More about Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink

In Preparation for the documentary we’ll be watching next class about Patsy

Matsu Takemoto Mink tomorrow titled Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority (dir. Kimberlee Bassford, 2008), I wanted to learn more about her perspective, goals, and legacy as the first woman of color (as well as the first woman from the state of Hawaii) elected to United States Congress in 1964.

Connecting the dots back to Shirley Chisholm (the first black major-party candidate to run for President of the United States in the 1972 election), apparently Patsy Mink also declared her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination in 1972, thus making her the first asian-american woman to seek the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party (and Shirley Chisolm the first black woman to seek this position ). Here is a link to a transcript of an interview given by Mink about her presidential run published in an article from 1971: https://judyflander.org/patsy-mink-heads-for-the-presidential-primaries-205f8e6bc89a

In addition, we’ve had the opportunity to engage with a variety of primary sources throughout this course, and in the spirit of continuing that type of research and historical engagement, I wanted to see if I could find some primary sources to better inform me about Mink’s position around women’s issues as a female politician during this time. While I was not able to find a plethora of resources, I did find several transcripts from an interview with her daughter Gwendolyn Mink from 2016 talking about her mother’s perspective on her responsibilities as a woman in Congress (https://history.house.gov/Oral-History/Women/Women-Media/mink-women/) as well as her mother’s feelings about the Congressional Women’s Caucus (https://history.house.gov/Media?mediaID=15032436438).