In 1968 Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress; she served in the House of Representatives from 1969 – 1983. In 1972 she became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States, the first Black candidate for a major party nomination.
Shirley Chisholm had spunk. Unlike Lou Grant (who told Mary Richards in one classic scene from the Mary Tyler Moore Show: Mary, you’ve got spunk – I hate spunk) I admire spunk so Rep. Chisholm is on my list of most admired people. I hear her voice with its crystal clarion calling out of truth to power echoing through the halls of the US Capitol today as surely as her footsteps walked those halls more than a half century ago:
“It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices. It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Can their jobs be so important to them, their prestige, their power, their privileges so important that they will cooperate in the degradation of our society just to hang on to those jobs?”
Yep. Sure sounds like it, Shirley.
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Every vote matters – don’t sit this one out. Vote Tuesday, November 08th!
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About Sheila Morris
Sheila Morris is a personal historian, essayist with humorist tendencies, lesbian activist, truth seeker and speaker in the tradition of other female Texas storytellers including her paternal grandmother.
In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press published her collection of first-person accounts of a few of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBTQ organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBTQ history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality.
She has published five nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and two collections of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award in 2008. Her writings have been included in various anthologies - most recently the 2017 Saints and Sinners Literary Magazine. Her latest book, Four Ticket Ride, was released in January, 2019.
She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike, Charly and Carl. She is also Naynay to her two granddaughters Ella and Molly James who light up her life for real. Born in rural Grimes County, Texas in 1946 her Texas roots still run wide and deep.
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