shot, in order to vote in favor of passing a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

In November 2011, Giffords and her husband released a memoir, “Gabby: A Story of Hope and Courage.” To coincide with the book’s launch, Giffords gave her first television interview since the shooting. During the interview, the congresswoman appeared upbeat but had difficulty forming complete sentences. On January 25, 2012, Giffords resigned from Congress in order to concentrate on her continuing recovery. In August of that same year, Loughner pleaded guilty to 19 of the crimes he was charged with, including killing six people. As part of the plea agreement, federal prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against him. On November 8, 2012, Loughner was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

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Bill of Rights passes Congress

Year: 1789

Month Day: September 25

The first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.

Influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Bill of Rights was also drawn from Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason in 1776. Mason, a native Virginian, was a lifelong champion of individual liberties, and in 1787 he attended the Constitutional Convention and criticized the final document for lacking constitutional protection of basic political rights. In the ratification process that followed, Mason and other critics agreed to approve the Constitution in exchange for the assurance that amendments would immediately be adopted.

In December 1791, Virginia became the 10th of 14 states to approve 10 of the 12 amendments, thus giving the Bill of Rights the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it legal. Of the two amendments not ratified, the first concerned the population system of representation, while the second prohibited laws varying the payment of congressional members from taking effect until an election intervened. The first of these two amendments was never ratified, while the second was finally ratified more than 200 years later, in 1992.

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Sex scandal leads to political fallout for Arkansas congressman

Updated:: Dec 9, 2019
Original:: Feb 9, 2010

Year: 1974

Month Day: December 10

Representative Wilbur D. Mills, a Democrat from Arkansas, resigns as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the aftermath of the first truly public sex scandal in American politics.

On October 7, 1974, at 2 a.m., Mills was stopped by park police while driving at night with his lights off. The 65-year-old representative, an influential congressman and married man, was visibly intoxicated, his face was scratched, and his companion, 38-year-old Annabell Battistella, had bruised eyes. Battistella then proceeded to jump into the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial and had to be pulled out by the police. She was later identified as a popular stripper who went by the names “Fanne Foxe” and the “Argentine Firecracker.”

Congressmen had been involved in these types of improprieties before but the details were generally kept quiet, saving the politicians from public disgrace. However, on this occasion, the story of Representative Mills’ sordid affair with the stripper was heavily publicized. At first, Mills denied all the allegations but later admitted he had joined a party Battistella was present at after “a few refreshments.” Mills was subsequently reelected to Congress, but because of the escalating scandal, he was forced to retire his chairmanship and later announced that he would not run for reelection. He died in 1992.

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Presidential election goes to the House of Representatives

Year: 1824

Month Day: December 01

As no presidential candidate had received a majority of the total electoral votes in the election of 1824, Congress decides to turn over the presidential election to the House of Representatives, as dictated by the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In the November 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president. Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election. On December 1, 1824, the results were announced. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams—the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States—received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, received 41 electoral votes; and Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky won 37 electoral votes.

As dictated by the Constitution, the election was then turned over to the House of Representatives. The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House. Representative Henry Clay, who was disqualified from the House vote as a fourth-place candidate, agreed to use his influence to have John Quincy Adams elected. Clay and Adams were both members of a loose coalition in Congress that by 1828 became known as the National Republicans, while Jackson’s supporters were later organized into the Democratic Party.

Thanks to Clay’s backing, on February 9, 1825, the House elected Adams as president of the United States. When Adams then appointed Clay to the top cabinet post of secretary of state, Jackson and his supporters derided the appointment as the fulfillment of a corrupt agreement.

With little popular support, Adams’ time in the White House was largely ineffectual, and the so-called Corrupt Bargain haunted his administration. In 1828, he was defeated in his reelection bid by Andrew Jackson, who received more than twice as many electoral votes than Adams.

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Former U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond dies

Year: 2003

Month Day: June 26

Strom Thurmond, who served in the United States Senate for a record 46 years, dies on June 26, 2003. Thurmond’s long and controversial political career had ended with his retirement one year earlier.

Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina, where he also died. He graduated from what is now Clemson University in 1923 with a degree in horticulture and became a teacher and coach, and, later, a superintendent of schools. While working in education, he studied law at night, and passed the bar in 1930. He worked as an attorney and, eventually, a judge, before serving in WWII, where he participated in D-Day at Normandy with the Army’s 82nd Airborne division.

Thurmond’s political career began in 1946 when he became governor of South Carolina, a position he held for one term. As governor, as well as in the early part of his Congressional career, he was famously pro-segregation, even saying in a 1948 speech, “I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.” It was also in 1948 that Thurmond made his one and only run for the presidency, as the candidate of the Dixiecrat party, in protest of Harry Truman’s nomination by the Democratic Party, of which he was a member. He was easily defeated, but did win the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, and their combined 39 electoral votes.

In 1954, Thurmond ran for the United States Senate as a Democrat on a pro-segregation platform and became the only candidate ever elected to the Senate by a write-in vote. Three years into this first term, he notoriously staged a record-breaking one-man filibuster to defeat a civil rights bill that lasted more than 24 hours. Although it is unknown whether his personal beliefs regarding racial equality ever changed, his political behavior became more moderate in the 1970s, perhaps as part of an effort to extend his political career in changing times. This change of heart, whether genuine or not, was exemplified by his endorsement of a renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and his vote in favor of creating the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday in 1983.

Throughout his career Thurmond was by any account a divisive force in American politics. His critics thought him to be an unabashed racist and condemned his alleged habit of skirt-chasing. Thurmond was married twice, the second time when he was 66 years old to a 22-year-old former Miss South Carolina, but also had a reputation for making frequent advances on a wide variety of women who crossed his path. His fans, however, seemed amused by his reputation as a “rascal” and admired his feistiness and personal discipline–Thurmond never smoked or drank coffee and only rarely indulged in alcohol–as well as his personal strength. Even in his 90s when his health began to fail, Thurmond refused to use a wheelchair or hearing aid in public. He was well known for personally helping out his constituents on a regular basis.

Thurmond retired from the Senate in 2002 and died about a year later in his South Carolina home. In December 2003, Essie Mae Washington-Williams announced that she was his illegitimate daughter, born to Thurmond and her mother Carrie Butler, a black maid who had worked in his family’s home. Thurmond was 22 when she was born; Butler was only 16. Although he never publicly acknowledged her while he was alive, a representative for his family did confirm Washington-Williams’ statement and it was reported that the two had a relatively close relationship.

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Equal Rights Amendment passed by Congress

Year: 1972

Month Day: March 22

On March 22, 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment is passed by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states for ratification.

First proposed by the National Woman’s political party in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was to provide for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. More than four decades later, the revival of feminism in the late 1960s spurred its introduction into Congress. Under the leadership of U.S. Representative Bella Abzug of New York and feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, it won the requisite two-thirds vote from the U.S. House of Representatives in October 1971. In March 1972, it was approved by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states.

Hawaii was the first state to ratify what would have been the 27th Amendment, followed by some 30 other states within a year. However, during the mid-1970s, a conservative backlash against feminism eroded support for the Equal Rights Amendment, which ultimately failed to achieve ratification by the a requisite 38, or three-fourths, of the states.

Because of the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment, sexual equality, with the notable exception of when it pertains to the right to vote, is not protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, in the late 20th century, the federal government and all states have passed considerable legislation protecting the legal rights of women. The Equal Rights Amendment, in its most recently proposed form, reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”

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Congress passes the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote

Year: 1919

Month Day: June 04

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

The women’s suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 240 woman suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York, to assert the right of women to vote. Female enfranchisement was still largely opposed by most Americans, and the distraction of the North-South conflict and subsequent Civil War precluded further discussion. During the Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting African American men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated Congress failed to expand its progressive radicalism into the sphere of gender.

In 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was formed to push for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone, was organized in the same year to work through the state legislatures. In 1890, these two societies were united as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. That year, Wyoming became the first state to grant women the right to vote.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the role of women in American society was changing drastically; women were working more, receiving a better education, bearing fewer children, and several states had authorized female suffrage. In 1913, the National Woman’s party organized the voting power of these enfranchised women to elect congressional representatives who supported woman suffrage, and by 1916 both the Democratic and Republican parties openly endorsed female enfranchisement. In 1919, the 19th Amendment, which stated that “the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” passed both houses of Congress and was sent to the states for ratification. Eight days later, the 19th Amendment took effect.

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Republican Party wins control of Congress for first time in 40 years

Updated:: Jan 2, 2020
Original:: Feb 9, 2010

Year: 1995

Month Day: January 04

The 104th Congress becomes the first held entirely under Republican control since the Eisenhower era. Thanks to Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America,” the Republican Party won majority control of Congress for the first time in forty years.

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Congress adopts the Stars and Stripes

Year: 1777

Month Day: June 14

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress adopts a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” The national flag, which became known as the “Stars and Stripes,” was based on the “Grand Union” flag, a banner carried by the Continental Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white stripes. According to legend, Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross designed the new canton for the Stars and Stripes, which consisted of a circle of 13 stars and a blue background, at the request of General George Washington. Historians have been unable to conclusively prove or disprove this legend.

With the entrance of new states into the United States after independence, new stripes and stars were added to represent new additions to the Union. In 1818, however, Congress enacted a law stipulating that the 13 original stripes be restored and that only stars be added to represent new states.

On June 14, 1877, the first Flag Day observance was held on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes. As instructed by Congress, the U.S. flag was flown from all public buildings across the country. In the years after the first Flag Day, several states continued to observe the anniversary, and in 1949 Congress officially designated June 14 as Flag Day, a national day of observance.

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