#OnThisDay, 2 Apr 1917, Jeanette Rankin is sworn in, becoming the first woman to sit in the US Congress.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

@CarveHerName republican

@MBEverding I think you might be outside the US, so I wanted to add some context: while the US political establishment has never truly been liberal, the Republican party used to be more liberal than the Democrats. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The parties began to switch roles at the end of our Civil War and completed their switch during the Great Depression, although Republicans started accelerating right during the Civil Rights Era.

Rough summary:

https://www.studentsofhistory.com/ideologies-flip-Democratic-Republican-parties

@CarveHerName

The Great Switch: How Republicans and Democrats Flipped Ideologies

An overview of the realignment of the Republican Party and Democratic Party and how they flipped ideologies of liberal and conservative over the course of US History.

@ProcessParsnip @CarveHerName ah thanks for the article it clarified when they switched
@MBEverding @ProcessParsnip Yep. We have plenty of women elected as Dems who had deeply reactionary ideas about race including eugenicists.

@CarveHerName Yeah, and a ton of white first wave feminists were eugenicists too. It's wild to me how even now, 100 years after white US women got the vote, people are still talking about abandoning our Black allies like it was just the way it had to be.
Kids. We're supposed to *learn* from mistakes, not keep making the same ones.

@MBEverding