What Would Shirley Chisholm Say?

What Would Shirley Chisholm Say?

http://blogs.vibe.com/man/2008/01/what-would-shirley-chisholm-say/

by Mark Anthony Neal
Posted 01/20/2008

"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."

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