Bella Abzug Dies At 77
NEW YORK (AllPolitics, March 31) -- Former New York Rep. Bella Abzug died Tuesday of complications following heart surgery in New York, according to her assistant Anita Nayar. Abzug was 77.
Recognized by her trademark hat and raspy voice, Abzug was a labor and civil rights lawyer and peace activist before becoming the first Jewish woman in Congress. She spoke out strongly against the Vietnam War and also fought for civil rights and feminist issues.
Running under the slogan, "This woman's place is in the House -- the House
of Representatives," Abzug, a Democrat, was elected to Congress in 1970 .
On her first day there, Abzug introduced a resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Indochina. The motion was defeated.
"There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash and overbearing," she wrote in her 1972 book, "Bella!" "Whether I'm any of these things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am -- and this ought to be made very clear at the outset -- I am a very serious woman."
Dubbed by the tabloids as "Battlin' Bella" or "Mother Courage," Abzug's tough stances were often a lightening rod for publicity, and contempt from conservatives.
In 1995, former President George Bush, noting her attendance at a U.N. conference on women in Beijing, said, "I feel somewhat sorry for the Chinese having Bella Abzug running around China."
Abzug served three terms and then decided to run for the Senate in 1976. Daniel Patrick Moynihan won the Democratic party's nomination, and went on to win the seat he still holds today. Abzug's other attempts to return to politics also ended in defeat, losing runs for New York City mayor and two bids to return to Congress.
Born Bella Savitsky, Abzug's parents were Russian immigrants. She grew up in the Bronx and her father owned a Manhattan butcher shop called the "Live and Let Live Meat Market."
Abzug championed the underdog all her life. A 1947 graduate of Columbia Law School, she worked at the Civil Rights Congress and the American Civil Liberties Union.
During that time she defended victims of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's red hunts in the 1950s. She was also chief counsel in the appeal of Willie McGee, a black Mississippian
convicted of raping a white woman. McGee was executed in 1951.
There was a message behind the hats that Abzug always wore. "When I first became a lawyer only about 2 percent of the bar was women. People would always think I was a secretary. In those days, professional women in the business world wore hats. So I started wearing hats," she told an interviewer in 1987.
She married Martin Abzug in 1944, who died in 1986. She is survived by two daughters, Isobel and Eve Gail, and a sister, Helene Alexander.
Following recent heart surgery, she had been hospitalized at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center for more than three weeks before she died.
A private funeral was planned for Thursday with a public memorial service to be held sometime later, her spokesman said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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