Chisholm, Forman and King
January 28, 2005
When we speak of the dead, we are supposed to follow the Latin phrase “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” (”Of the dead, only good is to be said”). In the case of civil rights leaders, nice things often are said about them by people who opposed them while they were alive. Plus, the history of the civil rights struggles they participated in gets sanitized and streamlined.
Doubts, mistakes and wrong turns are overlooked or forgotten. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the right to vote for women, for example, is remembered by many as simply a bill signed by a president and the next logical step on a one-way road toward greater justice and human understanding.
As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, we should also take a few moments to honor two civil rights pioneers who have passed away in the last month: James Forman and Shirley Chisholm. One stayed outside the system; the other became a member of Congress. Both had a role to play in translating human needs into law for African Americans and all Americans.
The entire nation soon will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of one of Mr. Forman’s best-known achievements: the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in March 1965. Forman, who was then serving as executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was leading the initial march that was forced to turn back after participants were brutally attacked. Two weeks later, after national attention had brought Alabama’s systematic civil rights deprivations into the open, a broad coalition of community, church, labor and student groups and supporters from across the nation, including Dr. King, successfully completed the march to Montgomery. Five months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, helping to safeguard the vote for African Americans and all Americans.
Aside from being a gifted community organizer, Forman was a brilliant strategist and stirring writer. The “Black Manifesto” he wrote in 1969 demanded that white churches stop benefiting from their prior affiliation with slavery. Taking over the Sunday service at New York City’s Riverside Church, he demanded half a billion dollars in reparations so that the African American community could develop the economic infrastructure it needed to end the cycle of poverty slavery had started. Many churches responded by increasing aid to the poor.
When I was helping to research the legal case for Japanese American redress in the 1970s, Forman’s concept of reparations made a lot of sense. The federal government had controlled the unjust imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire, so the government had a responsibility to make us whole. In our case, the logic held and justice was served because records of each incarcerated Japanese American were available. In the case of African Americans, the struggle to qualify, quantify and get past the white community’s “just get over it” mentality continues to hold back a righteous cause.
Chisholm took a different but complementary path toward helping her community as an educator and legislator. As the first African American woman to serve in Congress and the first to run for president, she was a role model for women of all backgrounds. Her slogan, “Unbossed and unbought,” reflected her determination to rise to heights commensurate with her considerable intellect and drive, no matter what party bosses or anyone else said.
The future Rep. Chisholm was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn in 1924. Her father was a factory worker, and her mother was a seamstress and domestic worker. They sent their daughters to the Caribbean island of Barbados, where Chisholm and her sisters lived with a grandmother for 10 years.
A precocious child, she started reading and writing before kindergarten, which led to her later strong advocacy for early schooling programs. When she went on to win debating prizes at Brooklyn College, faculty mentors asked her if she had considered a career in politics.
After earning a master’s degree in elementary education at Columbia University, she headed several education-related institutions. Chisholm also started preparing for her eventual political career in a way that is instructive for Asian Pacific Americans aspiring to office. She served as a consultant to the city’s Bureau of Child Welfare for five years but also started serving as a volunteer for the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League and the League of Women Voters.
By the time she was ready to run for the New York State Assembly in 1964, she was well-known in her community, had government credentials and was seen as someone who had “paid her dues.”
Chisholm was elected to the House of Representatives in 1968 and stayed for 14 years. She left partly to take care of her husband, who had been injured in a car accident, but she also noted that by 1982, “moderate and liberal” lawmakers were “running for cover from the new right.”
Chisholm’s life has several important messages for APAs as we move into the world of politics. In 1972, when she decided to run for president, she knew she probably could not win, but the seriousness of her quest became, in her own words, a necessary “catalyst for change.”
She also reminded us of the inferior role men have foisted on women in the world of politics. “I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being black,” she told The Associated Press 10 years later.
James Forman and Shirley Chisholm, like Dr. King, did more than their share of the work to bring more justice and equality to our world. While they chose different paths toward the same goal, each is deserving of our profound thanks.
Comments
Got something to say?