A Single Woman discover America's real First Lady

A powerful, dramatic and timely play about the funny, brilliant, warm, irascible, scrappy woman who voted against both World Wars - in Congress. The WWI vote landed on her in her first 6 days in 1917. The first vote was taken on Good Friday, "the anniversary of the most notorious murder in history," as Jeannette Rankin pointed out while she tried to delay the vote in order to get people to be more discerning. Working with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in Europe, Jeannette railed against the Treaty of Versailles as it would "create a monster" by punishing Germany. In the US, she led a Peace Parade at the Republican convention in Chicago in 1932 with the National Congress of Jewish Women and church groups, and recent Nobel Peace prize-winner Jane Addams. They were calling for Peace Planks to outlaw war forever (urging Democrats to do the same). As founding Vice President of the ACLU, she urged President Roosevelt to rescue Jews/religious and political prisoners from Europe in 1933 and onwards. The ACLU effort was shamefully rebuffed. A major suffragist since 1910, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman in Congress, voted in from Montana in 1916, four years before women even had the vote nationally (1920). In fact, she was the first woman elected to the legislature of any western democracy. Jeannette Rankin fought for equal pay and an 8-hour day for women, child labor laws, the rights of Native and African Americans, and rights of immigrants, including the first bill for immigrant women's rights to citizenship independent of their husbands. Gerrymandered out of her district in Montana, she lived in her own dirt floor house and worked in Georgia among poor people for a system of direct representation in presidential elections. During those decades she devised a multi-candidate system for a broader spectrum of Congressional representation. After fighting against the Korean War in her 70s, at 88 she led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade of 5000 women on the US Capitol against the Vietnam war and demanded unilateral disarmament, nuclear and otherwise. She spoke out against the corporate take-over of America. She left funds in her will for educational aid for poor women over the age of 35. In A Single Woman, the reader bears witness as Rankin is reviled by the public and flirted with by heads of government. "Although coming from a very WASP state, Montana, Jeannette made it a practice to sit next to Blacks or Jews attending suffrage meetings to counteract prejudice in the suffrage movement. She was also strongly pro-labor. I've been going to plays for 70 years, in NYC, here (SF Bay Area), London, and Moscow. Jeanmarie Simpson ranks with the best I've seen anywhere." Bill Mandel, 37 year KPFA Commentator. Leonard Nimoy introduced the play when it was performed at North Tahoe Hebrew Congregation to 200 people. Tens of thousands have seen the play in theatres, meeting halls and living rooms throughout the world.