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71 7. One Man’s Opinion By 1972 Andy’s champion, mayor John Lindsay, had switched his political affiliation from Liberal Republican to Democrat and entered the presidential primaries.George McGovern of South Dakota eventually won the Democratic nomination that summer. In November, McGovern was trounced by Republican incumbent Richard M. Nixon, who won 61 percent of the popular vote and lost only Massachusetts in the Electoral College.1 After the election, black representation in Congress grew again. Sixteen men and women were elected, including Andrew Young of Georgia, the first black man from the South elected to Congress since Reconstruction, as well as Barbara Jordan of Texas and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke of California. U.S. senator Edward Burke of Massachusetts, a Republican, was reelected.2 Shirley Chisholm was elected to a third term as representative from the Twelfth Congressional District of Brooklyn, New York. The previous January, she began an audacious six-month run for president of the United States. Chisholm largely courted white women from the emerging feminist movement, and black women and men from around America who were drawn to her tireless demands for inclusion in the political process. “I am not the candidate of black America,” said Chisholm in her announcement, “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 equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people, and my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history.”3 She broke all kinds of political rules. Chisholm did not follow Democratic Party protocol and defer to the male elders. She had the nerve to run for president when most American women could not get credit cards in their own names; their husbands had to vouch for them. Insurance companies added surcharges to the policies of single women who owned cars because the companies assumed the women were only letting their reckless boyfriends drive.4 Chisholm fomented conflict inside the overwhelmingly male Congressional Black Caucus. Walter Fauntroy of the District of Columbia said that Chisholm’s run drained energy from candidates who had a chance to defeat Nixon. U.S. representative Ron Dellums of California supported Chisholm 72 One Man’s Opinion and held on until a tense meeting at the Democratic National Convention at which he threw his support to the front runner. A political insider said Chisholm angered her peers because she grabbed for the brass ring while some of them pondered whether to pounce. Had Cooper been in the room, he would probably have admonished them not to fault Chisholm for her consistency . She had not hesitated years earlier to pursue the new congressional seat in Brooklyn,even as she expressed no interest in fighting for its creation. Chisholm’s presidential run was not pointless. She successfully challenged attempts to bar her from debating McGovern and Edmund Muskie on network television. And during the California primary, Chisholm successfully upended the winner-take-all delegate system in the Golden State. She was entitled to 12 of 271 delegates. The rest were split almost evenly between McGovern and Muskie.5 All along, Chisholm told supporters, it did not matter that she had nearly no prospect of winning the election; she wanted their votes to earn delegates she could use to leverage policy changes in the Democratic Party platform. In all, Chisholm received 152 of more than 2,000 ballots on the first roll call for president at the July convention in Miami Beach.6 Andy Cooper was working at his sole proprietorship public relations consulting company. Jocelyn Cooper was attending classes at Adelphi University in New York and working for the city Community Development Agency. Both parents raised“Jo Ann,” Jocelyn Andrea, who was seven and a second grader. The family settled into its new house on Third Street in Park Slope. Andrea Andrews, the newlywed, and husband Robert Lee Andrews cared for their newborn Damani. Before the birth, twenty-year-old Andrea taught high school students at the Satellite Academy in the Bronx. She had previously attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, a school that informed observers called the Harvard of the Midwest.7 On January 26, 1973, Local Level, a four-page, tabloid-size newsletter, was published by the Council against Poverty–Citizenship Education Program. Andrew W. Cooper was listed as the editor. The self-employed public relations professional produced the newsletter at his office on East Forty-second Street...

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