http://www.soulsearch.net/Cherry
Soul search.net
justcherry
July 16th, 2001 - 06:50:26
In the 1830's, political activist and orator Maria W. Stewart made this plea: "Daughters of Africa, awake! Arise! Distinguish yourselves? And it seems that we have been speaking out and taking public action ever since. Throughout American history sisters have fought for the ballot, run for school boards and political offices and held prominent federal posts.
From sisters like Sojourner Truth, who campaigned for women's suffrage, to Fannie Lou Hamer, who wanted to exercise her right to vote without intimidation, Black women have been raising their political voices and wielding their political power and clout. The following milestones highlight important political moments in the history of African-Americans and the accomplishments of African-American women in the political arena.
1619 The first Africans arrive in America; among them is a woman named Isabell who gives birth to the first African-American.
1775 Phillis Wheatley is invited to meet with General George Washington after penning a poem in his honor. She may have influenced Washington's decision to allow Blacks to join the Continental Army and later contributed to his discomfort as a slaveholder.
1787 The Constitution counts each male slave as three-fifths of a man when determining representation.
1832 Maria W. Stewart becomes the first American-born woman to speak publicly on political issues before an audience of men and women in Boston. She wrote political pamphlets and speeches, often encouraging women to accept public activism.
1870 The Fifteenth Amendment grants voting rights to all men. Women of any color were still disenfranchised.
1920 The Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote. But many Black women never got to exercise that right because of Jim Crow laws in the South.
1936 Mary McLeod Bethune becomes the first Black woman to head a federal office as director of the Negro division of the National Youth Administration under Franklin D. Roosevelt. She said that one of her "sacred duties" in years of advising and government service was to "interpret the dreams and the hopes and the problems of my long-suffering people."
1938 Crystal Bird Fauset is the first African-American woman to be elected to a state house of representatives, marking the first election of a Black woman to a major public office. Fauset--who believed that political action was necessary to bring economic change--was asked by the Philadelphia Democratic Party to run for the Pennsylvania office.
1952 With the Progressive Party nomination, Charlotta Spears Bass becomes the first Black woman to run for vice-president of the United States. She ran unsuccessfully against Richard Nixon. Her campaign slogan was "Win or lose, we win by raising the issues."
1965 Voting Rights Act passes, nullifying the tactics used in the South to keep Blacks disenfranchised.
1968 Shirley Chisholm is the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She characterized her legislative legacy as "unbought and unbossed" and she adopted the same take-no-stuff approach to her presidential campaign in 1972. She was the first African-American to seek the presidential nomination.
1973 Lelia Smith Foley is the first Black woman mayor in the continental United States. The former welfare recipient campaigned door-to-door in Taft, Oklahoma, pledging to clean up the city and attract business.
1977 The first Black woman presidential cabinet member, Patricia Roberts Harris, is appointed Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by Jimmy Carter. During her Senate confirmation hearing, she was asked if she would be sympathetic to the problems of the poor. She responded: "1 didn't start out as a member of a prestigious law firm, but as a woman who needed a scholarship. If you think that I have forgotten that, you are wrong."
1988 Lenora Fulani is the first Black woman to appear on the presidential ballot in all 50 states when she runs as a member of the New Alliance Party. Fulani, who later joined the Reform Party, has endorsed Pat Buchanan for president in 2000, becoming his campaign cochair.
1992 Carol Moseley-Braun, in the wake of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, is the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S Senate and the second Black to gain a Senate seat since Reconstruction.