Great women pass: I was saddened by the premature death of Susan Sontag last week; she was a hero of mine for her writing, her artful observations, and her activism. Now another hero, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm has passed on too. The first African American woman to run for Congress, Chisholm was also the first woman of any race to seek the nomination to run for president. The Nation writes:

Chisholm, who died January 1 at age 80, ran as the "Unbought and Unbossed" candidate for the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate. She campaigned in key primary states as a militant foe of the war in Vietnam and a champion of the economic and social justice movements that had organized so effectively during the 1960s. And she did not mince words. A co-convener of the founding conference of the National Women's Political Caucus, she once announced, "Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes. That kind of talk, along with her refusal to reject the endorsement of the Black Panthers, scared the party establishment -- including most prominent liberals -- and Chisholm's run was dismissed from the start as a vanity campaign that would do nothing more than siphon votes off from better-known anti-war candidates such a South Dakota Senator George McGovern and New York City Mayor John Lindsay. They were not ready for a candidate who promised to "reshape our society," and they accorded her few opportunities to prove herself in a campaign where all of the other contenders were white men. "There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter," Chisholm observed. "Anyone who takes that role must pay a price."

The subject of Shola Lynch's amazing film Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed, her wisdom is as relevant now as ever:

â?¢ When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that lose.

• I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free.

• At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.

• ... rhetoric never won a revolution yet.