RIP Shirley Chisholm

This weekend the light of the world has been made a bit dimmer with the passing of Shirley Chisholm. For those of you who don't know her she was the first Black woman to serve in the US Congress back in 1969. She represented the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and served until retiring in 1983. She also was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. She was a engrossing, a dogged critic of the Vietnam War, and a champion of woman and minority rights. People feared her independence and that gave her strength to challenge the status quo. However, her biggest asset to me was her pragmatism. She was one damn good political beast. She was one of the first members of Congress to visit George Wallace after he was shot to offer her condolences. And from that act of kindness she was able to get him to rally Southern congressmen for an increase in minimum wages, which helped those she cared about the most.

When I was an idealistic boy I had dreams of one day running for a seat in Congress or the Senate and I did research on the Blacks that were successful in that endevor it to see what I could learn from them.

Her story is the one that stuck out the most to me and her model was the one I would have wanted to emulate. It saddens me to see what the people of her caliber have been replaced by in the halls of the US Congress today. At the same time people of her integrity wouldn't be in US Congress today.