Janette Rankin with fellow Representatives: Four years before ratification of the 19th Amendment secured American women’s constitutional right to vote, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to Congress. Rankin was sworn in as a representative for Montana on April 2, 1917. She served a second term in the House of Representatives in 1941; National Archives Museum
Fifty years ago, when I first began looking for information on women in politics, the world was a different place. The only History of Democratic Women I could find was a 40-page pamphlet published by the Democratic Congressional Wives Forum in 1960. There were no updates. That year there were only eight women in Congress; a Democratic Women’s Caucus was inconceivable. Politics was a male domain.
In Brooklyn, where I live now, Shirley Chisholm (below, right) was “exploring” the possibility of running for President in 1972. In Chicago, where I lived then, I ran for Delegate to the Democratic Convention so I could get her name on the ballot. No one in the establishment – black or white – took her seriously, but in that year’s presidential primaries she got 400,000 votes in 14 states.
By the time I moved to Brooklyn in 1979, women were breaking barriers, but politics was still a male world. Chisholm had been joined in the House by Elizabeth Holtzman from Brooklyn (who would run for Senate and lose in 1980) and Geraldine Ferraro from Queens (who would run for Vice President in 1984 and lose).
Jump ahead to 2021. There are 123 women in the House (9 from NY) and 24 in the Senate (1 from NY). How much has changed was manifest at a street rally to “Pray for Haiti” organized in East Flatbush on July 26, 2021. I was invited to it by Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, who is also the Chair of the Kings County Democratic Committee. (I’m one of three thousand members of the KCDC).
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