History We Need: ‘Chisholm ’72’

If you’ve been following Mad Men this season then you know that the year is 1969, and Nixon has just taken office.  Although the show is centered on white upper-middle class men and women, we are finally seeing a wee bit of narrative texture in the two minority women characters employed at the Madison Avenue advertising firm that is the show’s locus.  But this is not a takedown of Mad Men, a show whose characters, writing, and style I find compelling even though I support the critiques offered by the likes of W. Kamau Bell and Daniel Mendelsohn. I bring up this series because, unless the writers this season will reveal otherwise, the New York City of 1969 on this show is not likely to highlight a major historical moment of this time and place:  in that year and in that city Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Three years later, she would launch the first major bid by a woman for candidacy for the Democratic Party for the President of the United States. While there had been other candidates for third and fourth parties as far back as 1872 (Victoria Woodhull, to be precise), Chisholm’s campaign was serious in its determination to represent the United States and all its citizens in no uncertain terms. Directed by Shola Lynch, the 2004 documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed tells the story of Chisholm’s campaign for her party’s nomination, and without even trying to, the film offers a necessary antidote to popular culture representation of the dominant white male supremacist lens of history-making that is reified when it goes unchallenged.

Lynch’s film follows a familiar style of documentary that viewers have come to expect from the POV series. There are numerous interviews with politicians, activists, and intellectuals who worked alongside Chisholm on her campaign or are called upon to reflect on why they did not support her nomination even while they supported her as a politician.  The accounts of author/activist Amiri Baraka and former Congressmen Reverend Walter Fauntroy and Ronald Dellums are especially fascinating in that they reveal the complex interplay of concerns over standing behind a candidate they believed in vs. one who they thought could realistically defeat Nixon.  Chisholm understood these concerns, but nonetheless offered a direct challenge to the conventional wisdom of electoral politics in her campaign announcement speech:

“I have faith in the American people. I believe that we are smart enough to correct our mistakes. I believe that we are intelligent enough to recognize the talent, energy, and dedication, which all American including women and minorities have to offer. I know from my travels to the cities and small towns of America that we have a vast potential, which can and must be put to constructive use in getting this great nation together.[…] I stand before you today, to repudiate the ridiculous notion that the American people will not vote for qualified candidates, simply because he is not right or because she is not a male. I do not believe that in 1972, the great majority of Americans will continue to harbor such narrow and petty prejudice.”

Though it is clear Chisholm sought the support of a united party, she was also explicit in her desire to bring together two groups to which she has dual membership: women and black people. After all, she opens her campaign announcement speech like this:

“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that.”

The film’s archival footage is rich with evidence of her attempting to demonstrate her goal to encourage her party toward inclusiveness.  We see her move with total confidence and self-possession through crowds of supporters on the campaign trail, on voter registration drives, and facing crowds of thousands. What is perhaps the most remarkable thing about her political presence is she seems to address each audience she encounters with an exacting sense of urgency to motivate all people to seize the rights and privileges of full citizenship. In interviews and behind-the-scenes campaign footage, Chisholm comes across as almost unbelievably authentic (especially for a politician), and embodies the film’s subtitle (taken from her 1970 political autobiography): she was truly “unbought” when it came to her refusal to make political deals that would compromise her constituents and “unbossed” by those who have her remain firmly entrenched in the status quo she was elected to challenge.

Although it’s no spoiler to say that she lost the bid to George McGovern (who would lose to Nixon), the film’s real dramatic force is in the enduring impact felt by those who would go on to realize their own political power as a result of Chisholm’s courageous work. For instance, U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) recalls when she first met Chisholm and joined the campaign. At the time she was both a student on public assistance and a single mother, and she remembers what Chisholm told her about her own will to act: “[She] told me, no matter what I do in life, use your power judiciously, use it with humility, but use it.”

I could spend all day quoting Chisholm; her famous 1969 speech on “Equal Rights for Women,” for instance, remains as relevant today as it did then (sadly). But rather than do that here, I’ll turn to reading and researching the words and history of a great human being who, as the Shola Lynch said, possesses “a story is an important reminder of the power of a dedicated individual to make a difference.”