R.I.P Shirley Chisholm:

Shirley Chisholm, a seven-term Congresswoman from Brooklyn, New York, the first black woman to both serve in Congress and run for president, died on Monday from a stroke. She was 80. Congresswoman Chisholm had been retired since 1991 and living what she called “a quiet life” in Florida.

A former Brooklyn schoolteacher, Congresswoman Chisholm was elected to the New York State Legislature in 1964 and the House of Representatives in 1968. Running for the Democratic nomination for President in 1972 under the slogan “unbought and unbossed”, Congresswoman Chisholm was an opponent of the war in Vietnam and a vocal supporter of woman and gay rights. As a legislator, she was a key player in the passage of minimum wage law. Bucking the silly orthodoxy of the Democratic party, she visited noted segregationist George Wallace in the hospital after his attempted assasination.

I was fortunate enough to see Shola Lynch’s excellent documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed at the San Francisco International Film Festival and wasn’t aware of Congresswoman Chisholm. She struck me as a person of integrity, courage and patriotism, a rarity in politics today. She served 7 terms in Congress, was a role model to politicians like Barbara Lee (who worked on her president campeign as a college student), Carol Mosley Braun and Barak Obama. She was a gifted orator in the tradition old fashioned street-corner soapboxing. I would love to see a CD of her speeches released.

Although I only knew about Congresswoman Chisholm for a short time, I will miss her. I am moved beyond measure that politicians like Chisholm, like Senator Barbara Jordan who have every demographic reason in the world to believe that the American political process is closed to them have not only claimed their place but have done so with more pride and integrity than those who wear their patriotism on their sleeve. In Congresswoman Chisholm’s own words…

“I ran for the Presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo…
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…
I ran because somebody had to do it first.”

• Category: heroes