Winning the Earthquake: An Evening with Lorissa Rinehart

In partnership with The Jeannette Rankin Foundation, The Woman's City Club, and The Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation

The first major biography of the groundbreaking suffragist, activist, and first American woman to hold federal office.

“Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to a higher honor and loyalty.”
—President John F. Kennedy on Jeannette Rankin

Born on a Montana ranch in 1880, Jeannette Rankin knew how to ride a horse, make a fire, and read the sky for weather. But most of all, she knew how to talk to people and convince them of her vision for America. It was this rare skill that led her, in 1916, to become the first woman ever elected to the House of Representatives.

As her first act, Rankin introduced the legislation that would become the 19th Amendment. Throughout her two terms in 1916 and 1940, she continued to introduce and pass legislation benefitting unions, protecting workers, and increasing aid for children in poverty. In 1941, she stood tall as the sole anti-war voice in Congress during WWII, stating that you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

A suffragist, feminist, pacifist, and workers' rights advocate, Rankin remained ever true to her beliefs—no matter the price she had to pay personally. Yet, despite the momentous steps she made for women in politics, overcoming the boys club of career politicians who never wanted to see a woman in Congress, Jeannette Rankin’s story has been largely forgotten. In Winning the Earthquake, Lorissa Rinehart deftly uncovers the compelling history behind this singular American hero.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program
Free & open to the public. Registration required.

Copies of Winning the Earthquake will be available for sale & signing.

About Lorissa Rinehart

Cultural critic and historian LORISSA RINEHART writes about art, war, politics, and the places where these discourses intersect. Her writing has recently appeared in Hyperallergic, Perfect Strangers, and Narratively, among other publications. She holds an MA from NYU in Experimental Humanities and a BA in Literature from UC Santa Cruz.

About Kimberly Hamlin

Kimberly A. Hamlin is an award-winning historian, author, and professor specializing in the history of women, gender, and sex in the United States. Her most recent book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton 2020, paperback 2022) tells the fascinating story of the “fallen woman” who reinvented herself and became “the most potent factor” in Congressional passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the highest-ranking woman in federal government. Hamlin teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where she is now the Chamberlin Family Professor of History and the Chair of the History Department. Hamlin lives with her family in Cincinnati, Ohio where she serves on the Board of Directors of the Mercantile Library and on the Board of the League of Women Voters of the United States.