Shirley Chisholm's Legacy
by John Nichols
The Online Beat - thenation.com
01/03/2005 @ 8:21pm
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=2098Thirty-three years ago this month, a member of the U.S.
House from Brooklyn challenged her party and her
country to think more boldly than it ever had before
about what the occupant of the White House should look
like.
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, who four years earlier
had become the first African-American woman to win
election to Congress, declared that, "I stand before
you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination
for the presidency of the United States. I am not the
candidate of black America, although I am black and
proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement
of this country, although I am equally proud of that. I
am not the candidate of any political bosses or special
interests. I am the candidate of the people."
Chisholm, who died January 1 at age 80, ran as the
"Unbought and Unbossed" candidate for the 1972
Democratic presidential nomination. She campaigned in
key primary states as a militant foe of the war in
Vietnam and a champion of the economic and social
justice movements that had organized so effectively
during the 1960s. And she did not mince words. A co-
convener of the founding conference of the National
Women's Political Caucus, she once announced, "Women in
this country must become revolutionaries. We must
refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and
stereotypes."
That kind of talk, along with her refusal to reject the
endorsement of the Black Panthers, scared the party
establishment -- including most prominent liberals --
and Chisholm's run was dismissed from the start as a
vanity campaign that would do nothing more than siphon
votes off from better-known anti-war candidates such a
South Dakota Senator George McGovern and New York City
Mayor John Lindsay. They were not ready for a candidate
who promised to "reshape our society," and they
accorded her few opportunities to prove herself in a
campaign where all of the other contenders were white
men. "There is little place in the political scheme of
things for an independent, creative personality, for a
fighter," Chisholm observed. "Anyone who takes that
role must pay a price."
Chisholm had to file a complaint with the Federal
Communications Commission in order to participate in a
televised debate featuring McGovern and former Vice
President Hubert Humphrey. Through it all, she
maintained the dignity that characterized a political
career that began in the clubhouse politics of
Brooklyn, saw her elected twice to the New York state
Assembly and seven times to the U.S. House, and was
capped by President Clinton's nomination of Chisholm to
serve as U.S. ambassador to Jamaica -- an honor she was
ultimately forced to refuse because of ill health.
One of the most remarkable moments of the 1972 campaign
came after Alabama Governor George Wallace, a foe of
civil rights who also sought the party's presidential
nomination that year, was shot. Wallace was shocked
when Chisholm arrived in his hospital room to express
her sympathy and concern. "He said, 'What are your
people going to say?' I said, 'I know what they are
going to say. But I wouldn't want what happened to you
to happen to anyone.' He cried and cried," Chisholm
recalled.
The congresswoman's compassion -- and her commitment --
struck a chord with voters. While she won no primaries,
Chisholm outlasted better-known and better-financed
contenders such as Maine Senator Ed Muskie and
Washington Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson. At that
year's Democratic National Convention in Miami, she
received 151 delegate votes and a measure of the
respect that she was often denied on the campaign
trail.
Chisholm, who would go to serve another decade in the
House, never expected to win the presidency in 1972.
But she did expect that her candidacy would inspire
others. "I ran for the Presidency, despite hopeless
odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to
accept the status quo," Chisholm wrote in her 1973 book
The Good Fight. "The next time a woman runs, or a
black, or 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...I ran because somebody had to do it first. In
this country, everybody is supposed to be able to run
for President, but that has never really been true."
Chisholm was indeed an inspiration. At least one young
"Chisholm for President" campaigner now serves in
Congress: California Representative Barbara Lee, the
only member of the House to oppose President Bush's
demand for a blank check to mount military responses to
the September 11, 2001, attacks. U.S. Rep. Stephanie
Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, spoke for many African-American
women in Congress when she said, "If there were no
Shirley Chisholm there would be no Stephanie Tubbs
Jones." And the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose 1984 and 1988
presidential campaigns picked up where Chisholm left
off, hailed the woman who served as an advisor to both
those candidacies. "She set the pace and pattern for
other public officials," Jackson said of Chisholm. "She
refused to accept the ordinary."
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