Here is a beautifully written article on the late Rep. Shirley Chisholm, who ran for the presidency in 1972.
Before Barack, before Clinton. . . .there was Shirley. Shirley was even the first black woman elected to Congress. (Now, how many people know that about her?)
Let no one ever forget the path that Shirley blazed. She was a black woman who lived in the 20TH Century—–and dared to be herself.
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February 27, 2008 5:19 p.m. PT
SAN ANTONIO — History is always in a hurry to see and do things that have never before been seen and done. But even in its insatiable quest for uncharted territory, history understands the importance of looking back and preserving the memory and accomplishments of those who gave it momentum.
This fall, for the first time in the American saga, either an African-American or a woman will be on the ballot as one of the two major-party nominees for president. Even the loser of the race for the Democratic nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will have broken new ground and earned a page or two in history books.
But before Hillary and Barack in 2008, there was Shirley in 1972.
Thirty-six years ago, U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and the first black person to seek a major party’s presidential nomination.
When she made her announcement on Jan. 25, 1972, she was already a historic figure by virtue of her 1968 election to the House, representing Brooklyn’s 12th Congressional District.
It was an election that made her the first black woman elected to Congress.
Her campaign slogan, and the title of her first book, was “Unbought and Unbossed,” and her sense of who she was became evident when, after being sworn in, she told The Washington Post, “I am an historical person at this point, and I’m very much aware of it.”
Chisholm also wasted little time in displaying her outspokenness and fearlessness when she challenged the House’s seniority system after being placed on the Agriculture Committee, a slot that did little for her urban district. She demanded reassignment and was given a seat on the Veteran Affairs Committee.
The daughter of a father from what was then British Guiana and a mother from Barbados, Chisholm’s pride in her gender and ethnicity were evident as she became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Organization for Women.
Her independence was reflected in her support of a white congressman, Hale Boggs, for majority leader over John Conyers, who was black.
Chisholm’s decision to run for president wasn’t met with the celebratory enthusiasm that has showered the campaigns of Clinton and Obama. Shunned by the political establishment, including most of her black male colleagues, Chisholm embarked on a heroic and idealistic campaign of inclusion that showcased her intellect, passion, wit and considerable oratorical skills.
George McGovern won the nomination, but Chisholm went on to the Democratic National Convention in Miami, winning 152 delegates.
Chisholm was an unabashed liberal who advocated for the rights of women and people of color and was a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War. But the essence of her character was revealed when one of her opponents for the Democratic nomination, race-baiting Alabama Gov. George Wallace, was the victim of an assassination attempt in Maryland, an attack that would leave him paralyzed from the waist down.
Chisholm visited him in the hospital and was criticized in the black community. She says that when Wallace saw her, he asked, “What are your people going to say?” Her answer to him was, “I know what they’re going to say. But I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.” Wallace cried.
In her book “The Good Fight,” Chisholm explained why she ran for president. “I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo,” she wrote. “The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is ‘not ready’ to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start.”
Chisholm died on New Year’s Day 2005 at the age of 80. That year, filmmaker Shola Lynch released a remarkable documentary on her campaign called “Chisholm 72: Unbought and Unbossed.” In it, Chisholm says she didn’t want to be remembered only for being the first black congresswoman or the first woman and black to seek a major party’s presidential nomination.
She said, “I want to be remembered as a woman who fought for change in the 20th century. That’s what I want.”
Shirley, you got it.
Cary Clack writes for the San Antonio Express-News; cclack@express-news.net
Congressman Edlophus Towns (left) and his wife, Gwen Towns (right) pose with former U.S.Rep. Congresswoman and Brooklyn native, Shirley Chisholm (center)
RELATED LINKS:
- Biography by Jone Johnson Lewis
- Shirley Chisholm at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Chisholm speech on the Equal Rights Amendment
- Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 Presidential Campaign
- Shirley Chisholm biography and video interview excerpts by The National Visionary Leadership Project
- Chisholm ’72 – Unbought & Unbossed by Shola Lynch
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I wrote of Shirley’s run for the presidency in 1972, here:
Shirley, Obama and Clinton owe you a debt they can never repay. You fought the good fight, Shirley, and in the end, you remained unbought, and unbossed.
Rest in Peace, Shirley. Rest in Peace.
SALUTARE.
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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm
“For the Equal Rights Amendment“
delivered 10 Aug 1970, Washington, DC
Mr. Speaker, House Joint Resolution 264, before us today, which provides for equality under the law for both men and women, represents one of the most clear-cut opportunities we are likely to have to declare our faith in the principles that shaped our Constitution. It provides a legal basis for attack on the most subtle, most pervasive, and most institutionalized form of prejudice that exists. Discrimination against women, solely on the basis of their sex, is so widespread that is seems to many persons normal, natural and right.
Legal expression of prejudice on the grounds of religious or political belief has become a minor problem in our society. Prejudice on the basis of race is, at least, under systematic attack. Their is reason for optimism that it will start to die with the present, older generation. It is time we act to assure full equality of opportunity to those citizens who, although in a majority, suffer the restrictions that are commonly imposed on minorities, to women.
The argument that this amendment will not solve the problem of sex discrimination is not relevant. If the argument were used against a civil rights bill, as it has been used in the past, the prejudice that lies behind it would be embarrassing. Of course laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws — to perpetuate injustice through inaction.
The amendment is necessary to clarify countless ambiguities and inconsistencies in our legal system. For instance, the Constitution guarantees due process of law, in the 5th and 14th amendments. But the applicability of due process of sex distinctions is not clear.
Women are excluded from some State colleges and universities. In some States, restrictions are placed on a married woman who engages in an independent business. Women may not be chosen for some juries. Women even receive heavier criminal penalties than men who commit the same crime. What would the legal effects of the equal rights amendment really be? The equal rights amendment would govern only the relationship between the State and its citizens — not relationships between private citizens. The amendment would be largely self-executing, that is, and Federal or State laws in conflict would be ineffective one year after date of ratification without further action by the Congress or State legislatures.
Opponents of the amendment claim its ratification would throw the law into a state of confusion and would result in much litigation to establish its meaning. This objection overlooks the influence of legislative history in determining intent and the recent activities of many groups preparing for legislative changes in this direction.
State labor laws applying only to women, such as those limiting hours of work and weights to be lifted would become inoperative unless the legislature amended them to apply to men. As of early 1970 most States would have some laws that would be affected. However, changes are being made so rapidly as a result of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is likely that by the time the equal rights amendment would become effective; no confliction State laws would remain.
In any event, there has for years been great controversy as to the usefulness to women of these State labor laws. There has never been any doubt that they worked a hardship on women who need or want to work overtime and on women who need or want better paying jobs, and there has been no persuasive evidence as to how many women benefit from the archaic policy of the laws. After the Delaware hours law was repealed in 1966, there were no complaints from women to any of the State agencies that might have been approached.
Jury service laws not making women equally liable for jury service would have been revised. The selective service law would have to include women, but women would not be required to serve in the Armed Forces where they are not fitted any more than men are required to serve. Military service, while a great responsibility, is not without benefits, particularly for young men with limited education or training.
Since October 1966, 246,000 young men who did not meet the normal mental or physical requirements have been given opportunities for training and correcting physical problems. This opportunity is not open to their sisters. Only girls who have completed high school and meet high standards on the educational test can volunteer. Ratification of the amendment would not permit application of higher standards to women.
Survivorship benefits would be available to husbands of female workers on the same basis as to wives of male workers. The Social Security Act and the civil service and military service retirement acts are in conflict. Public schools and universities could not be limited to one sex and could not apply different admission standards to men and women. Laws requiring longer prison sentences for women than men would be invalid, and equal opportunities for rehabilitation and vocational training would have to be provided in public correctional institutions. Different ages of majority based on sex would have to be harmonized. Federal, State, and other governmental bodies would be obligated to follow nondiscriminatory practices in all aspects of employment, including public school teachers and State university and college faculties.
What would be the economic effects of the equal rights amendment? Direct economic effects would be minor. If any labor laws applying only to women still remained, their amendment or repeal would provide opportunity for women in better-paying jobs in manufacturing. More opportunities in public vocational and graduate schools for women would also tend to open up opportunities in better jobs for women.
Indirect effects could be much greater. The focusing of public attention on the gross legal, economic, and social discrimination against women by hearings and debates in the Federal and State legislatures would result in changes in attitude of parents, educators, and employers that would bring about substantial economic changes in the long run.
Sex prejudice cuts both ways. Men are oppressed by the requirements of the Selective Service Act, by enforced legal guardianship of minors, and by alimony laws. Each sex, I believe, should be liable when necessary to serve and defend this country. Each has a responsibility for the support of children.
There are objections raised to wiping out laws protecting women workers. No one would condone exploitation. But what does sex have to do with it. Working conditions and hours that are harmful to women are harmful to men; wages that are unfair for women are unfair for men. Laws setting employment limitations on the basis of sex are irrational, and the proof of this is their inconsistency from State to State. The physical characteristics of men and women are not fixed, but cover two wide spans that have a great deal of overlap. It is obvious, I think, that a robust woman could be more fit for physical labor than a weak man.
The choice of occupation would be determined by individual capabilities, and the rewards for equal works should be equal.
This is what it comes down to: artificial distinctions between persons must be wiped out of the law. Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of society and the pre-scientific beliefs about psychology and physiology. It is time to sweep away these relics of the past and set further generations free of them.
Federal agencies and institutions responsible for the enforcement of equal opportunity laws need the authority of a Constitutional amendment. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1963 Equal Pay Act are not enough; they are limited in their coverage — for instance, one excludes teachers, and the other leaves out administrative and professional women. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has not proven to be an adequate device, with its power limited to investigation, conciliation, and recommendation to the Justice Department. In its cases involving sexual discrimination, it has failed in more than one-half. The Justice Department has been even less effective. It has intervened in only one case involving discrimination on the basis of sex, and this was on a procedural point. In a second case, in which both sexual and racial discrimination were alleged, the racial bias charge was given far greater weight.
Evidence of discrimination on the basis of sex should hardly have to be cited here. It is in the Labor Department’s employment and salary figures for anyone who is still in doubt. Its elimination will involve so many changes in our State and Federal laws that, without the authority and impetus of this proposed amendment, it will perhaps take another 194 years.
We cannot be parties to continuing a delay. The time is clearly now to put this House on record for the fullest expression of that equality of opportunity which our founding fathers professed. They professed it, but they did not assure it to their daughters, as they tried to do for their sons.
The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers — a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.
In closing I would like to make one point. Social and psychological effects will be initially more important than legal or economic results. As Leo Kanowitz has pointed out:
“Rules of law that treat of the sexes per see inevitably produce far-reaching effects upon social, psychological and economic aspects of male-female relations beyond the limited confines of legislative chambers and courtrooms. As long as organized legal systems, at once the most respected and most feared of social institutions, continue to differentiate sharply, in treatment or in words, between men and women on the basis of irrelevant and artificially created distinctions, the likelihood of men and women coming to regard one another primarily as fellow human beings and only secondarily as representatives of another sex will continue to be remote. When men and women are prevented from recognizing one another’s essential humanity by sexual prejudices, nourished by legal as well as social institutions, society as a whole remains less than it could otherwise become.”
Selected Shirley Chisholm Quotations
• I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free.
• I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to be herself.
• Of my two “handicaps” being female put more obstacles in my path than being black.
• I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being black.
• My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.
• Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.
• We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically.
• In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing – antihumanism.
• My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn’t always discuss for reasons of political expediency.
• The United States was said not to be ready to elect a Catholic to the Presidency when Al Smith ran in the 1920’s. But Smith’s nomination may have helped pave the way for the successful campaign John F. Kennedy waged in 1960. Who can tell? What I hope most is that now there will be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male.
• At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
• I am, was, and always will be a catalyst for change.
• There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.
• One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she’s probably a lesbian.
• … rhetoric never won a revolution yet.
• Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double pay scales and the classification of most of the better jobs as “for men only.” (1969)
• Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.
• Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth. (attributed — also attributed to Marian Wright Edelman)
• I am not antiwhite, because I understand that white people, like black ones, are victims of a racist society. They are products of their time and place.
• The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It’s a girl.
• When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses.
• It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.
At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time… its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.
I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.
Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.
The liberals in the House strongly resemble liberals I have known through the last two decades in the civil rights conflict. When it comes time to show on which side they will be counted, they excuse themselves.
When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.
You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 
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