Shirley Chisholm 5

I was always fond of her. Gutsy, idealistic and pragmatic are traits that don't often show up in the same person, but they did in this case. I will always remember that during her symbolic primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, she visited George Wallace in hospital after he was shot. This horrified a lot of her supporters, given that he was not only her rival, but her ideological opponent. What happened to him, shouldn't happen to anyone, she told them, and brazened out the support that drained away from her.