What Would Shirley Chisholm Say?
Posted 01/20/2008 at 5:58 PM
By - Mark Anthony Neal
Vibe Magazine
"Hello Brooklyn!" I imagine that Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy, do or die...) native Shirley Chisholm might have said that when she addressed a crowd of hundreds, as she stood in front of a Brooklyn Church 36 years ago this January, to announce her candidacy for President of the United States. Ms. Chisholm, was the first black women elected to Congress in 1968 and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)--her announcement in January of 1972 was historic. That Ms. Chisholm is not more often recalled in our current political season is a reflection of a corporate media structure that possesses a criminally short memory (particularly in relation to black folk). Shirley Chisholm was a political maverick who held both the black political establishment and professional feminists accountable as she toiled on behalf of the poor, Black and Latino/a constituents that she represented for 14 years. I wonder what Ms. Chisholm, who died in 2005, would have said about the current debates about race and gender in the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
Shirley Chisholm was born Shirley St. Hill in Brooklyn in 1924 to Guyanese and Barbadian parents. Until her parents were more financially stable, Chisholm and her sisters were sent to Barbados to live with their grandmother; Chisholm returned to Brooklyn at age 10 and later earned a degree from Brooklyn College graduating cum laude. Important to Chisholm's later political views is the fact that her mother was a domestic worker, her father a union man and her early career was spent working in and around the child care profession. Chisholm never wavered politically in her concerns for workers, poor women, particularly mothers, and children. Ms. Chisholm's initial grassroots activism led her to like-minded activists in organizations like the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League (BSPL) and the Unity Democratic Club (UDC), both of which she helped to elect black candidates to local offices in New York State, including the State Assembly, which she herself was elected to in 1964.
Despite Chisholm's successful election to the New York State assembly in 1964, she was viewed with some with suspicion and derision, largely based on her gender and her Caribbean heritage. In a recent essay on Chisholm published in the Journal of African-American History, Julie Gallagher notes that "One male constituent sarcastically inquired whether [Chisholm] has fixed her husband's breakfast before campaigning." The New York Times suggests that there were "whispers" in relation to Chisholm's heritage. Though some of Chisholm's Brooklyn constituents might have felt that she was not "African-American" or "church" enough for their taste, such thinking was more likely related to the discomfort produced by the public presence of a self-assured, broadly focused and articulate black woman.
Chisholm's emergence as a national political figure occurs in an historical moment where black women were still largely viewed as incapable of fulfilling the expectations of the "race man." As such, Gallagher is right in stating that Chisholm "helped fashion ideas about African-American women in the public sphere by taking bold stands and encouraging the media attention." "Fighting Shirley Chisholm-- Unbought and Unbossed" was one of those bold statements and the one that she employed during her campaign to be elected to the US House of Representatives in 1968. Chisholm's candidacy bought to the forefront debates about gender within the black community as she found herself running against James Farmer, Jr. (yes, that James Farmer). Chisholm's subsequent victory, as Yvonne Bynoe suggests, "stomped on the idea that leadership was the sole prerogative of black men."
In the her first years in congress, Chisholm demanded the repeal of anti-abortion laws (this in the years before Roe v. Wade), supported the right for workers to unionize, introduced legislation to address urban poverty and was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War. That Chisholm found so little traction on these issues within congress, was, perhaps, the major stimulus for her decision to run for President in 1972. The idea of Chisholm's candidacy germinated with her involvement in the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) which she founded with prominent feminists Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem and follow New York congresswomen Bella Abzug. When Chisholm formally announced her candidacy on January 25, 1972, the expectation was that she could garner support from the black political establishment as well as feminist activists. Instead Chisholm was reminded of the perceived lack of political gravitas held by black women.
With the exception of the Black Panther Party, few major black institutions supported Chisholm's candidacy (and many of those institutions pressured Chisholm to renounce the Panthers' support). A telling aspect of Chisholm's candidacy with regards to the black political establishment is that when black leaders gathered in Gary, Indiana for the oft-celebrated National Black Political Convention, Chisholm wasn't invited to participate. There's little doubt that some distanced themselves from Chisholm because of her mercurial nature and the symbolic nature of her candidacy. It's hard to imagine though that the Gary gathering, which was in part premised buttressing the role of black patriarchy in formal political circles, would have ever closed ranks around Chisholm--particularly given her desire to remain "unbought and unbossed," even to the expectations of her race.
More telling about Chisholm's candidacy was the reaction of professional feminists like Freidan and Steinem (who never mentions her "friend" Chisholm is her recent New York Times op-ed), who while offering tepid acknowledgement of the importance of Chisholm's campaign, never forcefully came out in support of it. A few years later when Chisholm's congressional colleague Bella Abzug ran for the Senate against Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chisholm chose to support Moynihan. When asked about her decision, Chisholm responded "Where was Abzug when I ran for President? Why didn't reporters ask why a lot of women didn't support me for the Presidency?" Chisholm recounts the difficulties of her presidential campaign in her second memoir The Good Fight (1973). As Gallagher admits in her essay "Waging the 'Good Fight': the Political Career of Shirley Chisholm," politicians were "more willing to accommodate the status quo in exchange for gradual, but tangible victories for African Americans and women. Full endorsement of Chisholm's presidential campaign would have been a risky political move for mainstream civil rights and feminist organizations."
Chisholm's political career, which ended in 1982, resonates in the current political environment. Upon leaving congress in 1982, Chisholm, for example, chided black politicians for "always putting their eggs in one basket." As she told The New York Times in October of 1982, "[black politicians] are not politically sophisticated enough to understand the pragmatic reasons behind my moves." Chisholm's wisdom is echoed in the decision of some mainstream black leaders to lend support to both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, though the racial litmus test that some apply to Obama's candidacy bespeaks the lack of recognition of his political pragmatism.
Chisholm's political career is also reminder of the difficulties of managing race and gender in a society that rarely seeks to address sexism, racism and misogyny with the seriousness that it deserves. While NOW founder Steinem can weigh in on the side of gender, at the expense of race, and Clinton can legitimately celebrate the historic aspects of her campaign--the first woman candidate to win a primary--both could be more sensitive to the positions of the black women voters that they are so desperately trying to attract to Clinton's campaign. As Yvonne Bynoe argued at the time of Chisholm's death, the "prospects for white women...are distinguished from those of black women by the fact that there are several white female senators and governors in the pipeline, but not one black women similarly positioned." Bynoe's comments, like Chisholm's career in general, is a reminder of the claim that a group of black feminist made a generation ago--"All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave."
Shirley Chisholm was born Shirley St. Hill in Brooklyn in 1924 to Guyanese and Barbadian parents. Until her parents were more financially stable, Chisholm and her sisters were sent to Barbados to live with their grandmother; Chisholm returned to Brooklyn at age 10 and later earned a degree from Brooklyn College graduating cum laude. Important to Chisholm's later political views is the fact that her mother was a domestic worker, her father a union man and her early career was spent working in and around the child care profession. Chisholm never wavered politically in her concerns for workers, poor women, particularly mothers, and children. Ms. Chisholm's initial grassroots activism led her to like-minded activists in organizations like the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League (BSPL) and the Unity Democratic Club (UDC), both of which she helped to elect black candidates to local offices in New York State, including the State Assembly, which she herself was elected to in 1964.
Despite Chisholm's successful election to the New York State assembly in 1964, she was viewed with some with suspicion and derision, largely based on her gender and her Caribbean heritage. In a recent essay on Chisholm published in the Journal of African-American History, Julie Gallagher notes that "One male constituent sarcastically inquired whether [Chisholm] has fixed her husband's breakfast before campaigning." The New York Times suggests that there were "whispers" in relation to Chisholm's heritage. Though some of Chisholm's Brooklyn constituents might have felt that she was not "African-American" or "church" enough for their taste, such thinking was more likely related to the discomfort produced by the public presence of a self-assured, broadly focused and articulate black woman.
Chisholm's emergence as a national political figure occurs in an historical moment where black women were still largely viewed as incapable of fulfilling the expectations of the "race man." As such, Gallagher is right in stating that Chisholm "helped fashion ideas about African-American women in the public sphere by taking bold stands and encouraging the media attention." "Fighting Shirley Chisholm-- Unbought and Unbossed" was one of those bold statements and the one that she employed during her campaign to be elected to the US House of Representatives in 1968. Chisholm's candidacy bought to the forefront debates about gender within the black community as she found herself running against James Farmer, Jr. (yes, that James Farmer). Chisholm's subsequent victory, as Yvonne Bynoe suggests, "stomped on the idea that leadership was the sole prerogative of black men."
In the her first years in congress, Chisholm demanded the repeal of anti-abortion laws (this in the years before Roe v. Wade), supported the right for workers to unionize, introduced legislation to address urban poverty and was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War. That Chisholm found so little traction on these issues within congress, was, perhaps, the major stimulus for her decision to run for President in 1972. The idea of Chisholm's candidacy germinated with her involvement in the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) which she founded with prominent feminists Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem and follow New York congresswomen Bella Abzug. When Chisholm formally announced her candidacy on January 25, 1972, the expectation was that she could garner support from the black political establishment as well as feminist activists. Instead Chisholm was reminded of the perceived lack of political gravitas held by black women.
With the exception of the Black Panther Party, few major black institutions supported Chisholm's candidacy (and many of those institutions pressured Chisholm to renounce the Panthers' support). A telling aspect of Chisholm's candidacy with regards to the black political establishment is that when black leaders gathered in Gary, Indiana for the oft-celebrated National Black Political Convention, Chisholm wasn't invited to participate. There's little doubt that some distanced themselves from Chisholm because of her mercurial nature and the symbolic nature of her candidacy. It's hard to imagine though that the Gary gathering, which was in part premised buttressing the role of black patriarchy in formal political circles, would have ever closed ranks around Chisholm--particularly given her desire to remain "unbought and unbossed," even to the expectations of her race.
More telling about Chisholm's candidacy was the reaction of professional feminists like Freidan and Steinem (who never mentions her "friend" Chisholm is her recent New York Times op-ed), who while offering tepid acknowledgement of the importance of Chisholm's campaign, never forcefully came out in support of it. A few years later when Chisholm's congressional colleague Bella Abzug ran for the Senate against Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chisholm chose to support Moynihan. When asked about her decision, Chisholm responded "Where was Abzug when I ran for President? Why didn't reporters ask why a lot of women didn't support me for the Presidency?" Chisholm recounts the difficulties of her presidential campaign in her second memoir The Good Fight (1973). As Gallagher admits in her essay "Waging the 'Good Fight': the Political Career of Shirley Chisholm," politicians were "more willing to accommodate the status quo in exchange for gradual, but tangible victories for African Americans and women. Full endorsement of Chisholm's presidential campaign would have been a risky political move for mainstream civil rights and feminist organizations."
Chisholm's political career, which ended in 1982, resonates in the current political environment. Upon leaving congress in 1982, Chisholm, for example, chided black politicians for "always putting their eggs in one basket." As she told The New York Times in October of 1982, "[black politicians] are not politically sophisticated enough to understand the pragmatic reasons behind my moves." Chisholm's wisdom is echoed in the decision of some mainstream black leaders to lend support to both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, though the racial litmus test that some apply to Obama's candidacy bespeaks the lack of recognition of his political pragmatism.
Chisholm's political career is also reminder of the difficulties of managing race and gender in a society that rarely seeks to address sexism, racism and misogyny with the seriousness that it deserves. While NOW founder Steinem can weigh in on the side of gender, at the expense of race, and Clinton can legitimately celebrate the historic aspects of her campaign--the first woman candidate to win a primary--both could be more sensitive to the positions of the black women voters that they are so desperately trying to attract to Clinton's campaign. As Yvonne Bynoe argued at the time of Chisholm's death, the "prospects for white women...are distinguished from those of black women by the fact that there are several white female senators and governors in the pipeline, but not one black women similarly positioned." Bynoe's comments, like Chisholm's career in general, is a reminder of the claim that a group of black feminist made a generation ago--"All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave."
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