Comments (Famous Bearer Only)
Charlene Choi Tsoek-jin (Chinese: 蔡卓妍) is a Hong Kong Canadian actress and singer. She is a member of Cantopop group Twins, along with Gillian Chung.
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Charlene Mitchell was the first Black woman to run for president of the United States.
Shirley Chisholm is often given credit for that superlative; Mitchell in fact preceded Chisholm by four years. (I have spent a decent amount of energy attempting to correct this factual inaccuracy, which is fairly widespread, especially during Black History Month. I usually don’t get any kind of response; my most recent emails, to Katie Couric and a congressman, have been left unreturned.)
In the Communist Party of the United States, before Angela Davis, there was Charlene Mitchell.
Charlene Mitchell, née Charlene Alexander, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1930, and moved with her family to Chicago as a young girl.
Mitchell spent time as a civil rights organizer, beginning as a teenager. At 13, she joined American Youth for Democracy, the youth wing of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
Mitchell initially pursued coursework at the Moody Bible Institute in the 1950s. While there, she was distressed by the racism she experienced from the school and its surrounding community.
This experience at Moody only solidified her affiliation with the CPUSA. Mitchell became on the CPUSA’s most influential leaders of the 1950s and 1960s, developing party connections with Black labor activists and pushing for greater international involvement between Black communities and Communist communities around the world. She traveled widely, developing connections with activists like Claudia Jones, of the UK’s Communist Party, and Yusuf Dadoo, of the South African Communist Party.
By the 1960s, Mitchell’s significance transcended her role in the CPUSA. The CPUSA was in declining influence in the period, but Mitchell was respected among radical and leftist organizations as a party figurehead and a community organizer.
On 4 July 1968, at the Diplomat Hotel in New York, Mitchell was nominated for president by the CPUSA. Her vice-presidential choice was Michael Zagarell, the CPUSA’s 23-year-old national youth director. In her acceptance speech, she declared she would “put an ‘open-occupancy’ sign on the White House lawn.” In her nomination, Charlene Mitchell became the first Black woman to run for president in United States history.
Mitchell’s nomination was covered by major outlets, but to most observers, the fact that the CPUSA had nominated a Black woman and a man too young for his office constitutionally, indicated the party’s lack of seriousness. The Chicago Tribune considered the nomination to be purely symbolic, “to dramatize what the Communists perceive to be the nation’s major discontents.” Black newspapers were comparably tepid in their reception, instead focusing on Dick Gregory and Eldridge Cleaver, two Black men running flamboyant campaigns on third party tickets.
Mitchell was fully aware that she had no chance of winning. In a press conference held after her nomination, she argued that the campaign’s success depended not on victory, but on whether it could “present to the American people the [party’s] views and platforms in a way that the American people can begin to understand what Communists see as some of the solutions to some of the problems in our country.”
Mitchell’s presidential campaign was headquartered at the Frederick Douglass Book Store in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the most notable interviews Mitchell gave was to a student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. The article the Crimson journalist wrote was rather bleak. The campaign apparatus was out of date, and Mitchell reportedly spent “almost as much time helping friends by watching the store and answering the telephone as she does campaigning.” Yet the article granted Mitchell the respect of emphasizing her genuine sincerity.
Speeches and articles from Mitchell’s campaign often sound hardly out-of-place in the realm of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the Harvard Crimson, Mitchell was quoted saying, ““what we need is a revolutionary transformation … replacing white capitalism with black capitalism isn’t going to solve the problems of poverty: the problems of poverty are rooted in the nature of capitalism itself.” In a campaign speech during 1968, she declared, “Black people must get together if we are to withstand this attack. There must be unity among our people, be they socialists, liberals, conservatives, communists, or independents. We must demand that all discrimination bars that keep us from taking advantage of everything that exists for other people be destroyed at once.”
Ultimately, Mitchell only appeared on ballots in two states. She received just 1,075 votes.
After the 1968 election, Mitchell maintained an active role in the CPUSA. She served as a mentor figure to Angela Davis, a rising figure in the party and eventually natonally, and became a public face for the CPUSA during the battle to free Davis in 1971. The two have maintained a relationship, appearing at panels and conferences together about Black radical politics. In 2009, Davis offered a passionate tribute to Mitchell in a speech at Brooklyn College.
Mitchell ran for elected office again in 1988, as an independent progressive for the Senate from New York.
In 1991, Mitchell, alongside Angela Davis and other notable Black members of the CPUSA, were purged from the CPUSA over their written criticism of Gus Hall. Hall, 81 at the time, served as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1959 until 2000. Mitchell, Davis, and their co-signatories pushed for greater openness and democratization of the party. Hall was unwilling. He would continue to hold power until his death age 90 in 2000.
Mitchell and Davis would both join an independent Communist offshoot called the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. As of 2006, Mitchell was still active; as of 2022, Davis is still reportedly active.
As of this writing, Mitchell is still alive and in her early 90s.
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Shirley Chisholm is often given credit for that superlative; Mitchell in fact preceded Chisholm by four years. (I have spent a decent amount of energy attempting to correct this factual inaccuracy, which is fairly widespread, especially during Black History Month. I usually don’t get any kind of response; my most recent emails, to Katie Couric and a congressman, have been left unreturned.)
In the Communist Party of the United States, before Angela Davis, there was Charlene Mitchell.
Charlene Mitchell, née Charlene Alexander, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1930, and moved with her family to Chicago as a young girl.
Mitchell spent time as a civil rights organizer, beginning as a teenager. At 13, she joined American Youth for Democracy, the youth wing of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
Mitchell initially pursued coursework at the Moody Bible Institute in the 1950s. While there, she was distressed by the racism she experienced from the school and its surrounding community.
This experience at Moody only solidified her affiliation with the CPUSA. Mitchell became on the CPUSA’s most influential leaders of the 1950s and 1960s, developing party connections with Black labor activists and pushing for greater international involvement between Black communities and Communist communities around the world. She traveled widely, developing connections with activists like Claudia Jones, of the UK’s Communist Party, and Yusuf Dadoo, of the South African Communist Party.
By the 1960s, Mitchell’s significance transcended her role in the CPUSA. The CPUSA was in declining influence in the period, but Mitchell was respected among radical and leftist organizations as a party figurehead and a community organizer.
On 4 July 1968, at the Diplomat Hotel in New York, Mitchell was nominated for president by the CPUSA. Her vice-presidential choice was Michael Zagarell, the CPUSA’s 23-year-old national youth director. In her acceptance speech, she declared she would “put an ‘open-occupancy’ sign on the White House lawn.” In her nomination, Charlene Mitchell became the first Black woman to run for president in United States history.
Mitchell’s nomination was covered by major outlets, but to most observers, the fact that the CPUSA had nominated a Black woman and a man too young for his office constitutionally, indicated the party’s lack of seriousness. The Chicago Tribune considered the nomination to be purely symbolic, “to dramatize what the Communists perceive to be the nation’s major discontents.” Black newspapers were comparably tepid in their reception, instead focusing on Dick Gregory and Eldridge Cleaver, two Black men running flamboyant campaigns on third party tickets.
Mitchell was fully aware that she had no chance of winning. In a press conference held after her nomination, she argued that the campaign’s success depended not on victory, but on whether it could “present to the American people the [party’s] views and platforms in a way that the American people can begin to understand what Communists see as some of the solutions to some of the problems in our country.”
Mitchell’s presidential campaign was headquartered at the Frederick Douglass Book Store in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the most notable interviews Mitchell gave was to a student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. The article the Crimson journalist wrote was rather bleak. The campaign apparatus was out of date, and Mitchell reportedly spent “almost as much time helping friends by watching the store and answering the telephone as she does campaigning.” Yet the article granted Mitchell the respect of emphasizing her genuine sincerity.
Speeches and articles from Mitchell’s campaign often sound hardly out-of-place in the realm of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the Harvard Crimson, Mitchell was quoted saying, ““what we need is a revolutionary transformation … replacing white capitalism with black capitalism isn’t going to solve the problems of poverty: the problems of poverty are rooted in the nature of capitalism itself.” In a campaign speech during 1968, she declared, “Black people must get together if we are to withstand this attack. There must be unity among our people, be they socialists, liberals, conservatives, communists, or independents. We must demand that all discrimination bars that keep us from taking advantage of everything that exists for other people be destroyed at once.”
Ultimately, Mitchell only appeared on ballots in two states. She received just 1,075 votes.
After the 1968 election, Mitchell maintained an active role in the CPUSA. She served as a mentor figure to Angela Davis, a rising figure in the party and eventually natonally, and became a public face for the CPUSA during the battle to free Davis in 1971. The two have maintained a relationship, appearing at panels and conferences together about Black radical politics. In 2009, Davis offered a passionate tribute to Mitchell in a speech at Brooklyn College.
Mitchell ran for elected office again in 1988, as an independent progressive for the Senate from New York.
In 1991, Mitchell, alongside Angela Davis and other notable Black members of the CPUSA, were purged from the CPUSA over their written criticism of Gus Hall. Hall, 81 at the time, served as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1959 until 2000. Mitchell, Davis, and their co-signatories pushed for greater openness and democratization of the party. Hall was unwilling. He would continue to hold power until his death age 90 in 2000.
Mitchell and Davis would both join an independent Communist offshoot called the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. As of 2006, Mitchell was still active; as of 2022, Davis is still reportedly active.
As of this writing, Mitchell is still alive and in her early 90s.
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Charlene is a character in Phineas and Ferb.
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Charlene, Princess of Monaco, is a former Olympic swimmer for South Africa and wife of Prince Albert II. Princess Charlene was born in Rhodesia, the daughter of Michael and Lynette Wittstock, and the family relocated to South Africa in 1989. Princess Charlene represented South Africa at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, with her team finishing fifth in the 4 × 100 metre medley relay. Princess Charlene retired from competitive swimming in 2007.
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Charlene "Charlie" Bradbury is a character on the television series "Supernatural."
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Charlene, Princess of Monaco. Née Charlene Lynette Wittstock. Formerly an olympic swimmer for South Africa.
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Charlene Darling is a character on The Andy Griffith Show.
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Amy Adams played the character Charlene in the 2010 movie The Fighter, and was nominated for an Academy Award for it! The Fighter had Mark Walberg and Christian Bale in it as well.
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Charlene "Charlie" McGee was the eight-year-old pyrokinetic in "Firestarter" by Stephen King.
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Charlene Sinclair was the daughter from Disney's 1992 series 'Dinosaurs'.
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A famous, or somewhat famous, bearer of this name is Charlene Tilton, who is mostly known for her role in the 1980s soap opera, 'Dallas'.
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Kylie Minogue's chararacter in the Australian soap opera, "Neighbours" (possibly more famous in the UK than Australia), was Charlene Robinson. The pronunciation in Australia is "shar-LEEN".
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