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This 1972 Shirley Chisholm US Presidential Election Card #37 New York is the exact item you will receive and has been certified Authentic by REM Fine Collectibles.
Shirley Anita Chisholm (November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress.
Chisholm represented New York\'s 12th congressional district, a district centered in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party\'s presidential nomination.
Throughout her career, she was known for taking \"a resolute stand against economic, social, and political injustices,\" as well as being a strong supporter of black civil rights and women\'s rights.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, she spent ages five through nine in Barbados, and she always considered herself a Barbadian American. She excelled at school and earned her college degree in the United States.
She started working in early childhood education, and she became involved in local Democratic Party politics in the 1950s. In 1964, overcoming some resistance because she was a woman, she was elected to the New York State Assembly.
Four years later, she was elected to Congress, where she led the expansion of food and nutrition programs for the poor and rose to party leadership. She retired from Congress in 1983 and taught at Mount Holyoke College while continuing her political organizing.
Chisholm began exploring her candidacy in July 1971 and formally announced her presidential offer on January 25, 1972, in a Baptist church in her district in Brooklyn. There, she called for a \"bloodless revolution\" at the forthcoming Democratic nominating convention for the 1972 U.S. presidential election.
Chisholm became the first African American to run for a major party\'s nomination for President of the United States, making her also the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party\'s presidential nomination (U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith having previously run for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination).
In her presidential announcement, Chisholm described herself as representative of the people and offered a new articulation of American identity: \"I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women\'s movement of this country, although I am a woman and equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolizes a new era in American political history.\"
Her campaign was underfunded, only spending $300,000 in total. She also struggled to be regarded as a serious candidate instead of as a symbolic political figure; the Democratic political establishment ignored her, and her black male colleagues provided little support. 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.
In particular, she expressed frustration about the \"black matriarch thing\", saying, \"They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn\'t mean the black woman must step back.\"
Her husband, however, was fully supportive of her candidacy and said, \"I have no hangups about a woman running for president.\" Security was also a concern, as, during the campaign, three confirmed threats were made against her life; Conrad Chisholm served as her bodyguard until U.S. Secret Service protection was given to her in May 1972.
At the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, there were still efforts taking place by the campaign of former Vice President Hubert Humphrey to stop the nomination of Senator George McGovern for president. After that failed and McGovern\'s nomination was assured, as a symbolic gesture, Humphrey released his black delegates to Chisholm.
This, combined with defections from disenchanted delegates from other candidates, as well as the delegates that she had won in the primaries, gave her a total of 152 first-ballot votes for the presidential nomination during the July 12 roll call.
Her largest support overall came from Ohio, with 23 delegates (slightly more than half of them white), even though she had not been on the ballot in the May 2 primary there. Her total gave her fourth place in the roll-call tally, behind McGovern\'s winning total of 1,728 delegates Chisholm said that she ran for office \"in spite of hopeless odds ... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo\".
It is sometimes stated that Chisholm won a primary in 1972, or won three states overall, with New Jersey, Louisiana and Mississippi being so identified.
During the convention, some McGovern delegates became angry about what they saw as statements from McGovern that backed away from his commitment to end U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, and cast protest votes for Chisholm as a result. During the actual balloting, Mississippi went in the first half of the roll call, and cast 12 of its 25 votes for Chisholm, with McGovern coming next with 10 votes.
