Fighting Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm didn't want to be known solely as the first African-American woman in U.S. Congress and to run for the Democratic nomination for president. Cristen and Caroline detail the life and legacy of this Brooklyn educator ahead of her time.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and Caroline. You know those times when
we are researching for stuff Mom Never Told You and

(00:25):
we learn about a woman that excites us and inspires
us so much a it's give me goose bumps right now,
and we can't wait to talk about it in the
podcast studio. But also we just want to tell everyone
about her, like uh, Polly Murray, Shirley Chisholm, I mean,

(00:51):
in such a political time as this, reading about Shirley
Chisholm was such a breath of fresh air, but also
a little bit of a disappointment that she's not still
around for me to uh hug yeah, call up on

(01:15):
the telephone, thank yeah, write a number of thank you
letters to just for just for everything, because y'all, Shirley
was a badass and you need to know who she is,
and you need to tell everybody you know about who
she was. Yeah. Unfortunately for all of us, she was

(01:35):
a woman ahead of her time. I mean fortunately because
we have such a great story to tell about her,
but unfortunately because well, being so ahead of her time,
she was sort of kept out of the positions that
she would have done so much great work in. And so,
of course, Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman

(01:59):
in Congress and the first black woman to run from
major party's nomination for president, among many many other firsts.
But something that's really kind of beautiful and poetic about
her is that in an interview in her later years,
she would say, when I die, I want to be
remembered as a woman who lived in the twentieth century

(02:21):
and who dared to be a catalyst for change. I
don't want to be remembered as the first black woman
who went to Congress, and I don't even want to
be remembered as the first woman who happened to be
black who ran for the presidency. I want to be
remembered as a woman who fought for change in the
twentieth century. And so this episode is sort of a

(02:41):
love letter too, surely, to not only educate you our listeners,
and to educate ourselves, and to provide this sort of
inspirational figure for women in politics and in this country
in general, but really to honor her memory and to
tell you her story and part of us honoring her

(03:03):
is really diving into her complexity, her passion, and her
brilliance that history just has not given her enough credit for.
We need to know more about Shirley than the things,
the individual things that she accomplished. We need to know
how and why she did that. Um. And also, I mean,

(03:26):
surely it's just fabulous for her gift of gab. Yeah,
some of her quotes, like I don't know, I mean,
we literally could deliver this entire podcast, and just surely
Chisholm quotes because she was such an amazing figure for

(03:47):
women in general. She was a staunch feminist. In addition
to being proud of her blackness, she was also proud
of her woman nous um And she said at one point,
the emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when
the doctor says it's a girl. How ahead of her

(04:07):
time is that? You know who quote Shirley Chisholm quite
a lot when he's talking about his own feminism is
President Barack Obama, that's right, who also posthumously awarded her
with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and which says so
much about the respect and admiration that he has for her, um,

(04:32):
which just makes me makes me already missed him being
in office. Um. But let's go back to Brooklyn in
nineteen twenty four. Surely Anita st Hill was born on
November twenty of that year in Brooklyn to Charles st Hill,

(04:54):
who was a factory worker from Guiana, and Ruby Seal
sat Hill, who was a seamstress from Bados. And surely
it was the oldest of four daughters. Yeah, so she
was around a lot of amazing women's no surprise that
she grew up like all pro lady power um. But
from the age of three to ten she actually lived

(05:14):
on her grandparents farm in Barbados in order to get
a British education. Her parents remained back in Brooklyn. They
were working to make a living in the bed Stye
neighborhood during the Depression, and they basically figured like, here
you can go live a happy, wonderful life with your grandparents,
getting an education while we work here. And so once
she came back to Brooklyn, she aces public school and

(05:38):
ends up getting accepted to Oberlin and Vassar. She opts
to go to Brooklyn College on scholarship. And here we
see one of the first instances, and I love to
talk about mentors and teachers and things like that on
the podcast to show how kids get inspired to do things. Obviously,
she was not a kid at the point that she

(05:59):
was at college, but her political science professor, Lewis wars
Off encouraged her to consider a career in politics because
of her quote, quick mind and debating skills. But even
at the time, Shirley's talking to professor Lewis and she says,
you know, I'm not so sure because I've got this

(06:19):
double handicap. That was her quote. I've got this double
handicap of being both black and a woman. But of
course that double handicap doesn't stop her from being active
in college. She joins the debate team and win. A
social club on campus denies black students entry. She starts
her room. It's called Apothia, and Apothia actually stood for

(06:43):
in pursuit of the highest in all? Can we start
an Apathia club? Can we can we get a chapter? Yeah,
I don't know how you do that, but I think
we'll just start with a framed portrait of Shirley Chisholm
and a bottle of water. Um. So from there, in
nine six, Shirley graduates cum Laudie with a sociology degree,

(07:08):
and she begins working as a nursery school teacher. A
few years later, in nineteen forty nine, she marries Conrad Q. Chisholm,
who's a private investigator. Uh. And in ninety two she
gets her master's in early childhood education from Columbia while
working as a teacher and ends up becoming the director

(07:30):
of two daycare centers, and early childhood education ends up
becoming her entry point into politics. Yeah, basically because a
couple of years later, in nineteen sixty, she becomes a
consultant to the New York City Division of Daycare. So
there you see her straddling that line of public life
and also still being in the education world. And so

(07:53):
around this same time, Shirley has joined a local Democratic
club that had been working really hard to root out
the white leaders of the Bedstine neighborhood, who they said
were ignoring black residents who were the majority in that neighborhood.
And they made a wonderful decision that ended up being
terrible for them. But in order to shut her up,

(08:16):
like God, this woman with her confidence and smarts and
brilliance to shut her up, they put her on the
board of directors and she's like, yeah, okay, that's gonna
shut me up. She surely, so of course she doesn't.
They end up removing her from the post because she
was so vocal and so active in the community. They

(08:37):
were like, oh, we did the exact wrong thing. They
couldn't handle the Chisholm. They you can't handle the Chisholm
and uh. In nineteen sixty two, the group actually got
a black man elected to the State Assembly, Thomas R. Jones.
But in nineteen sixty four, Jones actually decides, Hey, I'm
going to run for a judge ship. So the community

(09:00):
was like, hey, you know that surely woman, we like her.
So she ends up replacing Jones, making her the second
ever African American woman elected to the New York State Legislature.
Now keep in mind, if you've listened to our previous
podcast episode on arch conservative anti feminist Phillis schlaf Lee,

(09:25):
nineteen sixty four is the year her star starts to
rise because she helped get racist, anti civil rights un
activist Verry Goldwater as the Republican nominee for president running
against Lyndon B. Johnson, who beat Goldwater in the election.

(09:50):
So she's elected to the New York State Legislature, and
she has two bills she is especially proud of, one
of which established a program to help disadvantage high schoolers
go to college, and one that changed the practice of
revoking tenure for teachers who got pregnant. So you can
already see from the get go at the state level,

(10:11):
Sureley is out to work for the people. Yeah. I
I the fact that so early in her career she's
managing to accomplish things like this, that this is what
she's pushing for, and this will remain the type of
thing that she pushes forth throughout her political career. I mean,
it just warms my cold dead heart, basically. Yeah. And

(10:33):
I mean, and the thing is she's good at it.
She's very good at what she's doing. So in Surely
who is not one to just let history pass her by,
she says, you know what, I want to run for Congress? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And it's sort of a perfect storm of things that
convince her to run. Because there had been this court

(10:55):
ordered redistricting that had carved out a brand new Brooklyn district.
UM her bed Stye neighborhood, and the Democrats very specifically
wanted to send an African American from this new district,
the twelfth District, to the House of Representatives. And so
she launches her primary campaign, which she said was strenuous,

(11:18):
and she used the slogan unbought and unbossed, and she
set herself apart from her three competitors with a super personal,
up close and personal campaigning style. She even said, you
have to let them feel you. She really got out
there among the people. And in addition to getting out
there among the people, she also wrote around in an

(11:40):
open truck with a loudspeaker, I love this. Yeah. She
um would ride around this truck announcing ladies and gentlemen,
this is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through and people loved it. Yeah.
And I would also like to note that unbought and
unbossed would remain her campaign slogan. What I really want

(12:01):
after watching her documentary on Amazon which is called Shirley No,
which is called Chisholm seventy two, unboughten un bossed, I
really want to get my hands on one of her
campaign posters because it's got a picture of her with
unboughten n bossed and it's really cool, you know that
classic style. Well, so when we get to the general election,

(12:25):
she's a Democrat and she's up against Republican opponent James Farmer,
who's a solid opponent. I mean, he was a big
figure in the civil rights movement. He was the co
founder of the Congress for Racial Equality, he was an
organizer as part of the Freedom Writers, and they even

(12:45):
had similar views on education, housing, employment, the Vietnam War.
So like, how do you pick? How how does she
set herself apart? Well, I mean she did it handily
because Shirley ended up winning sixty seven percent the vote. Uh,
and with that the distinction of being the first black
woman elected to Congress, and in this case, gender was

(13:09):
on her side. This would really be the only case
that gender would be on her side. But what happened
was James Farmer, this well respected African American man, was
arguing during the campaign that quote, women have been in
the driver's seat in black communities for too long, and

(13:29):
that he was the right candidate because the district needed
quote a man's voice in Washington and called her not
only a little school teacher but also bossy. Oh yeah,
oh and a bossy female. So that's like total m
R a language, right, um. And Shirley's like, oh, that's

(13:53):
how you want to play huh okay, So she counters
all of his sexism by highlighting discrimination against women. She
also highlights the power of women's organizations in this country
and also her own unique qualifications as being this really
highly educated educator. Um. And she also points out like, hey, yeah, okay,

(14:20):
black men have been able to go to Washington, but
what have what have you accomplished that I can't? I
can accomplish more. And it helped too that Chisholm was
from the neighborhood. I mean, she knew the people, she
was out in her truck, she lived there, she grew
up there, whereas she portrayed farmer as an outsider since
he lived in Manhattan. And it also helped that surely

(14:43):
was fluent in Spanish, so she would make direct appeals
to the growing Hispanic population in bed sty um. And
it also helped, of course that more than eight percent
of a neighborhood were registered Democrats, so she did have bowers.
But nonetheless she won. Yeah, she won, and it's incredible

(15:05):
and like, I wish I weren't as shocked and surprised
at that as I was. But through so much sminty research,
I'm like, wait, a woman and a woman of color
beat a man by highlighting sexism well and also beating
a black man too. I broke my brain. I was like, wait,

(15:27):
normally women are slammed for victimizing themselves if they talk
about gender discrimination, and but that that's how great she was.
She even um, and this would be a couple of
years later, she would even go out door to door
as a census worker because so many people in her
bed Stye neighborhood were suspicious of census workers. But there

(15:51):
she was, as that neighborhood gal, going out and being
able to really talk to them one on one. Well,
that's the thing. She literally walked her talk and she
knew what she was talking about. Um. But when she
ends up in Washington, she's still super active, still very outspoken,
and sticks out like a sore thumb. She says, it

(16:14):
felt like I was somebody coming out of the moon
because being not only African American but also a woman
and the first at that to be elected to Congress,
and all these guys knew that unbought and on boss
Shirley was coming their way. So they were immediately wary

(16:36):
of what this loud mouth, bossy female might do. She
might challenge the establishment. I mean she already beat a
dude in the general election. That's right, yeah, And I
mean they were right to worry. She said, I have
no intention of just sitting quietly and observing, which, by
the way, is the expectation of any junior UH congress

(16:58):
man or woman who comes in, Like basically, it's your
first time, You're just gonna sit quietly and observed. She's like, okay,
Like hell, I will. I intend to focus attention on
the nation's problems. And so in her first floor speech
in March of nine, she slams the Vietnam War. She
vows to vote against any defense appropriation bill until the

(17:19):
time comes, she said, when our values and priorities have
been turned right side up again. And here she is
actively championing all of those same causes that had always
been so important to her. She sponsored increases in federal
funding to extend the hours of daycare facilities, and she
sponsored a guaranteed minimum annual income for families. She was

(17:44):
looking out for people like her and people like the
neighbors that she grew up around in Brooklyn. Yeah. She
also launched the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants,
and Children, which probably sounds a lot more familiar by
its acronym WHERE, which provides support for low income pregnant women.
And she also fought for programs like Headstart and food stamps.

(18:08):
She championed a bill to ensure domestic workers received benefits,
She fought for immigrants rights, and she helped establish the
National Commission on Consumer Protection and Product Safety. Surely is
out there working for us. Yeah, and she was at
the forefront of overriding President Ford's vito. Now this is

(18:31):
so impressive. She uh served as the primary backer of
a national school lunch bill. So that harkens back to
our episode on lunch Ladies. Yeah, so she was at
the forefront of realizing, like, yes, nutrition in schools is important.
We have to feed our kids. A teacher would probably
know that. A teacher would probably know that. Um. And

(18:53):
she was the one who led her colleagues in overriding
Ford's veto on that mess on the President No kidding. Yeah,
that little school teacher turns out to be a powerful force.
And another one of her causes that was very close
to her heart and that she argued very strongly for

(19:15):
was the Equal Rights Amendment. And we are going to
talk about her efforts to get that ratified when we
come right back from a quick break. So the Equal
Rights Amendment was written by Alice Paul and first proposed

(19:37):
back at the Seneca Falls Convention in nineteen three, and
it's a very basic proposed amendment stating, quote, equality of
rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any state on account
of sex. So, of course surely was all about it. Yeah,

(20:00):
I mean, she knew she had to take this on.
She wanted to support the e r A. But she
also knew that when she got up and spoke about it,
she would be addressing largely a room of white guys.
And one thing that she was so stellar at, way
back from her experience as an educator but also coming
up through the political machine, was being able to address

(20:24):
her audience, to meet them where they were at. And
so she talked to these guys and said, listen, we've
already overcome so much in terms of religious and political prejudice,
in this country. We you guys have already done so
much to address like racial discrimination with the Civil Rights
Bill and sixty four, it's time to tackle quote the

(20:49):
most subtle, most pervasive, and most institutionalized form of prejudice
that exists, sex based discrimination. And so what she does
in her speech, and we read a paper that basically
dissected her rhetorical style that she uses like a classic
and classical Greek style of delivering a persuasive speech, and

(21:13):
how effective she was. Of course, spoiler, the e r
A would not be ratified, but she herself was an
effective tool to try to get it ratified. She spells
out the ways that this subtle, pervasive sex based discrimination
harms women and limits their opportunity. She talked about how uh,

(21:34):
sex discrimination relegates women to low wage jobs. It excludes
them from not only selective service, but from receiving the
benefits both personal and professional, of serving their country. Her
argument was not only and this was very important. Her
argument was not only that like, hey, those military jobs

(21:57):
pay really well, and women should have access to well
paying jobs, but hey, women love their country too, and
women deserve the opportunity to serve that country in the
best way they can, and that is being a member
of the military. She talked about how women were still
barred from some college campuses, kept out of some night jobs,

(22:21):
and a lot of what she was talking about revolved
around that idea of benevolent sexism, the stuff, as you
will recall from our last episode, that philished Laughly so
badly wanted to maintain. Surely Chisholm so badly wanted to
deconstruct it. Women, she basically argued, don't need these special

(22:42):
protections and privileges. What they need is the e r
A to just guarantee a level playing field. Yeah, because
she basically argued, exploitation is exploitation. Sex has nothing to
do with it if we spell out legally like what
you can't do. And for that reason, the amendment, in

(23:03):
her words, was necessary to clarify the countless ambiguities and
inconsistencies in the legal system. And so she explained that
laws regarding women's employment, jury service, and access to education
widely varied from state to state, and so the e
r A, if it were ratified, would have leveled the

(23:26):
playing field across all fifty states. And get this mishmash
of gendered laws off the books well, and she's basically saying, like, guys, guys, guys, guys, men, men,
folk friends, colleagues, countrymen, romans. Like, look, if all of
this stuff is so different state to state, doesn't that

(23:49):
just speak to how irrational some of these sexist quote
unquote protections are. You know, she was saying that no
one would condone exploitation, but what does sex have to
do with it? Working conditions in hours that are harmful
to women are harmful to men, Wages that are unfair
to women are unfair for men. And that's like such
a modern feminist refrain that you know, so many people

(24:13):
make the very real important argument of feminism doesn't only
benefit women or one type of woman. The things that
feminists fight for can benefit all of us, and that
includes like families, people that Philish Laughly was saying needed
to be protected. Meanwhile, Philish Laughly, as you'll learn about

(24:36):
in our previous episode if you haven't listened, was fanning
the flames of panic that women might, for instance, be
drafted to military service. This also you know, being in
a very uh touchy time in terms of the draft.
But back to fighting, Shirley Chisholm, her speech was clearly

(24:59):
affect DOV because the day of it, the House approved
the e r A by a vote of three hundred
thirty four to twenty six. Yeah. But ultimately it was
not ratified by the number of states that needed to
ratify it to make it the law of the land,

(25:20):
right because Philish Laughlely led the anti feminist crusade that
overturned state ratification um of the amendment and two states
and then blocked it from being ratified and three other states,
leaving it short of the necessary number of states needed
to make it a constitutional amendment. But again, let's get

(25:44):
back to fighting Shirley Chisholm. Yeah, so remember at the
top of the podcast when we talked about how she
was really vocal in her bed Sty neighborhood about the
white politicians who were doing nothing to help the people
of color in the neighborhood, and to shut her up,
they were like, let's just put you on the board
of directors, and how it was like, oh, well, no,

(26:05):
you just launched her into power, Like thank you for
giving her a voice in a platform, but you guys
are going against uh, your best interests is trying to
shut her up. Well, when she gets to Congress, her
male white colleagues try to do the same thing, and
they try to shut her up by assigning her to
the Committee on Agriculture, and she's like, what seriously, the

(26:29):
Committee on Agriculture. I'm from Brooklyn, Okay. So she appeals
the decision to how Speaker John McCormick, who just basically
pats her on the head and tells her to be
a good soldier. Well, because it traditionally is on the
junior congress people to basically take the assignment they're given,

(26:52):
you know, it is the kind of weight your turn thing,
But she really chisen does not want to wait her
turn because she knows that no one is ever going
to give it to her. Yeah, so she takes her
complaint directly to the House floor, and as a result
of her being incredibly vocal uh, she is reassigned to
the Veterans Affairs Committee, which again not her first choice.

(27:12):
But according to a fabulous quote, she says, yeah, but
there are a lot more veterans in my district than trees.
So she would work with what she had. She wouldn't
just take what she was given, but if she saw
an opportunity, even if it is there's something more adjacent,
like veterans affairs, she would use that to work for

(27:34):
the people. Um And from nineteen seventy one to nineteen
seventies seven she served on the Committee on Education and Labor,
And also in nineteen seventy one she became a founding
member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and then from seventy
seven to eighty one she served as secretary of the
Democratic Caucus. And also in seventies seven, she became the

(27:56):
first black woman and the second woman ever to serve
on the ultra powerful Congressional Rules Committee, and was a
founding member of the Congressional Women's Congress. So, like we
said the top of the podcast, Shirley Chisholm has so
many firsts, racked up, so many first and I think
they're so important to note, not just by virtue of

(28:18):
the fact that they are first, but to really illustrate
how in it she was, that she was at the
forefront of all this stuff, because I feel like the
early days of the Congressional Black Caucus are frequently framed
as like, look at these men doing all of this
stuff in the interest of the black voter. But she
was right there, just right there at the front. And

(28:39):
to me, again, that just hearkens back to our episode
on Polly Murray. We're like, hey, she was one of
the founding members of Now. Okay like Now as frequently
framed as like a middle class white woman thing. You know,
you frequently hear about Betty Friedan, you don't hear about
Polly Murray and the other women of color who were
there from the get go, And so Shirley Chisholm has
a similar kind of parallel story in that regard well.

(29:02):
And also when we see her hustle kind of outlined
like this, it makes sense. But oh, yeah, she ran
for president. Yeah, so that timeline that we just gave you,
what's missing in there is that she ran for the
Democratic nomination for the presidential election of nineteen seventy two.

(29:24):
And don't think for a second that she didn't face
constant hurdles. But has that ever stopped her before? No, No,
And she she knew that there would be hurdles ahead
of her. She once said, I ran because most people
thought the country was not ready for a black candidate

(29:44):
and not ready for a woman candidate. Someday it was time.
In nineteen seventy two to make that someday come. Yes,
I love that. Surely doesn't wait for tomorrow, she makes
tomorrow today. Yes, I would campaign for her today. Um.
And the thing is, like we said at the top
of the podcast, yeah, she was proudly a woman, she

(30:05):
was proudly African American, but she believed that she could
and should represent everyone and then everyone should have a
voice in politics, and that she was that candidate. She said,
I'm not the candidate of Black America, although I'm black
and proud. I am not the candidate of the woman's
movement of this country, although I know I'm a woman
and I am equally proud of that. And the thing is,

(30:25):
She's like here, I am ready to be the candidate
of the everyman and the every woman. But she still
had people yelling at her on both sides because she
was really discouraged to find that women didn't want her
to discuss black issues and black people didn't want her
to discuss women's issues. But of course, you know, even

(30:48):
though she was stuck between a rock and a hard
place in that regard, that certainly didn't stop her from
flexing her feminist muscles. One badge of hers or button
that I am certainly going to have to find on
eBay and pay a million dollars for shows her face
in the middle of the venus symbol with the text
to represent all Americans. I mean truly, like Paully Murray

(31:13):
was so committed to intersectionality as well. She she knew
that that was part of her identity and she couldn't
and didn't want to divorce herself from that um. And
the thing is, though, the deeper involved she got into
politics and the further her presidential campaign went, the clearer

(31:35):
it became to her that of the double jeopardy status
that she possessed of being both black and female, gender
was what held her back more because even feminists were
split over her candidacy. And this was the most heartbreaking

(31:57):
part of that Shirley chose Um documentary where you see
women like Bella Abzug and Glorious Steinem start to moonwalk
slowly away from her. Yeah. So, despite the fact that
surely Chisholm had a ton of women and a ton

(32:19):
of white second wave feminist women working in her campaign,
ultimately those heavy hitters like Abzug couldn't support her. And
I mean that that sums up so much about politics
in general. UM. Basically you had a lot of people
arguing that they needed someone who could actually win UM.

(32:42):
And so despite the fact that Chisholm had founded the
National Women's Political Caucus with Betty for Dan, with Bella
Abzug and with Gloria Steinham, both Absa and Steinem through
their support behind George McGovern UH, he basically had very

(33:03):
similar policies and platforms as Shirley Chisholm did. And so
you had people like abs Aginsteine who were like, I
don't know, I mean, like, it's great that you're a
woman and a woman of color, and you're really educated
and outspoken, but like, we think McGovern stands away better
chance of winning. And as women who are trying to
get what we want for ourselves politically, we need to

(33:26):
try to bet on the winning horse. And as Robert Gottlieb,
who worked on her campaign, talks about in the documentary,
it's not an apples to apples comparison to UH. To consider, well,
if she were running in sixteen, everything would be different,
like how this is inconceivable that it would happen, because,

(33:48):
as Gottlieb says, having a woman run for president was
like having somebody from Mars run for president. I mean,
it was beyond inconceivable at the time. Yeah, and she
surely Chisholm, as you might expect, was so fed up
with this constant refrain. It wasn't just Steynham and abs like,

(34:10):
it was just about everybody who was reading the news
or watching her campaign. She was so fed up with
this attitude of like, you're great, We're so glad you're
doing this, but we need somebody who can actually win,
because she was like, look at my history. Well, yeah,
because no one was arguing with her politics or against

(34:31):
her politics, or against her accomplishments. They were just like
you are two woman and too black for this to happen. Yeah,
it's it's not realistic because think of the rest of America,
but also like think of how much she'd already overcome
against so many odds. But it seems like oftentimes in

(34:54):
our society, we love a trailblazer up to a point,
and we'll take one trailblazer, but we don't want the
floodgates to open, you know, And it feels like there's
a lot of that going on where it's like, listen,
you've already made history. You're the first black woman to
win a seat in Congress. You know, Relax, relax, But

(35:20):
surely she has m did the opposite, And I loved
watching footage of her so angry, so and just so
just over it where she would say, if you can't
support me, or you can't endorse me, get out of
my way. Yeah, because she had voters, she had reporters,
she had all of these people asking her about like,

(35:42):
why are you staying in You're just taking votes away
from mc govern. Because the whole thing there was like
a huge just the same way as in this election cycle,
there were a huge number of Republicans vying for the nomination,
there were a huge number of Democrats in the primary
race at the time, and so basically you've got people saying, hey,

(36:03):
your politics not that much different from an Edward Muskie,
not that much different from a George McGovern, you should
probably just drop out. Like you've done a great job.
Your politics are on point. You know, you're very outspoken
and educated. Uh, but I mean, white America, I don't
know if they can take you. So let let George
McGovern win and get those delegates so that he can

(36:24):
go to the convention and clinch the nomination right, which
absolutely echoes UM a lot of things that Bernie Sanders
supporters heard in this past Democratic primary. UM. And also
this is this is rather reminiscent of well as well.
She had to sue in order to participate in debates

(36:45):
because people were that quick to dismiss her. She you
know that they didn't even invite her to debates, and
she became There's footage in this documentary you guys have
to watch it, UM from a television interview that has
several of the Democratic contenders, including Chisholm, on and she

(37:09):
becomes visibly fed up when the interviewer asked her which
opponent she would support. And it's not that that language
is like anti Shirley Chisholm specifically, because you hear that
in every race, Like hey, you know, well everyone is
still asks every Republican politician, which will you really support

(37:29):
Donald Trump? Yeah, well yes and so. But I think
at that point, by the time this interviewer asks her
the question, she's like, seriously, I am still a contender,
Like I'm still in this to win this. And the
thing is, though, I mean, this was a this was
a dangerous time and a dangerous race. George Wallace, the

(37:52):
segregationist politician, was shot five times and paralyzed from the
waist down and that's when he ultimately dropped out of
the race. Uh. Sureley Chisholm herself had several attempts on
her life, and in the documentary where she's interviewed years
and years later, she still can't talk about it. It's
still so painful to her that people hated her enough

(38:16):
to want to take her life. There was one man
who was following her around with a knife, but luckily
her security team kept him from getting too close to her.
But even within the Congressional Black Caucus, which you would
assume would be fully supporting her, Sureley found herself an
outsider because some caucus members had wanted to rally behind

(38:38):
black male candidates from each state who wouldn't be expected
to win, but at the convention, those delegates would be
so scattered that they could then leverage those collective delegates
for those black candidates across those many states. Uh on
behalf of platform set would um help black the black

(39:04):
population like black voters, so but they couldn't decide like
which ones essentially that they wanted to uh to put
up for the nomination. So Shirley was like, hey, listen,
let's not wait for someday. Let's make it today. I'm
gonna run, I'll do it. Yeah. At least she was consistent, right, like,
let's stop waiting around. Um. And you know, she said,

(39:25):
I am looking to know man walking this earth for
approval of what I'm doing, because basically this journalist had asterlake. Uh.
You know, some of your congressional Black Caucus colleagues, some
of those dudes are a little sore that you're throwing
your hat on the ring. And that's when she was like,
I don't don't care. Um. And you know, a lot

(39:49):
of those black caucus members were resentful. They thought she'd
sell out black interests for women's interest. Um. A lot
of them considered her color Sian building as betrayal. You know,
she worked with women black and white, she worked with Hispanic,
she worked with white liberals and welfare recipients. And a
lot of her black colleagues were like, what are you doing.

(40:10):
You're leaving You're leaving your people behind. And in her viewpoint,
it's like no, I'm yeah. She's like I'm five steps
ahead of you. Catch up. Yeah, Like I'm bringing people
together because, like I have already said, gentlemen, I am
everyone's president. And at one point, her Congressional Black Caucus colleague,
Representative Bill Clay, questioned her Sandy during a press conference.

(40:34):
It was getting to that level of sexism. And as
Shirley later said, black male politicians are no different from
white male politicians. This woman thing is so deep. I've
found it in this campaign if I ever knew it before. Yeah,
And a lot of her male Congressional Black Caucus colleagues
ended up throwing their support just like Steinhum and Abzug

(40:58):
behind people like George mc governed um, And that was
for a lot of reasons. It went back to the
whole belief of, like, we need someone who can actually win.
But if a lot of those men said on camera
in interviews in the documentary, like we need to hitch
our wagon to a star and if we are going
to rise in the ranks of you know, either our

(41:20):
party or on the national political stage, we need to
share the spotlight with the guy who's gonna win. That
operative word of course being like that guy right who's
gonna win well, and Sureley did not give up all
the way to the Democratic National Convention. She knew she
was not going to win the nomination, but she also

(41:41):
knew the potential leveraging power of delegates. So she showed
up with one two delegates, which was more than either
Ed Muskie or Hubert Humphrey. And she was really hoping
for a deadlocked convention in which she could use her

(42:03):
delegates say like, listen, I will break the tie. I'll
throw my delicates to you if you will provide a
black running mate. She also wants to negotiate for a
woman to serve in the cabinet and a Native American
to serve as Secretary of the Interior. Had to talk
about an intersectional politician, because there's footage of her again

(42:26):
saying we need a Native American person as the Secretary
of the Interior because these were their lands. Yeah, this
was their land. Should they not have a representative in
government who can have a say? But unfortunately George McGovern
had put together enough delegates to where he didn't need

(42:51):
Shirley's so she didn't really have the chance to break
that deadlock and negotiate, and much later in if she
would lament the lack of true democracy saying that it's
more deals and bargains than what people assume democracy is. Yeah.
So here's this powerful, driven woman who, as her record

(43:16):
clearly shows, wants to act on behalf of families, wants
to help the average American worker, um, wants to do
right by her people in in her country. And she's
getting to this national stage and realizing, Oh, the track

(43:37):
that I've been on where I'm trying to help people
of all colors and genders and backgrounds, that's not really
what this is about. It's about it's about that leverage
and about making those deals in back rooms. And it
really seemed like that was distasteful to her. Yeah, because
it seems at least that surely chosen never out for

(44:02):
power personal game. She was out for the people, legitimately
out for the people, hence her campaign tagline of being
unbought and unbossed. And the thing that I was really
heart and to learn after her failed campaign was that
she was still highly respected. She had made an impression

(44:23):
on the American public. She returned to Congress a popular figure.
In the nineteen seventy four Gallop Pole, she was listed
as one of the top ten most admired women in
America ahead of Jackie Oh and Coretta Scott King. Yeah,
she was tied in sixth place with Indian Prime Minister

(44:43):
in Dearra Gandhi. It was a popular woman, you know.
She she her love for the people and her desire
to do right by them, I think really attracted her
a lot of fans. But the thing is, at the
same time that Philish Laughly is pushing the right wing

(45:04):
evangelical Christian bent to the Republican Party, Shirley is becoming
disillusioned by that hard right turn, and in nineteen eighty
two she announces she will not seek re election, and
one of the reasons was because of the country's conservative
turn with the nineteen eighty election of Ronald Reagan. And

(45:25):
she was also at this point super fed up with
being misunderstood. She said she felt that her fellow African
American politicians did not understand all of those coalition building
efforts that she had started and maintained over the years,
because she was like, listen, guys, we can't do this
by ourselves, nor can white people do it by themselves. Like,
if we share politics and political ideology, we have to

(45:46):
work together. And I just think that every step of
the way. She continued to face these hurdles in her career,
and by the time the country got so conservative, she
was like, all right, I'm out. I gotta I got
to tap out. Yeah, I mean, but she we can't
forget that. She remained in Congress and was reelected up

(46:08):
until she was finally like, I don't want to be
reelected again. You know. She was a very successful state politician, um,
and she remained active even after she stepped down. She
helped co found the National Political Congress of Black Women.
She taught at Mount Holyoke College in three She also

(46:28):
campaigned for Jesse Jackson's presidential bids and eighty four and
eighty eight, and when Bill Clinton nominated her as ambassador
to Jamaica, she was like, thanks, no thanks because for
health reasons, she she didn't want to take it on,
and she ended up in classic move, she settled in Florida,

(46:50):
like you do, uh, and from there she wrote and
lectured and until she died on January one, two thousand five. Yeah,
I mean, I am so grateful for what she did
for voters, what she did for Americans, what she did
for women and women of color. The fact that she

(47:11):
was able to so successfully be on the national stage
and be so vocal um. But it does break my heart.
But she felt so unwelcome finally in politics that she
was like, I'm done, because she really chose was obviously
not the type of person to back down. So the
fact that politics at that time were becoming so hostile

(47:31):
that she was like, I'll just go lecture and get
out of here. Like that's that's very telling. Yeah. I
mean because if she were sitting here in the podcast
studio today, I would flip out, um. And then I
have a hunch she would be a little mystified at

(47:53):
how celebratory we are, because she said in her autobiography
quote that I am a national figure because I was
the first person in one hundred ninety two years to
be at once a congressman, black and a woman. Proves
I would think that our society is not yet either
just or free. And that is the exact reason why

(48:16):
she says repeatedly that she doesn't want to be remembered
solely as being the first African American woman elected to
US Congress. I think she would be so much more
excited to hear US talk about her record of advocating
for uh, domestic workers, for immigrants, for women of all colors, um,

(48:41):
for education and children in this country. Um, you know
that's where she found her power and inspiration. Well. In
one final quote of hers that this makes me think
of is sort of another way that she has phrased
the whole thing of you know, I want to remembered

(49:01):
as someone who fought for change in the twentieth century.
At one point she also said, I want to be
remembered as a woman who was herself, you know, I
mean she she never compromised at all who she was.
And oh man, if you could just get only you
could like bottle up Shirley Chishom's character, you know, and

(49:24):
sell it. I'd take it like a vitamin every day,
Oh as would I. And so I have really high
hopes for this biopic that oh yeah, that a Nika
Nanni Rose is supposedly working on. She's set to produce
a star in it. And I will definitely eat that
up if and when it comes to theata's absolutely. Um So, listeners,

(49:48):
we want to know from you had you known about
Shirley Chisholm. Are you listening to this episode in Brooklyn,
possibly in bedside and feeling a whole new significance for
where you are. I hope you are, so let us
know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address. You can also tweet us
at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've

(50:11):
got a couple of messages to share with you right now.
I have a letter here from Grace in response to
our flight attendant episode. Uh. She said. I was a
flight attendant for just under two years, from early two
thousand four through late two thousand five. I was happy
to hear you speak about the profession because it is

(50:31):
ultra glamorized, but is not at all what people think
it is. Here are just a few things I have
to say about my experience. Number one, sexual harassment. I'm
average looking at best, and I got inappropriate comments from
passengers as well as pilots. I even had one pilot
send me a penis pick on an overnight. I told

(50:53):
him if he ever contacted me again, I would get
him fired and blacklisted. Sadly, no idea if I could
actually do that. Our airline didn't have weight limits technically,
but they absolutely did not hire larger people, and we
were expected to wear heels when working even in airports.
Heels are so super practical for people who are trained

(51:14):
in CPR to save your life doing heavy lifting, et cetera.
Number two schedule, you have to bid for your desired schedule.
This means you work a different schedule every single month,
and when you don't have much seniority, you work long trips.
You're gone for four or five days and ninth at
a time and never get a regular schedule. It does
improve his time on the job, but most people don't

(51:35):
last more than a year. Number three pay. I made
under eighteen thousand my first year, barely more my second,
and I didn't sleep at my home for over two
hundred and fifty days a year. Pay is based on
hours in the plane. Neither pilots or flight attendants are
making an hourly wage until the plane door is closed,

(51:56):
and they stopped getting paid when the door opens. Yeah,
while you are boarding andy planing, we aren't getting paid.
This also means the time we take to get to
the airport early, which is required to check all of
our safety equipment, et cetera, is time we are getting paid.
When on overnights we get a super small stipend to
help with food costs. Number four free flights depending on

(52:18):
your airline. You don't really fly for free. I got
discounted flights and the rates were different depending on what
airline you flew. You were always stand by and they
oversell all flights and I had to dress up. On
top of which I didn't make nearly enough money that
I could afford to travel even at a discount. Number
five turnover. Because the schedule sucks, the pay sucks, you

(52:40):
are gone all the time, et cetera. Most people don't
last longer than a year. Seems like a lot of
companies do it on purpose because flight attendants makes so
little their first five years on the job that it
keeps labor costs lower for them. And this is just
scratching the surface for me. I know people who stayed
with it, and once on the job about five years,
you have more seniority, which improves the job quite a bit.

(53:01):
I couldn't do it. I was in a relationship and
the travel made it hard. We've been together eleven years now.
He rules, and couldn't deal with what felt like a
really abusive job. If you haven't already, please check out
the passenger shaming on Instagram. It's a riot. Love your show,
Thanks for your time and thanks for your insights. Grace.
I have a letter here from brief subject line trans

(53:25):
pants suits. She writes, your recent show about pants suits
struck a particular chord with me. Finding a suit as
a transgender woman is hard. First, we have to fight
the societal norm that all trans women wear skirts or dresses.
Seven type transgender pants suits into Google. My first three
results are from a site about dealing with transgender victims,

(53:47):
of assault suits for trans men, and a lawsuit about
a trans girl in a locker room. That's not helpful
at all, Google. Then we have to fight other trans
people saying that we aren't trans enough because we want
to wear a suit. And finally, we have to find
someone who is actually decent at fitting a suit onto
our larger frames. Shout out to my tall and plus
sized lady friends. And that probably involves custom tailoring, which

(54:10):
is just another expense. There's a lot of info for
trans women on how to be hyper feminine, but very
little for those of us who want to express a
different side of our femininity. Our society is starting to
understand that cis gender women can be whatever they want
to be, so hopefully we can start to admit that
a trans woman's favorite color doesn't have to be pink.

(54:31):
And we also offered a helpful ps In response to
our episode on period tracker apps, she said using natural
family Planning was the best decision my wife and I
ever made, enabling us to discover some medical problems that
would have gone unnoticed otherwise but showed up when we
tracked her cycle. I would definitely give a shout out
to the Creighton method natural family Planning as the super

(54:55):
cheap method, nothing more than a piece of paper and
pen required. Well, thank you, Brief for all that insight
and love back to you and listeners if you've got
anything to share with us. Mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address and for links
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos and podcasts with our sources so

(55:17):
you can learn more about fighting surely Chisholm head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com