Salon.com > Shirley Chisholm http://www.salon.com Wed, 22 May 2013 00:22:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Shirley Chisholm, the Democrats’ forgotten hero http://www.salon.com/2012/09/09/shirley_chisholm_the_democrats_forgotten_hero/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/09/shirley_chisholm_the_democrats_forgotten_hero/#comments Sun, 09 Sep 2012 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13005107 A specter was haunting Charlotte over the past week: The specter of Shirley Chisholm, whose historic presidential campaign of 40 years ago was never mentioned (as far as I know) at this year’s Democratic National Convention. Beyond making occasional appearances in rap lyrics -- which she almost certainly never heard -- the church-lady-looking congresswoman from Brooklyn, N.Y., is a nearly forgotten figure in American political history, but one who casts a long and complicated shadow. On one side of the ledger, Chisholm is the unacknowledged grandma of today’s multiracial, multicultural, female-friendly Democratic Party, a direct antecedent to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. On the other side, Chisholm – and her unlikely friendship with segregationist George Wallace -- represents a road not taken, a semi-impossible dream of activist, class-based, cross-racial, coalition politics that might, just might, have produced a much different America than the one we live in today.

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