Justice & Law Quote by Shirley Chisholm

Chisholm’s line is a scalpel aimed at a particular species of ally: the kind that treats justice as a posture until it threatens their comfort, caucus standing, or reelection math. The bite comes from the calm specificity. She doesn’t rant about “betrayal” in the abstract; she indicts a pattern she’s watched up close “through the last two decades,” tying congressional liberalism to the long civil rights grind where sympathy was plentiful and risk-taking was rationed.

The phrasing “when it comes time to show” frames politics as a public accounting, not a private belief system. You can talk progressive in committee rooms and press releases, but Chisholm is naming the moment when votes are tallied, names are printed, and history decides who stood where. Her most revealing move is the passive construction “on which side they will be counted,” suggesting that neutrality is a myth: if you don’t choose, you still end up assigned. The real sin isn’t disagreement; it’s the dodge.

“Excuse themselves” lands like courtroom language and social etiquette at once. It evokes the polite exit, the procedural alibi, the strategic absence. In the context of mid-century and post–Civil Rights Act politics, this reads as a warning about the limits of liberal consensus: support evaporates precisely when Black freedom demands redistribution of power, not just rhetoric. Chisholm, as a Black woman navigating a party that often celebrated her symbolism more than her agenda, is documenting the gap between ideological branding and moral consequence.