Black women have long been a clarion voice of reasoning and self-determination both inside and outside the halls of political power. While Black people have been the Democratic Party’s conscience dragging it kicking and screaming into the modern era, Black women have offered a level of timely discernment, forcing the party to be a better version of its contemporary self.

Now on the verge of nominating its second Black nominee and first Black woman, the Democratic party is celebrating the leadership and tenacity of Black women within the party’s ranks.

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Many have made reference to Fannie Lou Hamer’s brave and bold testimony before the credential committee at the 1964 Democratic National Convention (DNC). Her commitment to building and exerting organized Black political power remains a demand on the current generation of organizers inside and outside of the party apparatus.

Thursday, Aug. 22, marks the 60th anniversary of Hamer’s courageous remarks challenging not only the entrenched and violent white supremacy of Mississippi politics but President Lyndon B. Johnson himself. At the time, Hamer and fellow members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ran the ultimate outside strategy organizing with other Black Mississippians to demand power and representation.

Hamer would later be followed by the fierce leadership of the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. A founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black woman to seek a major party presidential nomination. Standing firm in her conviction of representative leadership with a policy agenda for the people and by the people, Chisholm birthed a new era of Black women’s political participation inspiring a young Barbara Lee — then a single mother from Oakland who would later become known for her brave stance as the only elected member of Congress to object to George H.W. Bush’s authorization to use military force in 2001.

 

Chisholm’s impact on the party and the DNC would be followed by the force that was Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. The first Black member of the Texas Senate since Reconstruction and the first Black woman elected to Congress from Texas, Jordan demanded the Democratic Party and the nation move with rigor and reasonable purpose. She used her platform to disrupt complacency as seen in her speeches during the 1972 and 1976 DNCs and her presence during the Watergate hearings in 1974. The late Jordan would again return to the convention stage in 1992 delivering marks entitled “Change: From What to What?” in which she seems to predict the coming of the first woman president.

“One overdue change already underway is the number of women challenging the councils of political power dominated by white, male policymakers,” Jordan said at the time. “That horizon is limitless. What we see today is simply a dress rehearsal for the day and time we meet in convention to nominate…Madame President.”

Black women are driving changes inside and outside the Democratic Party

Over the years, Black women have played key roles at the DNC and its nominating convention. Political strategist Minyon Moore serves as the 2024 Democratic National Convention chairperson, managing the herculean task that is balance in the voices represented on the convention stage. Bishop Leah Daughtry ushered in the historic nominations of President Barack Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton, serving as the convention CEO in 2008 and 2016. She most recently has served as co-chair of the DNC Rules Committee.

Political strategist and commentator Donna Brazile has twice served as acting chair of the Democratic National Committee. As the first Black woman to take the helm of a major political party’s presidential campaign and former DNC Chair, Brazile told USA Today that Black women have fought the past sixty years to ensure that no one is denied a seat referencing Harmer’s testimony decades earlier. Speaking on opening night, Rep. Maxine Waters also invoked Hamer and the trajectory that led to the first Black woman presidential nominee of a major political party.

However, the impact of Black women’s leadership and strategic vision should not only be measured by those who operate within the party system. Barbara Smith, co-founder of the Combahee River Collective, reflected on her experience as a student anti-war organizer during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

In a first hand account written for the Mount Holyoke student paper “Choragos,” Smith recounted what she called the “bizarre cruelty” of the 1968 convention. Notorious for the Chicago Police Department’s violent crackdown on anti-war protestors, the 1968 convention stands as a lesson for the current moment as reverberations of anti-war come through the pro-Palestine protests and actions taking place across the country.

“AT ONE point—when we had been gassed very badly and pushed far back into the park, I found myself unable to stop crying form the inside because it was so difficult to accept what was happening,” wrote Smith. “Children were being beaten and gassed because they wanted an alternative to war and raicsm. The adult establishment responded to this demand for peace and justice by exercising a kind of institutionalized hatred.”

Contemporary Black women leaders have taken up the mantle of supporting and protecting the resurgence in student anti-war activism and pro-Palestine protests happening on college campuses and elsewhere. Black women organizing in the reproductive justice movement and pushing party leadership and elected officials on the winning issue of abortion are responsible for the clearest affirmative language protecting the right to bodily autonomy in decades.

And Black women organizers and journalists in Chicago are standing in the gap to ensure that even as people are celebrating the historic nature of this week’s convention, residents in the surrounding community are seen and heard. As people mobilize and energize inside the DNC and organize on the streets, one can only hope that we emerge in a better place than in 1968.

In many ways, this convention is very different from four years ago, and the energy feels similar to 2008. But the seriousness of the moment and required leadership demand something more of all of us. Consider the words of First Lady Michelle Obama from 2020.

“A president’s words have the power to move markets they can start wars or broker peace they can summon our better angels or awaken our worst instincts,” the first lady said. “Being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are. Well, a presidential election can reveal who we are too.”

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