Shirley and Kamala

Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation’s first woman Vice President will go down in the history books as the first woman and Black woman to become President of the United States come November – if all of her admirers go to the polls in November.

History also will record that Harris’ campaign could shatter records as the shortest Presidential race in modern-day history. She’s got a little more than 70 days left of her 90 days to rally the nation.

Harris’ journey writer, Clara Bingham suggests in her current Newsweek Op-Ed, actually has had more time. And started 3,000 miles from Harris’ Oakland, Cal. Birthplace. In Brooklyn.
Harris’ campaign, Bingham writes, grows from a “decades-long sisterhood of activists, intellectuals, organizers, and leaders who paved the way for Harris to be the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.”

It began with Shirley Chisholm, Congress’ first black woman member, who “was elected in a newly drawn Black-majority district in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn in 1968. When she was sworn in January 1969, just 11 out of 535 members of Congress were women, and only 11 were Black.”
In 1973, notes Bingham, “Without asking permission from the party machine, Chisholm jumped into the presidential race.

Her announcement speech, made at Brooklyn’s Concord Baptist Church January 25, 1972, heralded her iconoclastic mission:
‘I do not intend to offer to you the tired and glib clichés, which for too long have been an accepted part of our political life. I am the candidate of the people of America. And my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history.

Bingham continues, “Chisholm stormed the country speaking to large, enthusiastic crowds of young, multi-racial voters who embraced her message of gender and racial equity, alleviating poverty, and ending the Vietnam war.

“At the 1972 Democratic convention in Miami, with a little more than 150 delegate votes, became the first woman in the Democratic Party to have her name placed in nomination.”
Chisholm later wrote of her experience, “It was a wonderful moment for me to see the way all of the delegates received me at the convention … Because I had felt that someday, a Black person or a female person should run for the presidency of the United States, and now I was a catalyst of change.”

Bingham recalls, “After Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 presidential election, Harris gave a nod in her victory speech to the women like Chisholm ‘who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all, including the Black women, who are often—too often—overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy,” adding, “I stand on their shoulders.”

Fifty-two years later, Bingham wrote, “Chisholm’s legacy lives on, embodied in a woman who is the beneficiary of the women’s rights movement that Chisholm boldly spearheaded. Chisholm is joined by a sisterhood of brilliant Black women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Pauli Murray, Frances Beal, Florynce Kennedy, Barbara Jordan, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and many others.

Fortunately, Kamala Harris has the winds of history at her back.”
Our Time Press asked Griot Voices columnist long-time Brooklyn political leader and activist Annette Robinson about her thoughts on Harris run for the presidency. “She would be excited. Because Kamala is taking her seat at the table. Kamala’s bringing her chair and sitting down. Shirley would say “if they don’t give you a chair, bring your own chair to the table and sit.” I think Harris’ run is a wonderful opportunity for America.”

Clara Bingham, a former Newsweek White House correspondent is the author of The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973, and the co-author Class Action which was made into the major motion picture, North Country.

Our Time Press will offer the thoughts and perspectives of our Griot Voice columnists Velmanette Montgomery, Job Mashariki and Annette Robinson on the Presidential Elections and other local to global topics throughout the fall.