Funding for To the Contrary, provided by: That's how I see their campaigns in forcing people to talk about issues that the major party candidates ignored, especially as they pertain to race and gender.

These were women who felt that they had a voice that needed to be heard.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To the Contrary.

Our topic today is black women and the U.S. presidency.

There's a lot of history on this topic.

And today's cultural trends create an environment that's friendlier toward the idea of a female president of color than at any time in U.S. history.

Joining me to talk about this is Doctor Sharon Wright Austin, professor of political science at the University of Florida.

Her research focuses on African American women's political behavior, African American mayoral elections, rural African American political activism, and all manner of black politics, blacks as candidates and as voters.

She's written numerous articles and books.

So hold on to your seat as she unleashes a torrent of information.

Welcome, Sharon Austin.

Thank you very much for having me.

So let's get right down to it.

There are a number of, way more than even I knew about and I thought I knew them all, Black women who have run for president.

Obviously not as major party candidates as Kamala Harris is but who have run for president in the past.

And why don't you tell me a bit about Charlene Mitchell, who ran in 1968?

Charlene Mitchell ran in 1968.

And, as you know, that was probably one of the most tumultuous histories, years in American politics because of the assassinations of Dr. King, Robert Kennedy and other things that were taking place with rioting and other things.

And she was a candidate that really believed in Black Power and ran as a member of the Communist Party.

As a result, she couldn't get her name listed on the ballot in a number of states.

And a lot of people were really blatant in letting her know that they didn't think a black woman could win, and so they wouldn't put her name on the ballot because they felt that she would be taking votes away from candidates who were thought to be more credible.

She really wanted to call attention to a lot of issues, such as the Vietnam War, working class issues, especially concerning employment issues about racial justice, because those were all the things that the Communist Party stood for.

But she was the target of a lot of criticism simply because she was a member of the Communist Party.

But a lot of African Americans throughout history have belonged to the Communist Party because they believed in racial justice long before the major parties did.

She was, I believe, the only one who has run Black woman for president from the Communist Party.

Do you think she maybe made things a little more difficult for VP Kamala Harris?

Because now communism, as then, was such a dirty word.

Did she make it more difficult, did people start, I mean, you hear Donald Trump calling Kamala Harris a Marxist all the time, and so is that a problem created at least initially by Ms. Mitchell?

I don't think it was a problem that was created by Ms. Mitchell.

I think that, you know, there still is a stigma associated with the Communist Party.

I don't think that that her candidacy had any negative impact on Kamala Harris' candidacy because most people have never heard of Charlene Mitchell.

She only received 1,000 votes, but she knew that she couldn't win in 1968.

But she ran because she really wanted a symbolic candidacy.

She wanted people to address issues that the major parties, which were pretty much not addressing to her satisfaction.

Let's talk about Cynthia McKinney.

Tell us who she is.

Cynthia McKinney served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993, when she was elected, until she lost in a reelection effort.

And she wasn't reelected in 2006.

She decided to run for office.

Announced it in 2007 because she was running in the 2008 presidential campaign as a representative of the Green Party.

And when she first decided to run, well, when she was in the Congress during those final years, she was asked to run as a representative of the Green Party.

But she didn't want to.

She wanted to remain in Congress.

But then after she lost her congressional seat, she decided to run for the presidency.

And as an independent candidate, like Charlene Mitchell, she also focused on issues that she didn't think that people were addressing to her satisfaction, like economic justice, like racial justice and other issues that the Green Party stands for.

She really wanted to focus on their 10-point platform.

And she again, What was that?

What was there or what were some of the points on the 10-point platform?

Some of the things that they were talking about with things like economic justice, like racial justice, like environmental issues.

Some of the issues that you now hear people talking about more commonly, social justice issues.

But back then, in 2008 even, you didn't hear people talking about those types of issues as much.

And so she ran for president, hoping to call attention especially to racial injustices, because she even talked about that when she lost her election in Congress when she ran the final time and she wasn't reelected, she really believed that it was because of racism.

And even with the district that she first represented in Congress, it had more African Americans.

And later, it was redrawn to have a larger percentage of Republican residents.

And she felt that that was also something that was rooted in racism.

It was a partisan issue, but it was a racial issue as well because she really believed that her opponents were trying to do something to make sure that she as a black woman wasnt reelected.

So again, she ran for office in 2008.

And she knew that she probably couldn't win as a representative for an independent party.

However, President Obama was elected that year, so at least, you know, in that case, she talked about racial injustices and racism and rightfully so because of the experiences that she had.

But we did elect a Black president that year.

Interesting.

Now let's go to the Stacey Abrams, more recently.

She, of course, didn't run for president, but she ran twice for governor of Georgia.

And she came pretty close the first time.

And she also organized 800,000 Georgia residents to vote, most of whom were African Americans.

Did she change the ground game for presidential candidates?

And what does her work have to do, if anything, with Kamala Harris' supposedly vastly superior ground game or GOtv effort?

I would say that Barack Obama changed the ground game, but also I would say that that Stacey Abrams had a major impact, especially on Black female voters in Georgia and just around the nation.

Joe Biden wouldn't have won Georgia if it had not been for the voter mobilization and turnout efforts of Black voters in particular, but especially of Black women.

And that is something that he has admitted several times, that he wouldn't have won if it had not been for Black women.

And that's also why Kamala Harris has been in Georgia more than once.

And I'm expecting her to go there even again because of its importance in her role to the White House, if she's able to win, but also because there are so many Black women there that she really can mobilize and she can benefit from because we don't know if we can believe polls or not.

But they're showing that Black women are a lot more dedicated to her campaign than Black men are.

Even though the majority of black men, 80% approximately or more support her according to polls, they are more willing, according to polls, which I don't know if this is true or not, to support Donald Trump.

And so she knows that in Georgia she could really benefit from the mobilization efforts of Black women there because Stacey Abrams did a lot to call attention to voter suppression.

She talked about some of the things that happened in 2018 when she almost won her election as governor, but she didn't.

And she felt that it was because of unfair voting practices in the state.

And she, and others, formed different organizations.

She filed lawsuits.

She came up with the Fair Fight campaign.

And as a result of that, I think Kamala Harris is going to benefit in the sense that now if there's any type of evidence of any type of voting fraud or voter suppression, especially of minority voters, I think that they're going to be prepared for that.

And so and a lot of that is because of the work of Stacey Abrams.

Now, tell me about Shirley Chisholm, who is emblazoned in my mind as a teenager or younger.

I remember seeing posters for her and talking a lot about her and found her a very interesting candidate.

Tell me how she moved it forward.

Shirley Chisholm was was very important for female politicians just generally, for Black politicians generally.

And she also not only impacted the campaign of Barack Obama, but also Jesse Jackson, who ran for president in 1984, 1988.

They put together multiracial coalitions.

And they got that idea from Shirley Chisholm.

She was one of the earliest candidates to seek the Democratic Party nomination and put together a multiracial coalition that not only transcended race and ethnicity, but also transcended class.

And also, she was able to try to get support from female voters as well.

She had mixed results with that, she received a lot more support from Black women than from white women.

But she did have endorsements from women like Gloria Steinem and some other high-profile women at the time.

So she was someone in 1972 who became the first Black woman to ever seek a major party nomination.

The other women that we've been talking about have run as independents.

She ran and sought the Democratic Party nomination.

And again, she didn't have really a chance of winning.

She was also the first Black woman elected to Congress.

But she knew that she wanted to call attention to issues like the Vietnam War and like other issues that were happening at the time, economic issues, especially as it impacted minority communities.

She also wanted to talk about issues that concern women.

So I can really see when I look at the things that Kamala Harris focuses on, and also the things that Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama and even other candidates of all races have focused on, I can really see her influence because she was one of the first people to try to put together a broad based coalition that consisted of people of different races and ethnicities.

She was also one of the earliest candidates to really focus on trying to motivate younger people to vote.

So I can definitely see a lot of her influence in the campaign of Kamala Harris.

These women, it seems just about to a person so far have run for ideas to get out, ideas out there, to get the public used to seeing a Black female face in front of the camera and running for an important office, like the perhaps the most important office probably in the world, president of the United States.

Is that how you see their campaigns?

That's how I see their campaigns.

In forcing people to talk about issues that the major party candidates ignored, especially as as they pertain to race and gender.

And these were, you know, women of color.

No one thought that they could really win.

And they sort of acknowledged that there was a very slim chance that they would win.

Shirley Chisholm had to deal with blatant racism and sexism.

All of these women have, including in the Black community, having to deal with a lot of racism, even in their very own communities.

But these were women who felt that they had a voice that needed to be heard.

And we also have to think about the context of the times in which they ran in 1968, 1972.

These were totally different societies back then for women, for people of color.

In 1968, it was only four years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, only three years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

So even in the Deep South, voting was still kind of a relatively new phenomenon.

And for women, it was the height of the women's movement, the height of a lot of different movements, the Chicano Movement, the Yellow movement, the Black Power movement, the modern Civil Rights movement.

And she was running during that time as a woman.

And that was something that at that time that women simply just did not do, certainly not women of color.

And so that was a very brave thing for these women to do at the time.

They must have been the target of a lot of animosity and a lot of ridicule.

But they ran to, were they ever Were they ever the target of assassination attempts?

I don't remember ever.

Plots uncovered?

Right.

I don't ever remember reading about any assassination attempts, but they did receive hate mail.

I mean, they did, I think, and unfortunately, a lot of women receive hate mail.

I mean, I'm sure sometimes you might get it, sometimes I even get it.

But it's not on the same level.

But at the time, in 1968, when people were used to seeing women, especially women of color, in a certain role and women of color in a more subservient role, to have a woman saying that she's running for president as a communist like Charlene Mitchell, or a woman saying that “I'm a member of Congress and I'm now seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency.” That must have been mind boggling to a lot of people.

So I can only imagine the amount of stress that they must have had to deal with.

And let's switch a little bit over to Patsy Mink from Hawaii, who was a longtime U.S. House member and ran for president.

She was the first woman of color in Congress.

She was an Asian American woman.

And at the time, this was in 1964, which was, again, a totally different time.

And I think people are less familiar with the type of biases and prejudices and the different discriminatory acts that have been committed against Asian Americans.

She was someone who ran for office, as you know, a young woman.

So she had her gender, her ethnicity, and her age as a young woman running for office.

And being in Congress and, at the time, being one of the only women who had ever been elected in the history of the U.S. Congress.

So that was something that was really difficult for her.

And again, I think all of these women of color have paved the way for other candidates, but especially for other women, other female candidates, because they were taking a stand at a time when it was thought of as being not only, that women were not at the time expected to do these types of things, but it was also a dangerous thing to do at the time.

If you think about the history of 1964, civil rights activists were still being murdered.

And so for this woman to be a member of Congress and to be in a position where she is being outspoken about political issues, like the other women, it was something that was really remarkable.

And she was taking a huge risk.

And just after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was very supportive of Americans of color.

Tell me, please, about Lenora Fulani.

She ran a little bit earlier.

But also how did she move it forward?

Yeah, she ran twice in 1988, in 1992.

And that was, you know, years later.

And she ran as representative of the New Alliance Party, which was also an independent party.

And the interesting thing about Lenora Fulani, based on my research, is that she was one of the first candidates to openly talk about LGBTQ rights.

And so that was something, at the time, there still was a stigma.

It's time even, you know, we still didn't know a whole lot about AIDS and people back then, if you were gay, you pretty much had to be very discreet with it.

So for her to be a candidate who was running mostly in the North and running in New York and other places on the East Coast, but she ran her campaign across the country.

But she's probably more well known on the East Coast.

And to talk about not only issues involving race and gender and social justice, but also issues involving gay rights.

That was something that you had never really heard a presidential candidate talking about at the time.

And Carol Moseley Braun, who has appeared on this show in the past and was a U.S. senator.

She ran.

Talk about what she contributed.

Carol Moseley Braun served one term in the U.S. Senate from 1992 to 1996.

She wasn't reelected.

But she was the first black woman ever to serve in the U.S. Senate.

And since then, there have been very few, of course, Kamala Harris, more recently.

And now there are other Black women who are running this year, and we don't know if they're going to win or not, but there haven't been very many Black women in Congress in general, but certainly not in the U.S. Senate And so that was something that was really symbolic and historic when she won her race in 1992.

She's a former attorney from Chicago, who had been very much involved in statewide politics in Chicago, in Illinois and local politics in Chicago.

And she decided to run for office in 2008.

Eventually, she ended her campaign.

And I think a lot of it was because of some of the things that even happened during the time that she was in the U.S. Senate.

There were some controversies about the way that she handled some funds and some of the affiliations that she had, even with some a person who was referred to as an Algerian dictator.

And so a lot of people remembered some of that baggage from her.

And that's one of the reasons why she didn't get reelected for a second term.

But she still nevertheless has had a distinguished political career, but just not so much in the elective office holding.

But she decided to run for president.

She didn't run for very long.

During that same year, Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, also was running in 2008.

Both of them eventually withdrew their candidacies.

And, as you know, Barack Obama eventually won.

But she was more so interested in just talking about more traditional issues.

The other candidates talked about issues mostly that you never heard people discuss before.

She mostly talked about issues that you expect a political candidate to hear about, like economic issues and issues of those kind.

She didn't talk very much about racial justice or gender or social justice.

She was more of a traditional candidate, but her campaign wasn't very long.

She wasn't able to really raise very many funds, but nevertheless, it was significant that she had been elected to the U.S. Senate and that she had decided even to make the decision even to run for president and put yourself out there is something that's really extraordinary.

Still talking about Carol Moseley Braun, what did she do in terms of something, the next topic I wanted to talk about, which is the browning of America and how it has changed things for Kamala Harris and for Barack Obama before her?

I would say that Carol Moseley Braun and also Barack Obama show that, that Black candidates could receive significant amounts of she didn't receive a whole lot of votes, but Black candidates could realistically run for office like the presidency.

Because when Barack Obama even ran, at first people were saying, “There's no way this country will ever elect a Black man.” And as we know, he won twice.

For Carol Moseley Braun, when she ran for the U.S. Senate, people were telling her the same thing, that not only was she Black, but she was a woman as well.

And she's not from an affluent background.

She grew up in a community called “A Bucket of Blood.” So she grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood in Chicago, so she didn't really have a whole lot of economic resources or she didn't have any real advantages.

So I think with all of those candidates, but especially with Carol Moseley Braun, they showed that you could run for the U.S. Senate, which is a statewide position, and you could run for the presidency, which is a national, you have to run nationwide, and you can realistically expect to win, even in states that have very small Black populations.

Now, what about the changing demographics, as I asked a moment ago, and how it, for example, Kamala Harris' father is from the Caribbean.

How has immigration and the browning of America made it easier for people of color to run?

This is going to be a very significant election in terms of the result because is really going to show the impact of the browning of America because it's being predicted at some point, maybe within a decade or so, that white people will be the numerical minority in this country and people of color will be the majority.

And some people would argue that that doesn't matter, really, because the idea is that white people as a group have more power economically and politically than people of color.

But this is going to show the impact of the browning of America because now a lot of people who came here as immigrants have now become citizens, and a lot of them who came here as immigrants have had children who are now citizens.

And so, especially for people who are from the Caribbean, it's really going to be interesting to see to what extent they support Kamala Harris because her father is Jamaican and also is going to show more about the strength of the Asian-American community as well, because, as you know, her mother, her late mother, was Indian.

And you're going to see the impact of the Asian-American vote as well.

And so if she wins, its going to be because she successfully put together the kind of coalition that Shirley Chisholm attempted to put together many, many years ago that consists of people of different races, especially focuses on younger people.

And so it's going to really show whether or not the browning of America has any real impact politically.

And, finally, what about the coalitions that Kamala Harris is putting together?

What else is that showing about that?

Well, in terms of her running as a woman, first of all, never had a woman president before and a woman of color.

Do you think America is ready for that?

Well, I think we can't wait for America to be ready for anything.

I think that America gets ready when it happens because a lot of people asked the same question with Barack Obama: Is America ready for a Black president?

And we know now that America was ready because we were able to elect him and reelect him.

And the same question surfaced back in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, and even with other women who've run as vice presidential candidates like Geraldine Ferraro, even Sarah Palin, even though they were not successful.

Is America ready for those women to be vice president?

Was America ready for Kamala Harris to be vice president?

And I think America is ready because America gets ready when something happens.

But not before.

Right.

You also mentioned how Black candidates tend to distance themselves from their race.

Is Kamala Harris doing it?

And how did Barack Obama do it?

It's called a political strategy of deracialization.

And it's when minority candidates, but especially Black candidates, when they're running, in predominantly white communities or predominantly white for office, in which they know that most of the people who are voting for them are going to be white, and they need crossover votes from white voters.

They sort of de-emphasize any type of racially divisive issue that they think is a no win situation.

If you discuss things like affirmative action, for example, welfare, those are the types of racialized issues that regardless of what position you take, you're bound to offend someone.

So they tend to try to avoid those issues altogether.

And if you notice, even with Kamala Harris, she hasn't really talked about the symbolic nature of her campaign, the fact that, “I'll be the first woman president.” I mean, I'm sure she's mentioned that, but she's not really mentioned it a lot.

She's not mentioned in a lot publicly especially.

She's definitely not dwelling on.

Right.

She's not talking about it very much.

And then because I guess she feels like it's pretty obvious.

And also she's not talking about racial issues as much.

I mean, she did address some of them during the debate because I guess when she is asked about those issues, she'll talk about them, but she chooses not to because she knows that regardless of what position you take on some of the more racially divisive issues, you're bound to offend someone and you might alienate voters.

And what's being predicted as going to be a really close election.

So she's practicing the same strategy that Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama practice called deracialization because they chose not to really talk about issues concerning their race because they knew that they needed the support of many white voters, and they didn't want to risk turning off those voters.

All right.

Thank you so much, Dr. Sharon Austin, professor of political science at the University of Florida.

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