THE STORY OF BLACK WOMEN IN POLITICS: HOW WE GOT KAMALA HARRIS’ ASSENT. Figures like Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, and Barbara Jordan forged a tradition of Black women in politics. “This is life-altering, a Black woman vice president,” said Cornell Belcher, a pollster and political strategist to the Obama campaigns… “But what created this moment began more than 60 years ago. You can’t really talk about this moment and not talk about how this is in the continuum of what civil rights protesters, what Freedom Riders got their asses beat for.