Shirley Chisholm still wins

A Ironic power Stare at the photo and breathe a sigh of relief because nothing is changing in American life: A black woman, running for president, standing in front of a crowd with a determined look on her face, atop a poster extolling a woman’s right to choose abortion. It read in part, “Defending the right.” This black-and-white photo is from 1972. It hangs in an exhibit at the New York City Museum about Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to seek the nomination of a major party.

The idealist, no matter how beleaguered, might see an image that embodies what it takes to make a difference in American life. Unlike this year, when Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was competing closely with former President Donald Trump, no one at the time had any hope that Chisholm, the first Black woman to serve in Congress, would have a chance at winning the election. The Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency. She didn’t even do that. Instead, she saw herself, in her words, as a “catalyst,” pushing against sexism and racism to expand Americans’ idea of ​​what is fair and what should be possible. “I ran because someone had to do it first,” Chisholm wrote in her account of the campaign.

She lost that race, but more than half a century later, she’s still making progress in the race she truly cared about. “It opened a gateway for many to follow,” says Yvette Clarke, a congresswoman whose district in Brooklyn, New York, includes part of Chisholm’s old district, and who, as a 7-year-old, remembers the excitement in her home. Chisholm nomination. Ms Clarke adds: “If she had not had the courage to fight the battle, who knows when we would have reached this day.” A documentary about Chisholm from 2004 captures her philosophy and ferocity. “Don’t forget to study hard,” she tells a group of black children. “I’m paving the way for you. So don’t disappoint me.” In 2019, Ms Harris told… Greo, News website, that she stood on Chisholm’s shoulders, and that her example taught us that “you claim this platform as your own. You don’t ask for anyone’s permission.”

Harris did not emphasize the precedent-setting nature of her nomination, emphasizing the needs of Americans rather than her (and their) opportunity to make history. Chisholm, who died in 2005, had no other choice. “I’ve thrown a new hat — rather a bonnet — into the Democratic presidential race today,” Walter Cronkite said. CBS When she announced she was running. For her part, Chisholm said that she is “the American people’s candidate.”

Like Ms. Harris, whose father is from Jamaica, Chisholm, born in Brooklyn 100 years ago next month, has Caribbean roots. Her mother was a native of Barbados and her father was from British Guiana. He worked as an unskilled laborer and she as a seamstress, and in order to save enough to house and educate their growing family, they sent Shirley and her two sisters to Barbados in 1928 to live with the family for seven years. Chisholm attributed her success in part to the rigorous British education she received there. It also made her accept the idea of ​​black people in power, and was probably the reason behind her vulgar public speaking style, her habit of speaking about herself in the third person, and although she did not weigh more than a hundred pounds, her intimidating manner frightened her. ,bear my king. Gloria Steinem’s ally once said her decision to wear a dress instead of blue jeans at the first press conference of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), which Chisholm co-founded, was “entirely because of Shirley Chisholm,” whom she was always afraid of.

Chisholm graduated from Brooklyn College and became a nursery school teacher, then a nursery school principal. She became involved in Democratic politics, dominated by white men and Irish-Americans in Brooklyn, and eventually helped found a rebel group to elect black candidates. In 1964, she became the second black woman elected to the New York State Assembly, and then, in 1968, the first woman elected to Congress. Her legislative experience turned Chisholm into a “hardliner” who saw American politics as a “beautiful sham.” She concluded that political organizations protect the powerful, and whether white or black, male or female (the alternatives were slim), politicians put their party first.

Don’t call me “sure”

She wrote in her memoir, which bears a title after her slogan, “Of the two ‘obstacles’ I face, being female puts many more obstacles in my way than being black.” She saw America as “racist all the way,” where a mere “accident of pigmentation” carried terrible weight. “I can sometimes feel within myself the rage that just wants to destroy everything in its path,” she wrote. However, she believed that the American system was so flexible that there were almost no limits to its possibility of reform. “I love America not for what it is, but for what it can become,” she wrote in her book The Good Fight. In her era, the reverberations of which seem to grow louder even as they recede within living memory, young Americans—newly aware of racial inequality, concerned about the economic disruption caused by new technology, and radicalized by war abroad—seemed disillusioned with In the elderly – so confident. To demand profound change, even as they grow older. That’s what I thought, anyway.

The Democratic field was crowded with white men, from stalwart liberals like Hubert Humphrey to segregationist George Wallace. Chisholm ran a modest campaign that relied almost entirely on volunteers. After she was excluded from the discussion, she obtained a court order to give her equal time on television. She beat out several serious contenders, and although she received 152 delegates, it was not enough to extract the political commitments she had hoped for from candidate George McGovern. Most of the male Congressional Black Caucus chose not to support her, even NWPC He abandoned her in favor of McGovern, although in the end he did not introduce the abortion rights provision they wanted in the party platform. This struggle will continue in the future as well. ■

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