Rep. Shirley Chisholm Speaks Out For the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
Rep. Shirley Chisholm, an African-American Democrat from Brooklyn, addressed the U.S. House of Representatives on this day to voice her support for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee equal treatment for women.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) had been drafted and introduced by feminist and suffragist leader Alice Paul on July 21, 1923. The ERA received some support in Congress in the 1950s, but then virtually disappeared.
It revived in the 1960s, fuelled by the new feminist movement, marked by the creation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1066. In 1972, the amendment finally passed both houses of Congress and went to the state legislatures for ratification. Because it failed to receive the required number of state ratifications (38) before the final deadline mandated by Congress, it was not adopted.
Chisholm was the first African-American woman elected to Congress (November 5, 1968) and the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States (January 25, 1972).
Chisholm: “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.”
Read the Speech: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/shirleychisholmequalrights.htm
Read her autobiography: Shirley Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed (1970)
Read: Mary Frances Berry, Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women’s Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution (1988)
Learn more about women who ran for President: https://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/president/president.html
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here