Clinton: A Historical No To The Status Quo

I have written in the past about how determined Hillary Clinton is as a candidate for the presidency and the past few months of the primary campaign have done nothing to dissuade me from my original thinking. The people who are calling for her to drop out of the race before the end of the primaries are wasting their breath; she is going to finish the entire process and it is important for her to do so.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Michelle D. Bernard, Independent Women's Forum President, hit the nail right on the head. Clinton is continuing in the race for the nomination so as to anchor her place in history. Clinton is going to finish what she started so as to clearly establish how many people voted for her and what were the demographics of her appeal.

Keeping a historical eye on politics is always important and, in that vein, it is interesting to note that Clinton and Barack Obama can look back at one person who was a ground breaker for both of them. If you think you know who the first black candidate for U.S. President was, you might be mistaken.

Shirley Chisholm, in 1972, made a bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, receiving 152 delegate votes. The country was nowhere near the point of being ready or able to accept either a woman or a black person as president and she lost the nomination to George McGovern. Chisholm's base of support, however, was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization of Women (NOW). Chisholm said she ran for the office, "In spite of hopeless odds...to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo."

Chisholm: educator and author, she represented New York's
12th District for seven terms from 1968 to 1983 and was
the first major party African American woman elected
to Congress. In 1972 she became the first major party
African American candidate for President. She won
152 delegates.

Born Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn in 1924, she was the daughter of two immigrant parents. Her father was a native of British Guiana and her mother was from Barbados. From ages three to ten she lived in Barbados with her grandmother. She addressed those years in her autobiography Unbought and Unbossed (1970), "Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason." She was the author of another book, The Good Fight, which was published in 1973.

Years later she earned a degree in Elementary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. She was married to Conrad Chisholm from 1949 to 1977. Upon their divorce, she married Arthur Hardwick, Jr., who died in 1986.

Chisholm was elected to the New York State Legislature in 1964 and four years later ran as the Democratic candidate for New York's 12th District congressional seat and was elected to the House of Representatives. By defeating Republican James Farmer, Chisholm became the first African-American woman elected to Congress.

In 1969 Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus as one of its founding members. But a year earlier as a freshman congresswoman she shocked some members of the establishment by asking for a committee reassignment. Given the environment of her urban district, she felt her original assignment to the House Agricultural Committee was inappropriate and in response she was placed on the Veteran's Affairs Committee.

She voted for Hale Boggs as House Majority Leader over John Conyers soon after and, as a reward for her support, Boggs assigned her to the highly-regarded Education and Labor Committee. She remained on that assignment and was the third highest ranking member when she retired in 1983.

Chisholm created another controversy by visiting George Wallace, a seemingly moral opposite, in the hospital shortly after he was shot during the 1972 presidential primary campaign. However, several years later when she was working on a bill to give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage, it was Wallace who helped her gain enough southern congressional votes to push the legislation through the House.

Throughout her years in Congress Chisholm constantly worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She called for reductions in military expenditures while she supported spending increases for education, healthcare and other social services.

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton has the same fight in her as did Shirley Chisholm. If, in her political career, she can bring about the same ideological proficiency as Chisholm, Clinton will not only have made history but will have earned a highly regarded place in it as well.