Illinois was one of the first states to have a woman serve in Congress, and that was in Winnifred Mason Huck, who succeeded her late father, William Mason. However, she was a placeholder. The first to be in for a full term was Ruth Hanna McCormick, the daughter of Republican bigwig Mark Hanna. However, her time in office was short as her effort to move up to the Senate in 1930 election proved a flop. The next woman was Jessie Sumner of Illinois. Sumner, a banker and an attorney, was a trailblazer in multiple ways, including being the first woman to study law at Oxford University and being the first to be a county judge in Illinois, having been elected in 1937 by a 2-1 margin even though her Democratic opponent’s slogan, “You don’t want a woman for your county judge!” (Kacich) 1938 was the first bad election year the Democrats had had in ten years, and Judge Sumner was one of the beneficiaries, retaking the typically Republican 18th district by over 10 points, which had once been represented by the legendary Speaker Joe Cannon. In her time in Congress, she would prove even more conservative than he was. As her niece recounted about her, “She had her own opinions and wasn’t afraid to stand up to anybody. She was a fiery little person” (Kacich).
Congresswoman Sumner
After Sumner was first elected to Congress, she was something of a sensation as journalists could not help but comment on her looks (she was pretty with blonde hair and blue eyes) and were eager to get her opinions because she possessed a sharp wit. When asked about President Roosevelt, she responded, “Don’t ask me to say anything about President Roosevelt. I came to bury Caesar, not to praise him” (Kacich). This was just one of what the press called her “Sumnerisms”. Others were, per Tom Kacich (2013):
“The conservatives are the ‘whys,’ the liberals are the ‘why-nots.” – On the difference between them.
“I’ll be turned out in white and look like another Washington Monument.” – On what she would wear to a Congressional reception.
Sumner’s record was mostly anti-New Deal in her first term and it was hard to find a stronger opponent of FDR’s foreign policy than her, who voted down the line against intervention in World War II. Her motivation for opposition to American involvement in World War II was, according to her niece, “She was in high school when World War I started. Her friends — the guys she played with because she would play baseball with the boys and jacks with the girls and whatever — it’s a small town she was coming from, they lost people in World War I. She thought it was terrible that these people would come home and they had lost an arm or a leg or they had gotten mustard gassed. That impressed her. I think it really got her and stayed with her the rest of her life” (Kacich).
In 1940, she was the first woman to be reelected to Congress from Illinois. Appropriately given her banking background, she was assigned on the House Banking and Currency Committee, where she was a staunch supporter of small businesses. Although staunchly conservative, Sumner wasn’t afraid of dissenting from her party on a few occasions; as a budget hawk she not only voted against high expenditures on domestic and foreign policy, she also voted against Republican-backed tax relief legislation in 1943 and did not back tax relief until voting to override President Roosevelt’s veto in 1944. Another area she dissented from her party on was civil rights. Although Sumner had voted for anti-lynching legislation in 1940 and a bill banning the poll tax in federal elections in 1942, she opposed anti-poll tax measures in 1943 and 1945, the difference being that these two measures covered primaries as well. She was among the most conservative legislators in her day, with her DW-Nominate score being a 0.544, and her record only seemed to get more conservative with time. Despite her being one of the more extreme opponents of the politically durable President Roosevelt, she was tremendously competent at getting her bills and amendments passed, with a record having only one of them fail by early 1943 (Times Herald). Some votes in which was among a small group of conservative dissenters included:
. On March 12, 1940, she was one of 37 representatives to vote against constructing additional naval vessels.
. On March 21, 1941, she was one of 55 representatives to vote against additional appropriations for Lend-Lease.
. On June 11, 1942, she was one of 52 representatives to vote against appropriations for work relief.
. On September 21, 1943, she was one of 29 representatives to vote against the Fulbright Resolution, which expressed Congressional support for the creation of the UN.
. On June 7, 1945, she was one of 18 representatives to vote against US participation in the US participation in the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
. On December 18, 1945, she was one of 15 representatives to vote against US participation in the UN.
. On February 6, 1946, she was one of 84 representatives to vote against the law establishing “maximum employment” as a goal of the federal government, or the maximum employment that can be achieved without spiking inflation.
. On March 7, 1946, she was one of 22 representatives to vote against a bill to address the postwar housing shortage.
. On April 18, 1946, she was one of 42 representatives to vote against extending price control, even though many limiting conservative amendments had been added.
. On May 23, 1946, she was one of 41 representatives to vote against US participation in UNESCO.
Although Sumner would certainly not have been able to run statewide, her constituency liked her well enough, and their farewell greeting to her was “give ‘em hell, Jessie” rather than “goodbye” (Times Herald). A change in president with the death of FDR didn’t mean a change in her mind, if anything, she was stronger against Truman. However, Sumner didn’t have much time to battle with Truman.
Retirement
In 1946, when it seemed she could have had more time in Congress, Sumner chose not to run for reelection. She officially stated, “I’ve been away from home long enough” while denying a rumor that she was leaving to get married, responding, “What – give up 500 men for one man?” (The Sunday News) However, there was a different reason according to her niece. Jessie Sumner believed that she was dying as a doctor had given her a cancer diagnosis (Kacich). She had surgery for it but doctors said no more could be done, so she went to get further treatment at the Battle Creek Sanitarium and resolved to keep herself healthy afterwards. Sumner did not die the next year, nor the year after that, nor the decade after that. She continued her career in banking, serving as the vice president of Sumner National Bank until 1966, when she assumed the presidency and served in that capacity until shortly before her death on August 10, 1994, at the age of 96.
References
Congress to Miss ‘Sumnerisms’. (1946, June 9). The Sunday News (Ridgewood, NJ), 12.
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/632803382/
Kacich, T. (2013, December 18). Tom Kacich: Sumner went from Iroquois County to Oxford to Washington. The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana).
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Sumner, Jessie. Voteview.
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https://voteview.com/person/9086/jessie-sumner
Two Blondes in New Congress, But They’re Poles Apart. (1943, January 12). Times-Herald, 2.
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Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 