The perfect imperfect voice of Shirley Chisholm

One of the joys of starting Speakola was learning about Shirley Chisholm —Congresswoman, activist, and presidential candidate, and one of the great speakers of all time.

Today is the speechaversary of Chisholm’s1969 classic arguing for the Equal Rights for Women Bill. This was legislation aimed at achieving formal legal equality for women in the United States, and to have that legal equality carved into the Constitution as an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The wording was to be:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

The legislation eventually passed Congress in 1972, but never became a Constitutional amendment because it failed to be ratified by the required number of state legislatures. Congress initially set a deadline of seven years (1979) for ratification, and that was subsequently extended to 1982, but only 35 states came to the party.

Three of the naysayers, Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018), and Virginia (2020) have recently voted to ratify ERA, but there is a dispute over whether the rime restrictions have expired.

Back to Shirley Chisholm. She was a force of nature, a trailblazer, the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968, the first black person to run for a major party’s presidential nomination and the first woman to run for president in the Democratic Party’s primaries. Her voice was utterly unique. It’s almost as if she had a slight speech impediment, it spoke to her Bahamian roots, but she was fluent, fierce and beyond courageous and like Martin Luther King, Barack Obama or the Reverend Jesse Jackson, her voice was utterly compelling. It is possibly familiar to anyone who has heard the David Bridie constructed intro to the Speakola podcast — ‘fraud, sham and hypocrisy … change within the system!’ She’s the best speaker I’d never heard of when I started compiling Speakola.

The Equal Rights for Women speech I’m featuring today doesn’t have audio, but you should listen to her speech announcing her candidacy for president to get an idea of her passion and cadence.

This longer UCLA lecture is absolutely incredible. I haven’t added a transcript to the Speakola page yet, but you can listen to any two minutes of this and be blown away.

Here is a recreation of her Equal Rights for Women speech, delivered 57 years ago today. I’ll add a transcript below.

Here are a few more snipped Shirley Chisholm lines that I compiled when I was making the podcast intro with David — ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune!’

She was so freaking awesome:

Shirley Chisholm died at the age of 80 in 2005. She later said, ‘When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.’¹ She says something similar in her Equal Rights for Women speech, featured below:

As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.

Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double pay scales and the classification of most of the better jobs as “for men only.”

Thanks to everyone who subscribes to Speakola. Australian readers and listeners can catch me on ABC local radio at … 3am tomorrow morning! Ha. Might catch the interstate truckers anyway! I’ll try to give Shirley Chisholm a salute then.

Now I’m off to set my alarm.

Cheers

Tony Wilson

Founder & Curator, Speakola.

I’ll be attending the FIFA World Cup in Canada and the USA. If you want to follow my travel /sports watching adventures, subscribe to Good one, Wilson! (personal newsletter)

'You idiots in your beds!'

Shirley Chisholm: ‘The happy little homemaker and the contented “old darkey” on the plantation were both produced by prejudice’, Equal Rights for Women Bill - 1969

21 May 1969, Washington DC, USA

Mr.Speaker, when a young woman graduates from college and starts looking for a job, she is likely to have a frustrating and even demeaning experience ahead of her. If she walks into an office for an interview, the first question she will be asked is, “Do you type?’‘

There is a calculated system of prejudice that lies unspoken behind that question. Why is it acceptable for women to be secretaries, librarians, and teachers, but totally unacceptable for them to be managers, administrators, doctors, lawyers, and Members of Congress.

The unspoken assumption is that women are different. They do not have executive ability orderly minds, stability, leadership skills, and they are too emotional.

It has been observed before, that society for a long time, discriminated against another minority, the blacks, on the same basis - that they were different and inferior. The happy little homemaker and the contented “old darkey” on the plantation were both produced by prejudice.

As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.

Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double pay scales and the classification of most of the better jobs as “for men only.”

More than half of the population of the United States is female. But women occupy only 2 percent of the managerial positions. They have not even reached the level of tokenism yet No women sit on the AFL-CIO council or Supreme Court There have been only two women who have held Cabinet rank, and at present there are none. Only two women now hold ambassadorial rank in the diplomatic corps. In Congress, we are down to one Senator and 10 Representatives.

Considering that there are about 3 1/2 million more women in the United States than men, this situation is outrageous.

It is true that part of the problem has been that women have not been aggressive in demanding their rights. This was also true of the black population for many years. They submitted to oppression and even cooperated with it. Women have done the same thing. But now there is an awareness of this situation particularly among the younger segment of the population.

As in the field of equal rights for blacks, Spanish-Americans, the Indians, and other groups, laws will not change such deep-seated problems overnight But they can be used to provide protection for those who are most abused, and to begin the process of evolutionary change by compelling the insensitive majority to reexamine it’s unconscious attitudes.

It is for this reason that I wish to introduce today a proposal that has been before every Congress for the last 40 years and that sooner or later must become part of the basic law of the land -- the equal rights amendment.

Let me note and try to refute two of the commonest arguments that are offered against this amendment. One is that women are already protected under the law and do not need legislation. Existing laws are not adequate to secure equal rights for women. Sufficient proof of this is the concentration of women in lower paying, menial, unrewarding jobs and their incredible scarcity in the upper level jobs. If women are already equal, why is it such an event whenever one happens to be elected to Congress?

It is obvious that discrimination exists. Women do not have the opportunities that men do. And women that do not conform to the system, who try to break with the accepted patterns, are stigmatized as ‘’odd’‘ and “unfeminine.” The fact is that a woman who aspires to be chairman of the board, or a Member of the House, does so for exactly the same reasons as any man. Basically, these are that she thinks she can do the job and she wants to try.

A second argument often heard against the equal rights amendment is that is would eliminate legislation that many States and the Federal Government have enacted giving special protection to women and that it would throw the marriage and divorce laws into chaos.

As for the marriage laws, they are due for a sweeping reform, and an excellent beginning would be to wipe the existing ones off the books. Regarding special protection for working women, I cannot understand why it should be needed. Women need no protection that men do not need. What we need are laws to protect working people, to guarantee them fair pay, safe working conditions, protection against sickness and layoffs, and provision for dignified, comfortable retirement. Men and women need these things equally. That one sex needs protection more than the other is a male supremacist myth as ridiculous and unworthy of respect as the white supremacist myths that society is trying to cure itself of at this time.

Source: http://gos.sbc.edu/c/chisholm.html

1. Barron, James (January 3, 2005). "Shirley Chisholm, 'Unbossed' Pioneer in Congress, Is Dead at 80". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 7, 2021