Title: 100 Years of 100 Things: Shirley Chisholm

[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Today it's thing number 42, which is actually a person. It's 100 years of Shirley Chisholm. The former Brooklyn congresswoman, first-ever Black woman in Congress, and 1972 presidential hopeful was born 100 years ago this week, November 30th, 1924, just a few months after WNYC was born. 52 years before Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to throw her hat into the ring for that nomination when she was 48.

Shirley Chisholm: I would run, realizing all of the controversies that would swirl about my head. But when you are a catalyst for change in any society, you have to be prepared.

Brian Lehrer: That from a presidential campaign speech at UCLA in 1972, Shirley Chisholm, the politician who was also a public intellectual.

Shirley Chisholm: I'm a woman that holds three college degrees and 10 points from a PhD. I'm not here to boast to you, but I'm just a little bit sick and tired of people not looking at me in terms of my humanity and my capabilities.

Brian Lehrer: That was also from that UCLA campaign speech. We'll hear more archive tape of Shirley Chisholm in this 100-year segment as we go. We have, I think, the perfect guest to guide us through these clips of Shirley Chisholm in her own words. It's Zinga Fraser, author of a new book called Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings. Zinga Fraser is director of the Shirley Chisholm Project at Brooklyn College and a professor of Africana studies and women's and gender studies there. She has also been a consultant to the new movie Shirley with Regina King.

Dr. Fraser, congratulations on the book, first of all, and thank you so much for joining our series 100 Years of 100 Things. Welcome to WNYC.

Zinga Fraser: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get to more tape of Shirley Chisholm as an adult, let's talk a little bit about her childhood. Your book reminds us that Shirley Chisholm was born in 1924 to West Indian parents from Barbados who migrated to the United States in the early 1920s. Do you know why they left Barbados and why they chose Brooklyn as a new home?

Zinga Fraser: Like a number of West Indians, specifically Bajans, would come to New York City and come to Brooklyn because of economic opportunity opportunities. They decided to make that sojourn to Brooklyn where there was a enclave of Bajan, in particular, a community in Brooklyn, in Bedford-Stuyvesant as well as in Williamsburg during that time.

Brian Lehrer: Bajan, for people who don't know, refers to?

Zinga Fraser: Barbadian people.

Brian Lehrer: You write that Shirley's father, Charles St. Hill, was a laborer who followed and admired Marcus Garvey, read the papers, and engaged in kitchen table debates on local and international news. Can you say a little more about the political conversations that Shirley Chisholm may have been hearing in the earliest years of her life?

Zinga Fraser: Her father followed the UNIA. He was. He would take Shirley Chisholm to some of those meetings in Brooklyn and in Harlem. It was issues around colonialism, Black empowerment, self-determination. Those were the kind of things that Chisholm grew up hearing. She also grew up hearing about Marcus Garvey and other great Black leaders from the Caribbean. That helped develop a certain kind of self-esteem and understanding of herself, not only as someone who was from Brooklyn but her diasporic identity.

Brian Lehrer: What kind of laborer was Charles St. Hill? Do you know what he did?

Zinga Fraser: He mainly worked in a bakery in Brooklyn, as well as did some work on the seaport in Brooklyn. Seaport, the naval base. That was his primary occupation.

Brian Lehrer: You also remind us that because of hard economic times for the family during the depression in the 1930s, Shirley and her sister were sent back to Barbados to live with their maternal grandmother and attend what you call British-run schools. That allowed Chisholm to see some of the influence that British colonial power had on every aspect of Barbadian life. Do you know an example or two of that and how being a kid in the Barbados school system shaped her worldview?

Zinga Fraser: In particular, Chisholm later on in her life was someone who, at Brooklyn College, supported a Negro Week. A discussion of African and African American history. She found the Barbadian school system, in particular, its influence of the British in particular, for example, having to recite all hail to the Queen and learning British history instead of learning Barbadian or Bayesian history. Those influences of not necessarily knowing the native history, knowing what all encompassed their life, but it was many ways influenced by the British. She talked about how that influenced her own understanding of imperialism and colonialism.

Brian Lehrer: By the end of her childhood, Shirley came back to Brooklyn, got a bachelor's degree at Brooklyn College in 1946, and a master's in education from Columbia in 1952. You wrote that college life would serve as her entryway into politics. How, for example?

Zinga Fraser: Even though she's majoring in sociology and fluent in Spanish, she makes a decision to get involved in politics and also start forming her own kind of collegial politics on Brooklyn campus. She creates a sorority-like organization for Black women. There wasn't any group that was able to foster both education and social as well as political activism. She creates IPOTHIA as an organization.

She also meets really great professors who really want her to focus on thinking about the larger aspects of how she operates in her community. It's also during that time that she meets Wesley McHolder, who is in the NAACP, but also intertwined in Brooklyn politics during that time. That's her beginning stages of entering politics and seeing what organizing looks like.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe this is one of the things Shirley Chisholm learned in college. You tell me. Here's a clip of Chisholm. This is from a speech much later in 1983, nine years after her presidential run at Greenfield High School in Massachusetts. Steeped in history, she invokes how fully women were excluded from the US Democracy at the nation's founding, as she invokes a very early American feminist, someone we might call a founding mother.

Shirley Chisholm: Abigail Adams, the wife of the second President of the United States of America. In a letter to her husband at the Continental Congress back in the 18th century, she counseled the future President of the United States. This is what she said thusly. She said, "Remember the lady and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember that all men would be tyrants if they could."

Brian Lehrer: Shirley Chisholm quoting Abigail Adams in 1983. Any context, Dr. Fraser, that you'd like to give for Chisholm invoking Adams or the country's founding?

Zinga Fraser: She always used the framing and some of the framers, the foundational ideologies in women and men who are part of that framing of the country as a dichotomy of what was happening when she's talking about some of the hypocrisy that existed within our own Constitution, our own Bill of Rights, even how we imagine or reimagine American democracy. She was a student of democracy, and she was a student of the Constitution and all of those things. It provides such a telling way of how Chisholm also approached her intellectual journey.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, as usual in our 100-year segments, we can take a few oral history calls. Is anyone listening now who knew Shirley Chisholm or worked with her in any way during her lifetime? 212-433-WNYC. I'll bet we have somebody, maybe more than one person out there like that. 212-433-9692. If so, what memory stays with you the most? 212-433-WNYC. Or anyone else of any generation who feels that you've been influenced by Shirley Chisholm.

Again, is anyone listening now who knew Shirley Chisholm or worked with her in any way during her lifetime, or even met her? If so, what memory stays with you the most? Or anyone else of any generation who feels that you've been influenced by Shirley Chisholm? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. With our special guest, Zinga Fraser, director of the Shirley Chisholm Project at Brooklyn College and author of a new book called Shirley Chisholm In Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings, as well as a historical consultant to the movie Shirley with Regina King that's out this year. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

We've got many more clips to play. We haven't even gotten to the presidential campaign yet or 1968 when Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman ever in the House of Representatives. Since this is a 100-year history of her whole life, on this week of what would be Shirley Chisholm's 100th birthday. Back to Shirley in college for one more question because your book, Dr. Fraser, reminds us that black women were excluded from Brooklyn College's social clubs during the time she was in school in the late '40s. This was Brooklyn, New York City, not the Jim Crow South. That segregation was stated and official?

Zinga Fraser: Yes, it was. It's also important to note how Brooklyn College, as much as we like to rally CUNY as being a college for all people, all backgrounds, there was a small population. There weren't that many African American or Afro-Caribbean people even being accepted into Brooklyn College. It was very elite during that time. Chisholm really does enter Brooklyn College or enters the CUNY system during a time where they are collectively working against the institutions around race and gender and holding the institution to toll on those issues.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another clip of Shirley Chisholm, originally aired on WNYC and featured in a Museum of the City of New York exhibition on her life that I know you were co-curator of. The museum says before she entered public life as an elected official, Shirley Chisholm launched a career in early education working as a teacher's aide. This clip has Chisholm advocating for integration through busing of public school students. I'm not sure of the exact year, maybe he'll tell us after the clip, but here's Shirley Chisholm on busing in the '60s.

Shirley Chisholm: I'm so perturbed over the fact that all you have to do nowadays is just to mention the word bussing. The moment that word is mentioned, there's an emotionalism that's built up. One of the reasons that I have for busing-- I am so shocked, I am so shocked at the depth of the racism in this country that I really believe that unless white children and Black children have an opportunity to have some kind of ongoing relationships with each other as they're growing up, that seed also will be reproduced in the next generation and we don't want it. We don't want it.

[applause]

I'll finish in a few minutes. I just want to say, oh, how my heart bleeds for the people in the country now that are saying we do not want to bus our children out of the neighborhood. Where were all of these voices for years in the South when Black children were bused right past the white schools in the southern neighborhoods, going to schools in the most dilapidated put-together shacks, going to bathrooms, I call them out houses?

Brian Lehrer: Shirley Chisholm on the bad old kind of busing and the kind that she was advocating at that time. Actually, Dr. Fraser, I think I was corrected by my producer that that clip was not from the '60s, but during her presidential campaign in '72. Would you talk about that clip and how it might have fit into her role as a political advocate or organizer around education issues before her political career?

Zinga Fraser: I think the clip really does show how Chisholm is talking about busing in particular. It was a hot-button issue in the '72 campaigns within the Democratic Party as well as within the Republican Party. You have a huge contingent of segregationists who were against busing in particular. Chisholm in many ways talks about busing to the political chagrin of a lot of her supporters as well as-- Not her supporters, but her advisors that they thought that she really should not come out for busing because it provided many ways for her not to receive a significant support in the Southern states.

Chisholm understood what busing meant in the urban areas in which she represented a large portion, and understood busing as a way to talk about the educational and economic inequalities that are surrounding public schools and the ways in which we use property taxes and all of those things to fund schools and how segregation, as well as urban areas, have really limited the resources within Black and brown communities. Chisholm makes a hard stance around busing and talks about a larger framework when we think about segregation.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Don in Manhattan, who I think is going to say he worked on Shirley Chisholm's first campaign for elected office. Don, do I have that right? You're on WNYC. Hello.

Don: Yes. Shirley Chisholm's first run against Congresswoman Edna Kelly, who represented Bedford-Stuyvesant. She said one of the ways to beat Edna Kelly was to go into the projects to register voters. Her first run she didn't make it, but the second time around, using that strategy, she got more people to vote to ouster Congresswoman Edna Kelly.

Brian Lehrer: What was your role, Don? What did you do?

Don: I'm from the South and we register voters, so we went into knocking on doors in the projects to ask people to register to vote. A lot of people weren't registered because they come from the South and you couldn't vote down South. Come to New York, you know what? It was a novel idea to register the vote.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Don: This was '64.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Don. That is some story, Dr. Fraser.

Zinga Fraser: Yes. It's important to note the discussion around Chisholm going to the projects. Chisholm really went everywhere where there were people. Even she talks about her shreking the respectability politics of her day. Right. Going to street corners and saloons or bars to register people to vote. She would go anywhere where the people were. That's definitely a testament of what Shirley Chisholm embodied in terms of her political strategies in organizing and connecting to everyday people.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that call, Don. Let's take another one right now before we continue on the timeline and get to the presidential campaign and her days in the state assembly, by the way, which don't get well remembered. Eleanor in Oceanside, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eleanor.

Eleanor: Hi, Brian. Hello, Dr. Fraser. I was a teacher. I'm now retired, but around 1970, I taught at Ocean Hill Brownsville Elementary School. We met her. She came to our school. I was immediately struck by her straightforwardness, her feeling of honesty. Even today, I'm overwhelmed whenever I think of her. She was just so wonderful in the things that she said. I'm Jewish. It's like I wanted to say the things that she said. My feelings were her feelings. It was a community I felt was in her. I just can't say enough about her. She really, to this day, I just like what she said.

Brian Lehrer: Does any line or anything from her stick with you, or is it too far of a distance?

Eleanor: Not particularly. [chuckles] It was a long time ago, but I still remember her presence, her straightforwardness, just the way she-- I don't want to say attack, but she just said things that needed to be said. That's how I felt. She just visited our school one day. I just remember, even though it was like maybe 1970.

Brian Lehrer: One visit to your school, and she impressed you that much and it stayed with you all these years. Eleanor, thank you for that piece of oral history. It's funny, she mentions Ocean Hill Brownsville because, of course, Dr. Fraser, as I'm sure you know, that was the the central neighborhood focus of the big New York City teachers' strike in the fall of 1968 over community control of the schools, which Black leaders in the neighborhood in particular wanted. Was Shirley Chisholm involved in that?

Zinga Fraser: Yes, she was. She really found a way to try to merge-- being a former teacher herself, merged the issues around teachers, as well as the importance that she also believed in having community control and engagement, in particular Black and brown communities, to have a role in terms of the curriculum, have a role in terms of increasing the number of teachers that represented that community. Chisholm was very much a part of that history of that time. In some ways, some people didn't like her stances. Others, a number of people supported her. She really was about trying to find the best way to support schools, to support children, to get the best education that they required and needed.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, it's 100 years of Shirley Chisholm in our 100 year series today. The former Brooklyn congresswoman in 1972, presidential hopeful, was born 100 years ago this week, November 30th, 1924. Our guest is Zinga Fraser, director of the Shirley Chisholm Project at Brooklyn College and author of a new book called Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings, as well as a consultant to the Museum of the City of New York or co-curator of the Museum of the City of New York exhibit on Chisholm and the movie Chisholm with Regina King.

Who else has an oral history memory to share or any other question? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Kevin in Denver, I see you. You're going to be the next call when we get to the presidential run. Before she became the first Black woman ever elected to Congress, Shirley Chisholm got elected to the New York State Assembly. Dr. Fraser, did she have any specific state-level policy focus or accomplishments that you want to recall?

Zinga Fraser: Yes, I think the most important legislation that she-- since we're talking about education, is the SEEK Program that provided resources is still in working today. There are tons of SEEK students. It provided resources as well as scholarship to students from marginalized communities, in particular those who were poor or working class. Chisholm understood what it meant to have that kind of support, not only financial support but as well as mentorship and engagement of those students from the beginning as freshmen to their senior year.

Since Chisholm, as I wrote in the book, was able to receive admittance into some of the most prestigious schools like Vassar and others, but because of her family background, she could not afford to go to those schools. As we know, CUNY was free for most students during the time. When she gets into this assembly, it still is free, but she understood the toll it took for a number of students to receive funding as well as resources to support them. I would say that was probably one of the most major legislations that she's able to pass in the state assembly and her working with people like Percy Sutton and others to ensure that that legislation got passed.

Brian Lehrer: That's a good one. You may get free tuition, but you still have to put a roof over your head and food on your plate. in 1968, she's elected to Congress, first Black woman ever. In 1969 she gives one of her famous speeches in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Here's a 20-second clip.

Shirley Chisholm: I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am Black. Prejudice against Blacks is becoming unacceptable, although it will take years to eliminate it. Prejudice against women is still acceptable.

Brian Lehrer: She didn't have the music bed at that time. Obviously, a very dramatic and a very famous Shirley Chisholm moment. I think Amanda in Manhattan is calling about exactly that clip. Amanda, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Amanda: Hello, Brian. Yes. Now that you've played the clip, you've stepped on my lines. What I further am now thinking of is Maya Angelou's line about how you may not remember what people said or what they did, but you remember how they made you feel. I can tell you that Shirley Chisholm was so exciting for women. I'm white. My mother was white and Jewish and adored. We all adored Shirley Chisholm because she was so articulate, so strong, so insistent, and just didn't take no guff.

I guess I remember at the time being somewhat surprised. We had been activists and civil rights and stuff. I think I was taken aback at first. I was in my teens at the time, I guess. That someone would say that they had been more discriminated against as a woman than as a Black person. All these years later, that is the one thing that really stands out.

Brian Lehrer: Amanda, thank you. Dr. Fraser, would you talk about that speech or the framing in that clip, which seems to compare two different parts of her intersectional identity in ways that obviously, per Amanda's call, surprised a lot of people?

Zinga Fraser: Chisholm really understood the ways in which misogyny and patriarchy is embedded in almost everything, a part of our society. She understood how people, men and women, saw her ability to run for office, the questioning of her intelligence, her mental acuity, all of those things. She understood it through the prism of sexism and misogyny. She thought of it understanding that racism was pervasive, and indeed it was, but also how important it was for us to understand and grapple with sexism and patriarchy.

In particular, for women in politics, she tries to create and carve away that allows women to speak freely about the ways in which being in the halls of Congress or being in the state assembly also isolated her from a number of her colleagues. What I say to people, too, is she also still put people to the test in regards of their racism and also talking about the ways in which women, in particular white women, needed to step up their understanding of the lived experience of marginalized people, and in particular Black and brown women.

She was never happy with being the only one to be included, whether it be in a leadership conference or panels. She said that it is a requirement of women who are invested in feminism, in particular white women who have a certain privilege, to understand the lived experiences of others and not only kind of exceptionalize Chisholm as being the only one, but understanding that feminism is for everybody, as Bell Hooks would say.

Brian Lehrer: We come to the year 1972. Shirley Chisholm would turn 48 that November. The Vietnam War was raging. Richard Nixon was running for reelection. George McGovern would get the Democratic nomination for president. Shirley Chisholm made history running as the first Black woman to seek a major party's nomination. Here's a classic one-minute from her campaign kickoff news conference.

Shirley Chisholm: I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud.

[applause]

I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman and I'm equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests. I stand here now without endorsements from many big-name politicians or celebrities or any other kind of prop. I do not intend to offer to you the tired and glib cliches which for too long have been accepted par of our political life. I am the candidate of the people of America.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: one more clip from Shirley Chisholm's campaign kickoff news conference answering a question on why it would be important to have a woman president or have women in politics generally.

Shirley Chisholm: Do I recommend a trend for more women, and specifically Black women to enter into politics elected office? Yes, I definitely am feeling and recognizing that as a result of over 20 years in political life only emerging eight years ago publicly, that there is a great need for more women in the political arena. I happen to believe that there are certain aspects of legislation that probably would be given much more attention if we had more women voices in the halls of the legislatures on the city, state, and national level.

Legislation that pertains to daycare centers, education, social services, mental services, the kind of legislation that has to do with the conservation and preservation of the most important resources that any nation has, and that is its human resources.

Brian Lehrer: Shirley Chisholm running for president in 1972, and Kevin in Denver remembers it. Kevin, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Kevin: Hey. Thank you, Brian. Hey, thank you. Especially just listening to these clips and I hope you have something from that convention, the McGovern, Muskie, Humphrey thing. To hear her talk there, the stuff that I heard is just like, really prompted me. I had just turned of age where I could vote. That was the first election I voted in and I voted for her. Really because of how she struck me as not being marketed like everybody else was.

The things she had to say were the same thing, I guess, that a lot of the guys were saying but it seemed more genuine and authentic and sincere. I'm still idealistic today, but as idealistic as I was back in '72, it just really struck me and resonated with me. It's sad that we haven't moved the needle an inch since that day.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly haven't elected a Black woman president. At least, it hasn't moved in that respect. Kevin, thank you for that memory. Here's one more clip from the campaign.

Shirley Chisholm: I realize that this is a rough road, but a catalyst for change in a society is usually persona non grata with those who have been the beneficiaries of the system. A catalyst for change has to be able to withstand the insults, the humiliations, the abuses, and the slurs. What's wrong with my running for president of this country? After all, for 15 years, I have been the ghostwriter for a lot of them.

Brian Lehrer: One more oral history call. Remembering the '72 campaign. Jeff in Ridgewood, you're at WNYC. Ridgewood, Queens, or Ridgewood, New Jersey, Jeff?

Jeff: Ridgewood, Queens.

Brian Lehrer: Hi.

Jeff: Hi. I was in high school in 1972. My best friend and I decided we were going to take photographs of every political candidate. We went to a Chisholm rally in Los Angeles. That's where I lived. There were a couple hundred people there. My friend and I and my high school girlfriend were the only white people. We were blown away. It was so different than the way other politicians talked. Even liberal anti-war politicians just had a political way of talking about it. She was so upfront and so clear and it just completely blew our minds. Also being in a Black space like that, certainly was the first time I'd ever done that. That's my memory.

Brian Lehrer: What did you take away from being a white person in a largely Black context? Anything you can put into words all these years later?

Jeff: It was like abstractly I was for integration and equality for Black people, but it was so real and it just woke me up that from my comfortable middle-class upbringing that I had no idea what the issue was really about.

Brian Lehrer: Jeff, thank you so much for your call. Dr. Fraser, few clips from the '72 campaign, few memories from our callers. In retrospect, what was important about Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign? Certainly, she didn't think she was going to win, I presume.

Zinga Fraser: No, she didn't necessarily think she was going to win, but I think she also thought that she had the possibility of really changing the political agenda during that '72 election. I think initially she thought she had a chance at winning. I don't want to say that. Of course later down the line when there's, of course, a lack of resources, she didn't have the same amount of money that a number of her opponents did.

She also approaches '72 as what would an election look like if I was able to mobilize a multiracial that went also across economic backgrounds. What would it look like if I created a coalition? I tell people the coalition that Chisholm is trying to form across party-- Not across party lines, but across race and identities and ethnicities. She's trying to mobilize young people. We can see that from the callers that we had today. She's mobilizing because that's their first election as 18-year-olds.

She's mobilizing Indigenous coalitions, women, the Black coalition, of course, Hispanic and Latino coalitions. she's saying, what would it look like? Many ways she was like, this is a coalition of those who have been outside of the political realm, who haven't been talked to, who haven't been embraced, their ideas have been really ignored by the current administration. She's also mobilizing a large peace contingent who's against the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War is literally the first speech that she gives when she gets to Congress.

That coalition is the same coalition that gives birth to a Rainbow Coalition for Jesse Jackson. It's the same coalition that we were able to have our first African American president with Barack Obama. These groups of people. What would it look like? What would democracy look like if you're able to have all of these people come together to really reimagine who should be at the top of the ticket?

While she didn't necessarily think that she could win, she thought that she would also have a ability to gather enough delegates. That she can influence and impact what the platform was for the '72 election with McGovern. That is her strategy. In many ways, she did really well. I tell people all the time until Kamala Harris went to Chicago for the nomination, Shirley Chisholm was the only Black woman who was able to even get to a convention. Kamala runs for the first time, she doesn't get to the convention.

Brian Lehrer: In our last 30 seconds. Kamala Harris did not run at all or hardly at all on identity and marginalization compared to Chisholm, making it front and center on behalf of a number of groups in 1972. Tell me if you disagree with that framing. Otherwise, compare and contrast or highlight Chisholm's influence on Kamala Harris all these years later. We have 20 seconds.

Zinga Fraser: Having spoken to a number of her staffers, she asked for a speech of Chisholm's from the convention. She's always talked about the importance of Shirley Chisholm really breaking and allowing her to see herself for the opportunity of running for the presidency. While her campaign did not do that, she drew from Chisholm's legacy.

Brian Lehrer: Zinga Fraser is author of a new book called Shirley Chisholm in her Own Words: Speeches and Writings, and is director of the Shirley Chisholm Project at Brooklyn College. That's our 100 Years of 100 Things segment for today. Dr. Fraser, thank you so much for being our guide.

Zinga Fraser: Thank you so much.

 

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