The Good Fight by Shirley Chisholm

Author:Shirley Chisholm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

X.

The Convention

WE TOOK AN 11:00 p.m. flight from New York to Miami on the Saturday night before the convention, July 8. My party was small: two aides, Conrad, and eleven Secret Service men. The other passengers appeared to be bound for the convention, too; there was an excitement in the air aboard the plane. Some of the passengers shook hands and wished me good luck. One said, “Things aren’t going to be the same in this country after you’re nominated.” “I hope not,” I said. At Miami International Airport, there was a small crowd of reporters, photographers and supporters to greet me. The Secret Service formed a phalanx and forced past them all; without a speech and with hardly a word to the reporters, I was in a car and we were off for Miami Beach with motorcycles all around us, flashing their red lights. It was a lot more than I was used to, and I remember thinking this must be what it is like all the time when you’re a president, or a queen. When we pulled up to the Deauville Hotel, there was a huge crowd on the steps, with hastily made placards. The hotel had refused to let us put up signs anywhere, as the other candidates had done at their headquarters hotels (many of them had huge billboards on the marquees). The crowd’s enthusiasm was far greater than I had expected, especially in the middle of the night. I felt a convention air of unreality and abandon. The Secret Service men would not let me out of the car until a path had been cleared through the people who had surged into the driveway to surround us. I had to sit there for what seemed like half an hour. When the car doors finally opened, the crowd cheered, “Right on!” “We love you!” “Give ’em hell!” “Don’t sell us out now!” A woman touched me and began shouting, “I touched her!”

They let me pass into the hotel lobby and crowded in behind me shouting, “Speech, Shirley! Speech!” At the foot of the stairs to the mezzanine stood Mayor Kenneth Gibson of Newark. Although a McGovern supporter, he had agreed to appear and greet me when he learned from one of my staff that no other prominent blacks were going to be there for my arrival, and he made a short but extremely warm speech welcoming me to Miami and the convention. I stood at the foot of the stairs and gave my standard campaign speech to the excited crowd. Then we went upstairs, my head already full of what I would say to the black delegate caucus meeting the next afternoon.

A fresh blow had been struck against the hope of black unity about two weeks before the convention. District of Columbia delegate Walter Fauntroy and Representatives Louis Stokes and William Clay had made a move on June 26 that, if it had succeeded, would have put the nomination in McGovern’s pocket by handing him a package of 96 uncommitted delegates, for which Fauntroy, Stokes and Clay would get the credit.

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