Brooklyn's Finest: The Seminal Audacity of Shirley Chisolm by Sheldon Taylor

   

                                     “Reagan is the Prez /but I voted for Shirley Chisolm”
                                                “Nobody Beats The Biz” --- Biz Markie (1987)

The Diabolical One’s conscious couplet wasn’t just a slick one-liner delivered nearly thirty years ago. It was a hip hop salute for a historical moment that wasn’t lost on the Long Island emcee who was only eight years old when Shirley Chisolm became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1972.  History shows little love for Chisolm’s defining moment despite the fact she predated Geraldine Ferraro’s addition to the ’84 ticket and Jesse Jackson’s consecutive runs in ’84 and ’88.

Upper-echelon male-dominated politics have given way to a new wave of female power brokers ushering in new energy and inclusiveness. Individuals like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillebrand watched the throne and have followed in the footsteps of previous presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina---throwing their hats in the ring, in hopes of shattering the ultimate political glass ceiling, harking back to the watershed moments that defined Chisolm’s ’72 run. She began her career as the first African-American woman elected to Congress she represented New York’s 12th Congressional District, home to a majority African-American and Latino working class primarily residing Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

In 1965, Andrew W. Cooper, a journalist from Bedford–Stuyvesant, brought suit under the Voting Rights Act against racial gerrymandering. The lawsuit claimed that Bedford–Stuyvesant was divided among five congressional districts, each represented by a white Congress member. It resulted in the creation of New York's 12th Congressional District and the election in 1968 of Chisholm, the first black woman and West Indian American ever elected to the US Congress.

Chisolm protested defense budget increases in favor of social programs raising the quality of life of her supporters. She supported pro-choice legislation and was an advocate for women to be admitted to male dominated professions particularly African American women reduced to holding stereotypical maid and nanny roles---dignified temporary stops along the path to social mobility for female immigrant groups but permanent dead end destinations for African American at the expense of their own families.

The elimination of inner city blue collar jobs, exclusion from unions and selective hiring practices for African American males coincided with the rise of a black matriarchal class as breadwinners.  Like the slave auctions of the antebellum period, they were picked off street corners by middle class and affluent white women who offered “day work” to the lowest bidder. They commuted long distances to suburban neighborhoods they were restricted from living in, excluded from the very women’s liberation movement they inspired. Chisolm responded to this by working to establishing a bill to guarantee domestic workers a mandatory minimum wage.

Chisolm was a political paradox.  She worked across party lines regardless of race and political agenda. Segregationist George Wallace lent his support to her domestic wage bill after she visited him in the hospital after he was critically wounded. She worked with Robert Dole on expanding the food stamp program and was instrumental in creating the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program to combat nutritional deficiencies of pregnant women and children. 

Chisolm frustrated her Black, White and Puerto Rican male colleagues who were dismissive of women in politics. She raised questions of the legitimacy of their congressional policies that failed to address the needs of her constituents. From her days as a budding community organizer, Chisolm was courageous and outspoken, casting herself as unbought and unbossed--- free from the corruption or manipulation associated with politics.  When appointed to a position within the Agricultural House Committee, Chisolm took it as a professional slight and undermining of her urban power base. She responded by using her authority to distribute surplus food to the poor and the hungry.

Like Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Chisolm could dismiss her foes with a witty brashness when necessary. Socially isolated during her early years in Congress, she faced down Southern representatives who attempted to intimidate her. When a so-called sickly White congressional colleague coughed and spit in a handkerchief in her presence, a thinly veiled personal sign of contempt, she responded in typical Chisolm fashion. The next day when he attempted to respond in the same manner, she pulled out her own handkerchief---spitting in it and throwing it in his face while tossing a venomous retort: Beat you to it today.

While the opinionated tough talk defining future female presidential candidates Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell and Michelle Bachmann mirrored the high strung patriarchal politics of their male counterparts, the upright Chisolm walked to her own drum. Her presidential agendas included reopening the Kennedy and MLK assassination cases and openly showing contempt for Palestinian living conditions when US public support for Israel was high.

During her early years in office, she extended unemployment benefits to her constituents and sponsored programs to send disadvantaged students to college while receiving intensive remedial education. Chisolm would exclusively hire women to support her various positions in office half of which were African American. Forty years later, her inclusive and social activist approach resurfaced in the agenda of another community organizer---this time from Chicago destined to follow in her footsteps with ground breaking results.

Chisolm’s formidable career was shaped by a superior education courtesy of Guyanese and Barbadian parents with the foresight to recognize that her educational opportunities would be much stronger outside of America. As a child, she remained behind in Barbados, obtaining a formal British education at the prestigious Vauxhall Primary School while her parents immigrated to New York City.

Her secondary and collegiate educational experience at Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High and Brooklyn College honed her oratory skills and made her an advocate of the comprehensive education’s hybrid of targeting vocational education, university-prep school preparation and remedial instruction for high school students. Chisolm’s master’s degree in elementary education and tenure at the instructor, director and consultant levels saw her become an authority on child welfare and early education platforms that shaped her future political platform and agenda.

Chisolm also advanced her platforms during tenures with the Veterans and Education and Labor Committees. Her anti-war and women’s liberation stance made her popular among college students earning her $30,000 a year in speaking engagements---the highest among her congressional peers.

In early ‘75, when the Seatrain Shipbuilding Company located inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, experienced a massive layoff of shipbuilders, 80% of those affected living in and around Bedford–Stuyvesant, Chisolm saved the jobs of her constituents, convincing the government to restructure existing loans and guarantee new loans so the shipbuilders could resume building them. From 1968 through 1979, Seatrain Shipbuilding would become was the largest employer inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, providing an estimated $750 million in economic stimulus to the City of New York by way of its shipbuilding activities during the years stabilizing its weak financial infrastructure.

Social activism and reform in the hands white historical figures is characterized as transformational and visionary. In the hands of African Americans it is depicted as marginal, irresponsible and subversively disruptive.  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Billie Jean King and Gloria Steinem are celebrated while Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ida B. Wells and Famie Lou Hamer are footnotes. In a recent interview, Steinem revealed that she learned feminism disproportionately from Black women and credited them for inventing the feminist movement that Chisolm championed---the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality while pressing to advance the quality of life of men, women and children from all walks of life around the world.