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The first Black woman to serve in Congress, Shirley Chisholm delivered her first speech on the floor of the US House of Representatives on this day in 1969.
It was a rhetorical thunderbolt delivered directly to President Nixon and her fellow legislators. She lashed out against the Vietnam War and vowed to vote “no” against any defense appropriation bill “until the time comes when our values and priorities have been turned right-side up again.”
She made it clear that she was not a pacifist — her opposition was specifically to the Vietnam War, and to the billions spent on warfare rather than social services.
“New weapons systems are dreamed up, billions are spent, and many times they are found to be impractical, inefficient, unsatisfactory, even worthless. What do we do then? We spend more money on them.”
“For years, we have given the military, the defense industry, a blank check,” she told the members of Congress. “New weapons systems are dreamed up, billions are spent, and many times they are found to be impractical, inefficient, unsatisfactory, even worthless. What do we do then? We spend more money on them. But with social programs, what do we do?
You can read a transcript of Chisholm’s remarks here, on the Speaking While Female Speech Bank.
The first Black woman elected to the US Congress, Chisholm spent her life pursuing social equality and justice.
She had started her professional life running a day-care center in Brooklyn, and from that experience sprang her lifelong fight for early childhood education and child welfare.
She never veered from the conviction that helping women, children, and the disadvantaged would benefit America far more than funding the military and defense.
Those remained key themes when, in 1972, she made history as the first African American woman from a major political party to run for president, and the first woman to seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Just over a year later, Chisholm’s hopes were realized when the last remaining US troops pulled out of Vietnam.
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