Unbought and Unbossed

by Shirley Chisholm

Now, I am not a pacifist. Ending the war had not been a major theme of my campaign; it was ninth on a list of nine goals that I had pledged to fight for if I were elected, behind jobs, job training, equality education, adequate housing, en- forcement of antidiscrimination laws, support for day care centers, and several other items. But when President Nixon announced, on the same day, that he had decided that the United States would not be safe until we started to build an ABM system, and that the Head Start program in the District of Columbia was to be cut back for lack of money, that was enough for me. I started working on my maiden speech in the House. For whatever it would be worth, even if it would only get it off my chest, I had to tell the world that it was wrong to plan to spend billions on an elaborate and unneces- sary weapons system when disadvantaged children were get- ting nothing.