Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005)

Only U.S. denizens of a certain age and/or students of American presidential politics or African American history are likely to have heard of Shirley Chisholm. She was the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (from her district in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn) and, in 1972, the first to run for president, as she took on George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, Bob Muskie and others for the Democratic Party nomination. The Good Fight is her memoir of that presidential campaign, written very soon after the election and republished last year on the occasion of the campaign's 50th anniversary.

Chisholm was (she died in 2005) a very clear and effective writer, and this memoir makes very interesting reading. She provides a survey of the important issues of the day, the Vietnam War, race relations, women's rights and Nixon's dismantling of the social programs put in place by Lyndon Johnson foremost among them. She describes her decision to run, essentially, as she tells it. due to calls from calls among the constituencies she represented who wanted a relevant alternative to the many white men, conservative and liberal both, to work and to vote for. She writes of the resentment and resistance she encountered by male black political leaders, very few of whom actually endorsed her campaign, although some who didn't actually endorse her gave tacit support. And she writes of her frustration with white liberal politicians who talked a good game but were not often to be found when action (or important congressional votes) were needed.

Her campaign was mostly a cash-starved effort, and she only entered a handful of Democratic primaries. The idea was to garner enough delegate votes to keep any of the "major" candidates from being able to win the nomination on the first vote at the convention, enabling her to be able to bargain for important concessions in the official party platform before releasing her delegates to the candidate who stood to win the nomination. In some states, supporters who wanted to campaign for her begged Chisholm to allow them to enter her in a primary she wouldn't otherwise have signed up for. This happened in the California primary. Chisholm explained to these supporters that she wouldn't be able to campaign in the state or even provide financial help due to lack of funds. The California volunteers would be entirely on their own. Those supporters pushed on, anyway.

Another important sign of those times was the fact that Chisholm's most prominent supporters came from the ranks of young African Americans and mostly middle class white women's rights activists, who often couldn't communicate well with each other and in many states developed fairly acute enmity for each other. The women were often arrogant, unable to identify with the problems of African Americans and looking down at working class people in general, and the African American men brought their gender bias to the office. But as Chisholm writes in her conclusion, "it is important that I never made the rights of women or of blacks a primary theme of my campaign but insisted on making my role that of a potential voice for all the out-groups, those included. . . . Long unmet needs for housing, health care, pensions on which the aged can live decently, effective schools everywhere, including the poorest neighborhoods--all these and more cannot be neglected any longer, I kept saying." In the end, she gained support for her candidacy from across the gender/race spectrum. But she did not come close to picking up enough delegate votes to force more robust policies into the Democratic Party platform.

Chisholm has a lot to say about the rather arrogant, paternalistic campaigns run by McGovern and Humphrey, in which blacks and women were represented only by token figures, but in which effective black and female voices were very much excluded. And yet, post-election, she also says, "Men like George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey are going to be badly needed in the U.S. Senate in the coming years. Our public life would be greatly enhanced if we had dozens more George McGoverns, men who, to quote George Orwell, are 'generously angry--a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.'"

The memoir's only drawback, if such it is, is that it provides Chisholm's global perspective of events, but precious little detail about personality and life experience, either Chisholm's or any of the other players. Her husband barely gets a mention, for example, other than that we're told he fully supports her efforts. None of the other figures become people; they're just names attached to actions and attitudes. That makes for a brisk and readable political memoir--obviously what Chisholm was shooting for--but we never really get the idea we're seeing Shirley Chisholm the person rather than the politician and activist. Fifty years on, though, as far as posterity's concerned, maybe that's the most important thing, anyway.

At any rate, I found The Good Fight to be a fascinating memoir about a fascinating watershed time in U.S. history. Chisholm was clear-eyed about the damage Nixon had already done and what further damage would be done during his next term (aborted though it turned out to be). In terms of civil rights, the Nixon-era backlash was bad enough. The Regan-era backlash "war on crime" was many degrees worse, and the potential that Chisholm saw for the future at that pivotal moment seems tragically to have foundered on the rocks.… (lisätietoja)

I stumbled across a reference to Shirley Chisholm in another book, mentioned with the implication that, of course, the reader will know who this is and requires no explanation. To my shame, I had no idea. I could fault my education, but that would do no good, so I decided to remedy the situation instead.

The problem with this book was that it was written smack in the middle of Ms. Chisholm's career. To her contemporaries, most of what she includes anecdotally is familiar, so she breezes past many events and faces that I found myself needing to pause and research. The latter part of the book catches up to the present, and so it is primarily a series of exhortations instead of recollections. It read like a string of campaign speeches, which are all the more awkward without the benefit of her knowing which of her "confident" predictions were going to fizzle and which would turn out to be correct.

I'm glad I read it, since my knowledge of this era of American history is shamefully lacking, but I think I would rather have gone with a biography written after the fact instead of a memoir from the period.… (lisätietoja)

This book was an honest look at politics, racism, and genderism in the 1970’s – and the story of a woman who fought it all to become the first African American woman in Congress. She told her story – her strengths, her illness, her regrets – and pulled no punches about who and what she had to work around (or work with) to do what she needed to do. What I disliked about the book was how relevant that book is 50 years later. I kept having to remind myself that this was published in 1970 – and yet so much of the prejudice and behind-the-scenes political machinations seem to be pulled straight out of last week’s newspaper. “I know they think, as many people do, that I don’t understand politics. I understand it too damned well, after all my years in it, and that’s why I want to change it.”
“I hope if I am remembered it will finally be for what I have done, not for what I happen to be. And I hope that my having made it, the hard way, can be some kind of inspiration, particularly to women.” (Yes, you are, Shirley, yes you are.) – Reviewed by Debbi… (lisätietoja)

The amazing story of U.S. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, a New Yorker who did it her own way. A principled woman, who overcame all odds in speaking out for causes that today are common, but were anything but that in the 1970s. Told again and again, that she could not do the right thing by opponents and even her own party, Shirley supported her constituents first in Brooklyn, then in Albany and finally as the first African-American woman in Congress. She was outspoken on a wide range of issues, such as gerrymandering; abortions, Vietnam, sexism, equal access to education, and the seniority system of Congress. She does not have the same talent for writing as Michelle Obama or this would easily be 5 stars.… (lisätietoja)