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Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault

AN INESCAPABLE NETWORK OF MUTUALITY: THE LIFE OF SHIRLEY CHISHOLM
(DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. SUNDAY)
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
January 16, 2005

OPENING WORDS: "A Network of Mutuality"
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.
Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.
We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.
Dr. King

MEDITATION READING: Quotes

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

Dr. King

SERMON: "An Inescapable Network of Mutuality"

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

These stirring words, this rallying cry calling us to action, were those of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose 76th birthday would have been yesterday, but who was assassinated when he was 39 years of age by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968 on that balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN.

President Lyndon B. Johnson decreed that the following Sunday, April 7, 1968, would be a day of national mourning to honor Dr. King.

And one week after the assassination, on April 11th, Johnson signed the civil rights legislation that banned racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing to Blacks and minorities.

On June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning for the presidency of the United States.

And on November 5, 1968, Shirley Chisholm of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York became the first African American woman elected to Congress.

This past New Year's Day, Congresswoman Chisholm died at the age of 80.

In honoring Dr. King today and his beliefs that "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality" and that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," let us do so by celebrating the life and the legacy of Shirley Chisholm, born Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn, New York.

Hers is a story that might be summed up with the tag line WHAT MADE SHIRLEY RUN? Indeed, what was it that made her so passionately committed to the political process in our country that she would run for Congress, becoming the first African American woman elected to it, and then become the first African American - male or female - to seek a major party's nomination for the U.S. presidency?

The answer is really two-fold: discrimination and guts.

Let us consider what Shirley said about the latter.

Once discussing what her legacy might be, she commented, "I'd like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That's how I'd like to be remembered."

So, I am here this morning, to tell you that she had guts.

And I am here this morning to ask as she would repeatedly throughout her life: why don't more of us - politicians or otherwise - have guts?

Her "guts" included a big, dramatic voice within a small body; a voice that would not be quieted simply because of her color or her gender.

Along with a few thousand other Unitarian Universalists on that hot June night in Atlanta in 1985, I heard that voice telling us point blank that "we" - meaning those assembled before her and hanging on her every word - as well as the rest of our country - were not doing enough to create that "network of mutuality."

Now, others could have given that speech - but few on the planet could have said it the way Shirley Chisholm said it!

She spoke slowly and deliberately - so very slowly and deliberately, articulating in her most inimitable way every single syllable!

And she stared right at you - speaking from her guts, from her life-long experience of racial and gender discrimination. Her presence commanded our attention.

You could have heard a pin drop - even among us chatty Unitarian Universalists.

She knew she had "the power," saying of herself many years ago:

My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency.

Truly, this singular attitude, one refusing to compromise principles of equality and justice, can be illustrated in her campaign slogan when she first ran for New York's Twelfth Congressional District. It said:

Fighting Shirley Chisholm--Unbought and Unbossed.

I take this to mean that Shirley Chisholm meant that Shirley Chisholm was the one doing the "fighting" - although her political opponents were the ones attempting to "fight" against her.

Unbought and Unbossed became the title of one of her two books. The other one was called The Good Fight.

Assuredly, her "fighting" spirit was a toughness based on compassion for one and all. She was that rare individual who was smart, determined, willing, and indefatigable.

I like what her first husband, Conrad Chisholm, now 88-years-old, said of her upon her death:

She was a mouthpiece for the underdog, the poor, underprivileged people, the people who did not have much of a chance.

She bested James Farmer, the former national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, to gain that Congressional seat in 1968. At the time she said:

"I am the people's politician.If the day should ever come when the people can't save me, I'll know I'm finished."

Of all the newspaper headlines announcing the fact that the first African American woman had been elected to Congress, the one that Chisholm, herself, liked the best was:

Black woman will sock it to Congress.

And, indeed, she did.

Despite the fact that she would receive national and international recognition - serving for seven terms in Congress and running for the presidency, she never forgot that she, herself, was one of "the people" she was talking about.

She was the eldest of four daughters born to poor immigrant parents from Barbados. Concerned about the effects of a New York ghetto education on their children, her parents sent Shirley and two of her sisters to live with their grandmother and their extended family in Barbados where they would receive a better education. At the time the British Commonwealth schools had 99% literacy. Six years later, and despite all the fears of bringing their children back to a life of big-city poverty, Shirley's parents did it nevertheless, in an attempt to keep the family together.

Her father was a major influence on Shirley's thinking in relationship to the crying need for racial equality in America.

Shirley and her family did not experience such great inequality while they lived in Brooklyn, but certainly encountered it, according to Shirley, when they moved into Bedford-Stuyvesant section of the city. She also felt this in relationship to her being a female in the classroom - this, despite her 170 IQ!

The latter changed when she attended a female high school - and she excelled in her studies - although not in her social life. Her mother was so strict, that Shirley was never permitted to go on a date during her four years of high school. She stated that having so much free time allowed her to read a great deal about Black history.

From high school, she went on to Brooklyn College. We should note here that although she was admitted to both Vassar and Oberlin, the family was too poor - and there was not sufficient scholarship money offered to her from those schools - for Shirley to be able to attend them. Brooklyn College, on the other hand, was tuition-free.

Shirley spoke of one of the experiences while in college that cemented her decision to be involved in politics:

Back in the forties at Brooklyn College we used to have local white politicians come to the campus to speak. And I remember towards the end of his speech, this (one) politician said, "Black people will advance someday, but black people are always going to need to have white people leading them." I will never forget that as long as I live.

That did something to me. I became angry. I don't even think I became so angry at the words as much as the way he said it, with scorn and arrogance, with a know-it-all attitude. And in my mind's eye, I said, "I'm going to show you someday there'll be at least one black person who's not going to accept that."

Graduating magna cum laude was still was not enough qualification for her - because she was a black woman in 1946 - to obtain a job quickly. After an arduous job search she got one at a childcare center. For the next 6 years she took night classes in education at Columbia University where she got her MA in 1952. It also was where she met her first husband, Conrad Chisholm.

Her degree landed her various positions in the childcare field, including the supervision of 10 day care centers in New York City. And she continued to be politically active.

She was one of the founders of a black rights political action group that wrested control from the traditional white political machine in the Seventeenth Assembly District. In 1964 she was elected to represent the district in the New York State Assembly, where she served for four years.

Then, of course, on to the U.S. Congress.

During her first term, she hired an all-female staff and spoke out for civil rights, women's rights, the poor, and against the Vietnam War. She supported improved employment and education programs, expansion of day care, income support and other programs to improve inner city life and opportunity. She advocated for the end of the military draft and reduced defense spending.

She was a sought-after public speaker and co-founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She remarked that:

Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes.

In her speech "For the Equal Rights Amendment" delivered on August 10, 1970 in the U.S. Congress, she said:

This is what it comes down to: artificial distinctions between persons must be wiped out of the law. Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of society and the pre-scientific beliefs about psychology and physiology. It is time to sweep away these relics of the past and set further generations free of them.

. We cannot be parties to continuing a delay. The time is clearly now to put this House on record for the fullest expression of that equality of opportunity which our founding fathers professed. They professed it, but they did not assure it to their daughters, as they tried to do for their sons. The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers -- a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.

On January 25, 1972, Chisholm announced her candidacy for president. She stood before the cameras and in the beginning of her speech she said:

I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or special interests. I am the candidate of the people.

Let me editorialize here, if you will allow me. Let me just ask you to consider Shirley Chisholm's passionate words in respect to our political candidates today. Granted, she was as savvy a politician as the most savvy of them, but what about her authenticity? There was trustworthiness about her - based upon her firm convictions and the passion with which she both spoke them and acted upon them. And for what reason was this so? Because she truly believed that no matter what "category" we might be in: color-wise, gender-wise, or any other-wise, we all deserve equal protection under the laws of our land.

She was a woman and a black one, both before her time and very much of her time - called by her inner conviction to get involved, to make a difference, and who, in the process of doing so, influenced so many others to do the same.

But you say she lost her presidential bid.

By not getting the nomination, yes! But consider her victory - and ours! Said Shirley on the matter:

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start.

You see, Shirley Chisholm was a trailblazer - and felt deeply within her bones that she could be nothing else but one. I do believe that she, like Martin Luther King, lived their lives of passion and commitment not because they thought they were being courageous, but because given the circumstances surrounding them, and their call to the higher principles of love and freedom and equality, they could do no less.

One story that illustrates this aspect of Shirley's character has to do with her meeting with Governor George Wallace right after her failed presidential bid. She went to the hospital to visit him, her rival candidate and ideological opposite, after he had been shot -- an act that appalled her followers.

"He said, `What are your people going to say?' I said: 'I know what they're going to say. But I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone.' He cried and cried."

Also consider the fact that when she needed support to extend the minimum wage to domestic workers two years later, it was Wallace who got her the votes from Southern members of Congress.

So this morning, as we honor the memory and the legacy of Martin Luther King, we do so through this reflection of the life of Shirley Chisholm - both symbols of the struggle to strengthen that "network of mutuality"; a struggle that must continue because there is still injustice in the world and because:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

CLOSING WORDS: "There is nothing more dangerous."

There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.

Dr. King