"It is time that other peoples in America besides white males run for the highest office of this land." This was Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president in 1972.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I realize that this is a rough road, but a catalyst for change in a society is usually persona non grata with those who have been the beneficiaries of the system.
00:09A catalyst for change has to be able to withstand the insults, the humiliations, the abuses, and the slurs.
00:16What's wrong with my running for president of this country?
00:19After all, for 15 years, I have been the ghostwriter for a lot of them.
00:30Do you think America is ready for a president that is both black and a woman?
00:39America hasn't been ready for a lot of things.
00:42America wasn't ready for the tremendous civil rights movement that resulted in the Voting Rights Act that gave the black people of this country a great deal of freedom in terms of what had been denied to them.
00:53America wasn't ready for a Catholic president, they say.
00:56We will not know whether America is ready for me or not until the people of this country go to the polls and make that decision.
01:03This is a challenge.
01:04And I think what is even more important than whether or not America is ready for me as a president is to begin to prepare America for the fact that it is time that other peoples in America, besides white males, run for the highest office in this land.
01:20It's a preparation for the atmosphere to bring about the realization that someday blacks will leave this country.
01:27That someday women will leave this country.
01:29That's what this is all about.
01:50Mrs. Chisholm, why do you want to be President of the United States?
02:13I want to be President of the United States because I'm very concerned about the direction in which this country is moving.
02:19I think that there has come a time in America for a new kind of moral leadership, if you will.
02:25Not a leadership that operates on the basis of political expediency or a leadership that operates primarily on the basis of patronage.
02:35Or leadership even on the concept of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
02:39The American people are interested in leadership that has integrity.
02:43Leadership that does not have a credibility gap.
02:46Leadership that if even from time to time they do not always agree with that leader, they know that the leader is honest and sincere with them.
02:53I represent that kind of leadership on a national level that dares to say that I am going to run and try to capture the presidency of this country.