Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

1972 was the first year in which I could vote -- and did vote -- for President. I no longer remember for whom I voted in the Dem primary. (In the general election, it was McGovern -- although it was a kind of trepidatious vote. I abhorred Nixon, but McG -- despite his compassion and down-to-earthness -- never quite sold me, either. He seemed like a featherweight in a heavyweight bout.) But among the numerous interesting candidates in the primaries that year was a slightly built, schoolteacherish black Congresswoman from New York named Shirley Chisholm.

Chisholm never displayed any pretense that she might actually win a given primary, let alone the November show; she wasn't given to Sharpton- or Jackson-like flights of oratory; she wasn't "stylish"; she simply wanted to make her voice heard, and to offer an example to future black and minority candidates.

From her announcement of her candidacy:

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 a woman, and 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.

A few years earlier, Chisholm -- a co-founder of the National Organization of Women -- had formally introduced the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress. In the conclusion of that address, she attempted to rebut "two of the commonest arguments that are offered against this amendment":

One is that women are already protected under the law and do not need legislation. Existing laws are not adequate to secure equal rights for women. Sufficient proof of this is the concentration of women in lower paying, menial, unrewarding jobs and their incredible scarcity in the upper level jobs. If women are already equal, why is it such an event whenever one happens to be elected to Congress?

It is obvious that discrimination exists. Women do not have the opportunities that men do. And women that do not conform to the system, who try to break with the accepted patterns, are stigmatized as ''odd'' and "unfeminine." The fact is that a woman who aspires to be chairman of the board, or a Member of the House, does so for exactly the same reasons as any man. Basically, these are that she thinks she can do the job and she wants to try.

A second argument often heard against the equal rights amendment is that is would eliminate legislation that many States and the Federal Government have enacted giving special protection to women and that it would throw the marriage and divorce laws into chaos.

As for the marriage laws, they are due for a sweeping reform, and an excellent beginning would be to wipe the existing ones off the books. Regarding special protection for working women, I cannot understand why it should be needed. Women need no protection that men do not need. What we need are laws to protect working people, to guarantee them fair pay, safe working conditions, protection against sickness and layoffs, and provision for dignified, comfortable retirement. Men and women need these things equally. That one sex needs protection more than the other is a male supremacist myth as ridiculous and unworthy of respect as the white supremacist myths that society is trying to cure itself of at this time.

While the country did make progress on many of the issues in the next couple of decades, it's ironic how relevant much of that passage seems right now.

Chisholm was a hard-line liberal at a time when liberals weren't casting about looking for less "inflammatory" labels for themselves. Yet she was also a warm, loving person, a bridge-builder, whose faith and humanity did not prevent her from befriending, among others, former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace -- for a handful of Presidential elections, the face of unrepentant racism in the United States. She took a lot of heat for visiting Wallace in the hospital following a failed assassination later in 1972.

"He said, `What are your people going to say?' I said: 'I know what they're going to say. But I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone.' He cried and cried," she recalled.

And when she needed support to extend the minimum wage to domestic workers two years later, it was Wallace who got her the votes from Southern members of Congress.

According to filmmaker Shola Lynch, director of Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed, Wallace returned the favor, telling his supporters, "If you’re not going to vote for me, vote for Shirley Chisholm. She’s at least telling you how she feels. There’s integrity in that." Whatever that comment says about Wallace, it says one hell of a lot about Shirley Chisholm.

Shirley Chisholm has died at the age of 80. May she rest in peace; may her ideals and her example inspire us all.