History Defined These Two Women
Maybe it’s me and in some ways it is, but I don’t recall a single post dealing with this month regarding February being Black History Month. With that said, there are two people I would like to share with you.
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement.”
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white passenger, once the "white" section was filled.[2] Parks wasn't the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year.
The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Over a period of time, she became involved with both Malcom X and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, and like so many other people, made the march from Selma to Montgomery. For a number of years she remained an activist to promote the well-being of Black Americans.
Rosa Parks played an important part in raising international awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights struggle. King wrote in his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom that Parks' arrest was the catalyst rather than the cause of the protest: "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices." He wrote, "Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'
Shirley Chisholm
You can tout and applaud the election of the first Black Man, Obama as president all you want, but in retrospect, it palls in comparison regarding Shirley Chisholm.
Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In the 1972 United States presidential election, she became the first African-American candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
She led expansion of food and nutrition programs for the poor and rose to party leadership. She retired from Congress in 1983 and taught at Mt Holyoke College, while continuing her political organizing.
Her campaign was underfunded, only spending $300,000 in total. She also struggled to be regarded as a serious candidate instead of as a symbolic political figure; she was ignored by much of the Democratic political establishment and received little support from her black male colleagues. She later said, "When I ran for Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men."
In particular, she expressed frustration about the "black matriarch thing", saying, "They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn't mean the black woman must step back." Her husband, however, was fully supportive of her candidacy and said, "I have no hang-ups about a woman running for president." Security was also a concern, as during the campaign three confirmed threats were made against her life; Conrad Chisholm served as her bodyguard until U.S. Secret Service protection was given to her in May 1972.
Altogether during the primary season, she received 430,703 votes, which was 2.7 percent of the total of nearly 16 million cast and represented seventh place among the Democratic contenders. And when it came to the actual election itself, she garnered just over a million votes, and six electoral votes, hardly enough to make a dent, but she set a precedent for African-Americans that anything is possible.
And, surprisingly enough, Rosa Parks supported Chisholm's congressional and presidential campaigns.
(In the photo, Rosa Parks is on the left, Shirley Chisholm is on the right.)