First black US Congresswoman dies

First black US Congresswoman dies

 

 Shirley Chisholm, the first black American woman elected to Congress, and the first black person or woman to run for president of the United States, has died at the age of 80. She was born in a poor area of Brooklyn, New York, but studied and worked hard and entered politics in 1965. She won a seat in Congress in 1969, and remained there until 1982. In 1972, Ms. Chisholm ran for president of the United States, although she got less than seven per cent of the vote. She said,
“I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo”.
Her running was more symbolic that realistic, but did change perceptions of who can run for president. In her book “The Good Fight” she said,
“The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is ‘not ready’ to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start.”
However, she retired from politics because of her inability to bring about change in the conservative Congress. She said,
“Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs … it is ruled by a small group of old men.”
She always fought for women's and minority rights, and was also a staunch critic of the Vietnam War. She often said she experienced more personal discrimination because she was a woman than because she was black. The Reverend Jesse Jackson told Associated Press Shirley Chisholm was
“a woman of great courage … She was an activist and she never stopped fighting. … She refused to accept the ordinary, and she had high expectations for herself and all people around her.”
She said she wanted to be remembered for ‘having guts’.