Before there was Barack Obama...

...there was Shirley Chisholm. And while I'm still deeply suspect of U.S. politics, rock on sister. Annnnd she was from Brooklyn (Brooklyn!). <3



















Who was she?

http://www.jofreeman.com/polhistory/chisholm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm
http://www.africanamericans.com/ShirleyChisholm.htm
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/shirleychisholm.htm

"I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free."

"I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to be herself."

"In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism."

"My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency."

"One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian."

"Of my two "handicaps" being female put more obstacles in my path than being black."