“If Not Now ... When?”

By Gwendolyn Beetham. “If not now, I say, when?” This was the answer given by Shirley Chisholm when running for the for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972. One of the three women profiled by Ellen Fitzpatrick in her book The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency, as the first black woman to attempt the nomination, Chisholm had both sexism and racism to content with. More...