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It was an amazing and apparently spontaneous transformation in the attitudes and behavior of youth; the generation of the 1950s had been so famous fo… - Shirley Chisholm
" "It was an amazing and apparently spontaneous transformation in the attitudes and behavior of youth; the generation of the 1950s had been so famous for its "apathy" that some college newspapers banned the overused word from their editorials. Now it was enlisting en masse in a high-minded and high-spirited campaign to integrate the society by living and fighting together, going to jail together, and sometimes (this must never be forgotten) dying together. But the civil rights movement did not achieve its lofty ideals. Hotels and buses were desegregated, but blacks perceived slowly that they were not much better off than before. What good is it to be allowed to sit in the front of the bus when you haven't got the fare? Inevitably, the movement fell apart along racial lines. The blacks began to see that they were still, subtly, being treated as inferiors by the white students. They were in the same position that Frederick Douglass found himself in a century earlier with the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. The well-meaning Garrison was using Douglass as an "exhibition piece," Douglass perceived, and when the great black leader demanded a more important role in the abolition movement, Garrison said he thought that the most black people were able to do at the moment was to serve as exhibits of the fact that they could be taught to read, write and speak about their experiences as slaves. Douglass understood then that he was still in a master-slave relationship with the white man and resolved to break his intellectual chains as well as his physical ones. Young blacks in the 1960s played out the same story. Where they had been integrationist and nonviolent, they became separatist and militant. It was the era of Black Power. Discovering that they were not going to win any important gains by carrying picket signs and coaching people for literacy tests, they declared their independence from white society in every way. In diet, dress, religion, clothing and behavior, they set out to become black, black and beautiful, black and proud. This struck a deep chord in the soul of black Americans, whose great need is to believe in their worth and dignity, their selfhood, after generations of having been beaten, sold, murdered, exploited and demeaned. They have been told in the most direct, brutal ways that they are worthless, and there are deep psychic wounds in the minds of all black Americans. A few hard-won gains in status have not healed them, and healing them is the most important priority for blacks. Independence movements, from community-united black fronts to the Black Panthers and the Republic of New Africa-each has an essential role to play in the cure. Of course, one may criticize some of their tactics. I have, myself; but it should not be missed that the people who hate and fear the militant black movements the most, and who would mobilize all the resources of the law against them, do not come with clean hands; they are people who have profited through the years from black subjugation. Many of them have supported in the past, by inaction or action, a group that was far worse than the most militant black ones, the Ku Klux Klan.
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About Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (30 November 1924 – 1 January 2005) was an American politician, educator and author. In 1968, she became the first African American woman elected to Congress, representing New York's 12th District for seven terms until 1983. On January 23, 1972, she became the first African American candidate for a major party nomination for President of the United States, winning 162 delegates - the closest any woman had ever come to winning the nomination before Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 campaign.
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Shirley Anita St. Hill
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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm
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Shirley Anita Chisholm
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Additional quotes by Shirley Chisholm
The movement has, for the most part, been led by educated white middle-class women. There is nothing unusual about this. Reform as movements are usually led by the better educated and better off. But, if the women's movement is to be successful you must recognize the broad variety of women there are and the depth and range of their interests and concerns. To black and Chicano women, picketing a restricted club or insisting on the title Ms are not burning issues. They are more concerned about bread-and-butter items such as the extension of minimum wage, welfare reform and day care. Further, they are not only women but women of color and thus are subject to additional and sometimes different pressures.
I’m a politician. I detest the word because of the connotation that cling like slime to it. But for want of a better term, I must use it. I have been in politics for twenty years and in that time, I’ve learned a few things about the role of women in politics. The major thing that I have learned is that women are the backbone of America’s political organizations: they are the letter writers, the envelope stuffers, they are the speech writers and the largest numbers of potential voters. Yet, they are but rarely the standard bearers or elected officials.
The attitudes some members of Congress display toward the rest of humanity, including their constituents, sometimes irritates and sometimes dismays me. They act like aristocrats. It has been a long time since Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as President, then rode his horse back to a boardinghouse and sat down to dinner with the rest of the roomers. Now even the most junior member of the House is surrounded by a hush of deference when he moves around the Hill.
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