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Shirley Chisholm's mentor, Jocelyn Cooper, has passed.
Jocelyn Cooper Dies at 86; Helped Pave Way for First Black Congresswoman
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/nyregion/jocelyn-cooper-dies-at-86-helped-pave-way-for-first-black-congresswoman.html?rref=politics&_r=0
Jocelyn Clopton Cooper, who helped shift New York’s black political center of gravity from Harlem to Brooklyn and, with her husband, established an alternative voice in journalism, died on Dec. 21 in Brooklyn. She was 86.
The cause was congestive heart failure, her daughter Jocelyn Cooper said.
Through grass-roots organizing, registering voters and challenging congressional district lines in court in the early 1960s, Ms. Cooper and her husband, Andrew Cooper, scored victories against the regular Brooklyn Democratic organization. They fielded black candidates under the reform banner and paved the way for the election of Shirley Chisholm in 1968 as the nation’s first black congresswoman.
To finance their legal challenge to racially gerrymandered congressional districts, they took out a third mortgage on their home and, unable to afford a process server, delivered the court papers themselves. Ms. Chisholm won in a new district drawn under court order.....
The cause was congestive heart failure, her daughter Jocelyn Cooper said.
Through grass-roots organizing, registering voters and challenging congressional district lines in court in the early 1960s, Ms. Cooper and her husband, Andrew Cooper, scored victories against the regular Brooklyn Democratic organization. They fielded black candidates under the reform banner and paved the way for the election of Shirley Chisholm in 1968 as the nation’s first black congresswoman.
To finance their legal challenge to racially gerrymandered congressional districts, they took out a third mortgage on their home and, unable to afford a process server, delivered the court papers themselves. Ms. Chisholm won in a new district drawn under court order.....
More at link.