SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

We’ve needed Kamala Harris for quite a long time.

In 1971 I became part of a group of determined women who gathered every Thursday around Betty Friedan’s big kitchen table on the Upper West Side. For those of you who don’t know, Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, an uplifting, powerful book that charged up our feminist movement. The stunning novelist Lois Gould was part of our group, as was writer Alix Kates Shulman, Barbara Seaman who wrote The Case Against The Pill, and a bright young poet wearing hot pants, Erica Jong.

And Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.

I remember the day the magazine MS. arrived at one of these gatherings. We sat looking at the illustration on the bright red cover—the East Indian Goddess, a baby in her belly, and in each of her eight arms she's clutching the wheel of a car, an iron, a mirror, a phone, a clock, a duster, a frying pan, and a typewriter. Up on the top left corner was the headline “MS. RATES THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES.” The one who came in first in every category was our friend Shirley.

Hubert Humphrey was negative in every category and Richard Nixon came in last (of course.) It’s a great chart to look at today. The candidate behind Shirley was Gene McCarthy. You've all heard of Joseph McCarthy, reviled for blacklisting. But there was also Gene McCarthy, wise, dry, interesting, with style and polish. He was tied with McGovern, who a lot of people liked. But McGovern didn't have McCarthy's wise cool charm. McGovern was a nice salesman. Shirley, on the other hand, was going to make history. She said, “I've suffered more discrimination as a woman than as a black.” This even startled us.

The issues then were Red China, ecology (before it was called the Environment), the wage-price freeze, offshore oil drilling, and abortion rights. The latter was not discussed on TV. We were looking for Independence, “the courage to challenge the status quo.” Wilbur Mills, also running, had a Forced Work bill requiring a welfare mother to put all her kids over the age of three in Childcare Centers. She would also have to accept any job, and if she refused she'd lose all her welfare benefits. This was known as the “southern fried chicken” Program because President Nixon had talked to Chicken Delight about franchising the children's centers. Needless to say, Wilbur Mills didn't give Ms. an interview.

Like all the great Civil Rights leaders, Shirley believed in the power of prayer, and insisted on reform in convention rules. She challenged any delegation to the convention that wasn’t 50% women. I think it was her birthday, when she turned to me and said, “I want these words on my tombstone: ‘Shirley Chisholm had women running her campaign.’”

You’d feel the bolt of electric energy when Shirley would walk into our gatherings. She took bold stands. “I will vote ‘no’ on every bill that provides money for the Department of Defense until our values and priorities have been turned right-side up again.” Cheers went up on that. She also said, “As long as they keep fighting this Vietnam War, I’ll keep praying on my knees fifteen minutes a day to get us out of it.”

Shirley had fought for women's rights all her life. She died in 2001.

I know she’s glowing today.