What Would Shirley Chisholm Say?
by Mark Anthony Neal

“Hello Brooklyn!” I imagine that Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy, do or die…) native Shirley Chisholm might have said that when she addressed a crowd of hundreds, as she stood in front of a Brooklyn Church 36 years ago this January, to announce her candidacy for President of the United States. Ms. Chisholm, was the first black women elected to Congress in 1968 and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)—her announcement in January of 1972 was historic. That Ms. Chisholm is not more often recalled in our current political season is a reflection of a corporate media structure that possesses a criminally short memory (particularly in relation to black folk). Shirley Chisholm was a political maverick who held both the black political establishment and professional feminists accountable as she toiled on behalf of the poor, Black and Latino/a constituents that she represented for 14 years. I wonder what Ms. Chisholm, who died in 2005, would have said about the current debates about race and gender in the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

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