Despite President Johnson’s popular Vietnam bombing halt and a closing surge by the Democratic nominee and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the Republican candidate, Richard MiIhous Nixon, won the Presidency- barely—on November 5. Mr. Nixon, who had lost to John Kennedy by 120,000 votes eight years before, edged out Humphrey by a mere 800,000 this time around, with George Wallace a distant third.

In Brooklyn Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. “I am an historical person at this point,” she told a reporter shortly after, “and I’m very much aware of it.” With her rapid verbal barrages, Shirley Chisholm had gone up against the civil rights hero James Farmer for the seat from New York’s new Twelfth Congressional District and won against all expectations. Chisholm promised not to be “a quiet freshman congressman.” And from her first assignment—to the forestry and rural-villages subcommittee—she wasn’t.