GUTS AND HEART
BY
JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Shirley Chisholm often said that her mouth would get her in trouble. She didn’t care who she said what to, who she challenged. In her career as a childcare worker, a state representative, a Congresswoman (the first African American woman elected), and a Presidential candidate, she gave whomever what for. That included the Congressional establishment that, through the seniority system, assigned her a position on the Agriculture committee (what does that have to do with Brooklyn, she asked), as well as the black male political establishment who asked her why she didn’t check in with them before she decided to run for President. She quit the Presidential race with 152 delegates in her hip pocket – more than Al Sharpton, Carol Mosley Braun, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Dennis Kucinich, and many others managed. She was a political pioneer, not only for African American women, but also for those who operate at the margins of power. Indeed, she wrote that "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." And if Geraldine Ferraro, Joe Lieberman, Al Sharpton, and Lenora Fulani are not thanking God for Shirley Chisholm, they ought to be.
Mrs. Chisholm said she wanted to be remembered for having “guts”. I’d alsoremember her for having a heart for economic justice, for the least and the left out, for those at the margins. Her legislative career was distinguished by the fact that she cared for those that the economy didn’t treat well, and also for the fact that she opposed the war in Vietnam. And her image is burnished by the fact that she didn’t mind saying what she thought, to anyone.
She was the consummate feminist. She asserted that she’d experienced more barriers as a woman than as an African American. She said discrimination against women began from the time the doctor said, “It’s a girl”. And she never backed down from her assertion that it was important to treat women equally, eloquently urging Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, noting that many of the arguments against the Amendment were both specious and insulting, and would not pass intellectual muster if they were applied in the case of the Civil Rights Act and African American people.
In 1984, Chisholm was a founder of the National Political Congress of Black Women. The group was formed at the Democratic Convention where New York Congresswoman Ferraro ran for Vice-president on the Mondale ticket. White feminists were so excited about the Ferraro bid that they forgot the history Chisholm had made in running in 1972. African American women chafed and decided that if political feminism didn’t include us, we should do our own thing. Shirley Chisholm was the first leader of the NPCBW and, even after she stepped down, remained an inspiration.
She was so much of an inspiration that when nine women gathered to form Future PAC, the African American women’s political action committee, in 2002, they asked Shirley Chisholm to be part of the Legacy Circle of inspiring women whose works set the tone for the PAC. Other legacy circle members include Dr. Dorothy Height and Coretta Scott King, Cicely Tyson and C. Delores Tucker. Chisholm was emphatically a foundation of the contemporary work that African American women do around issues of political empowerment. We aspire to her guts, her mouth, her heart, and her absolute passion for justice.
Shirley Chisholm described herself as “unbought and unbossed” in reference to the clubby way that Congress operated when she was elected in 1968 (and even more so now). Self-described as “black and proud” as “woman and proud”, she transcended racial and gender caucuses to vote with the only caucus she knew – the people. She visited George Wallace in 1972, appreciating his effort to raise the minimum wage, despite his segregationist past. She voted for the white Louisianan Hale Boggs over fellow Black Caucus member John Conyers for House Majority Leader. And, crossing party lines, she expressed support for Nelson Rockefeller’s vice-presidential bid. She did it all, she said, to leverage influence for the people who could not get influence for themselves. In these partisan times, her moves might raise eyebrows and cause throats to clear, but the fact is that she was, as Jesse Jackson has said, “a woman of courage”, and she had the courage of her convictions.
Shirley Chisholm had receded from the public eye in recent years, but she has never receded from our hearts. Those who bring heart, mouth, and guts to the table might commemorate her life by shaping their own as risk-taking advocates for the people who the economic and political system ignores, those who stood in line too long in Ohio to have their votes go uncounted, those who have not had a raise in the minimum wage in nearly a decade, those who are neither stock holders nor homeowners, just working people trying to make it. Chisholm had a heart for the folks who couldn’t write the checks or twist the arms, but simply needed responsive government to assist in their survival. Who has Chisholm’s heart, and her back, in contemporary politics? As Mr. Bush parses pennies with the tsunami tragedy and attempts to strangle public programs in the name of privatization, our nation cries out for an activist, unbought and unbossed, who will call it like it is.