{"id":3478,"date":"2014-11-25T17:47:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T17:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/?p=888"},"modified":"2014-11-25T17:47:55","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T17:47:55","slug":"unbossed-and-unbought-shirley-chisholm-and-the-voice-of-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/2014\/11\/25\/unbossed-and-unbought-shirley-chisholm-and-the-voice-of-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cUnbossed and Unbought\u201d: Shirley Chisholm and the Voice of the People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, November 30 is the 90th anniversary of the birth of Shirley Chisholm. The following blog post was written by Anna Bostwick Flaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Chisholm<\/a><\/p>\n

Image via usps.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Shirley Chisholm, the \u201cunbought and unbossed\u201d African American congresswoman and 1972 Presidential candidate from the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn is the subject of a 2014 limited edition stamp.\u00a0 Chisholm\u2019s candidacy was remarkable not only because she presented Americans with the prospect of a Black woman in the Oval Office, but also because she promised to wrest electoral politics out of the hands of the rich and powerful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Chisholm<\/a><\/p>\n

Chisholm campaign flyer.\u00a0 <\/em>Lolly Eggers Papers<\/span><\/em><\/a>, Iowa Women\u2019s Archives <\/em><\/p>\n

Shirley Chisholm viewed her campaign as an effort that would give voice to \u201call<\/span> Americans.\u201d\u00a0 In particular, Chisholm opposed incumbent President Richard Nixon as the embodiment of a \u201cminority government\u201d only interested in \u201crepresenting the wealthy and vested interest.\u201d\u00a0 The investigation of the Watergate scandal that began with the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters and the administration\u2019s cover-up prompted congressional legislation intended to curb abuses in campaign finance.\u00a0 These reforms were substantially dismantled recently when, in a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court in McCutcheon<\/span><\/em><\/a> struck down limits on the total sum that donors may contribute to candidates and parties.\u00a0 Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer took the rare step of reading his dissent from the bench:\u00a0 \u201cWhere money calls the tune,\u201d he cautioned, \u201cthe voices of the people will not be heard.\u201d\u00a0 His turn of phrase suggests not just a warning about the future, but also an understanding of the past.\u00a0 Just months before Watergate, Shirley Chisholm had used similar language to encourage small contributions to her 1972 Presidential campaign in donation envelopes promising to \u201cgive voice to that vast segment of the country that has never had national exposure before.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Chisholm<\/a><\/p>\n

Chisholm contribution envelope.\u00a0 Lolly Eggers Papers, Iowa Women\u2019s Archives<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0In 1968, Chisholm had become the first African American woman elected to Congress.\u00a0 In Congress, as she had in the New York State Assembly, Chisholm concerned herself with the legal, educational, and employment concerns of women and minorities.\u00a0 She was a founding member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women\u2019s Political Caucus.\u00a0 During her presidential campaign, Chisholm told Roxanne Conlin<\/span><\/a> \u2013 a Democrat who would later run for Iowa governor in 1982 and for the U.S. Senate in 2010 \u2013 that 1972 must be the year that \u201cwomen, blacks, brown, the young, the old, activists for social change, and just people who are tired of reading the election results before the votes are counted \u2013 are going to prove that our candidates and our policies and our government are not the exclusive preserve of the financial community, the political establishment and the opinion polls.\u201d\u00a0 Chisholm wanted to direct her energies on behalf of the concerns of the people.\u00a0 She offered her outspoken advocacy on behalf of civil rights legislation, the Equal Rights Amendment, and a minimum family income; she opposed wiretapping, domestic spying, and the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

For many, Chisholm\u2019s candidacy signaled a broader movement for change in America.\u00a0 In 1972\u00a0New York Magazine<\/em> columnist Richard Reeves warned, \u201cIt\u2019s happening in Cedar Rapids, folks.\u201d\u00a0 Edna Griffin<\/span><\/a>, who in the summer of 1948 had led a successful campaign to desegregate a Des Moines lunch counter (more than seven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama), was \u201cquite surprised\u201d by the support for Chisholm in Iowa.\u00a0 Griffin, Roxanne Conlin, and Louise Rosenfield Noun<\/span><\/a>, a prominent feminist and civil liberties activist and, later, a cofounder of the Iowa Women\u2019s Archives, spearheaded efforts for Chisholm in Des Moines.\u00a0 They established a state headquarters for Chisholm supporters in a private residence on Eleventh Street in order to reflect Chisholm\u2019s preference for neighborhoods and community rather than \u201cbig business.\u00a0 Noun later recalled that supporting Chisholm was one of the \u201cmost memorable\u201d political adventures of her life.\u00a0 In Iowa City, Chisholm supporters organized in the days leading up to the precinct caucuses.\u00a0 They managed to join with the McGovern caucus to elect Sylvia T. Johnson, a Chicago native and part-time member of the Augustana College Psychology Department, as a Shirley Chisholm delegate.<\/p>\n

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\"chisholm<\/a><\/p>\n

Image courtesy the Lolly Eggers Papers, Iowa Women\u2019s Archives<\/em><\/p>\n

In campaign literature, Chisholm supporters proclaimed that the presidential candidate transcended categorization as \u201ca woman, and a Black Woman at that;\u201d rather, Shirley Chisholm was a beacon of \u201cnew hope for our system.\u201d\u00a0 Recent events remind us that we must still reckon with the work of the \u201cunbought and unbossed\u201d candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, November 30 is the 90th anniversary of the birth of Shirley Chisholm. The following blog post was written by Anna Bostwick Flaming. Image via usps.com Shirley Chisholm, the “unbought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3478"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4746,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478\/revisions\/4746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}