Sign-In
Cart
When There Was No Chair: The Courage to Show Up
Hardcover
Biographies GeneralPolitical BiographiesManagement
ISBN13: 9781940498775
Publisher: Juxtabook Press
Published: Sep 15 2026
Pages: 164
Weight: 0.83
Height: 0.44 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
You know what it's like to walk into a room that wasn't built for you - to be the first, the only, or the one they never saw coming, and to find that no chair was saved with your name on it.
You've been talked over in the meeting. Passed over for the seat. Told, in a hundred quiet ways, that the table was already full.
Helen Giddings spent a lifetime in those rooms. The first African American executive assistant in Sears' eleven-state Southwest Territory. The first woman to chair the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce. One of a handful of Black members in a 150-seat Texas House, where she would serve for twenty-six years - and the founder of a business that now operates in airports across Texas.
From corporate boardrooms to the Texas Capitol to the company of Nelson Mandela, she learned a truth that changed everything: belonging is rarely offered. It is earned by those who decide that a place not given can still be made their own.
In When There Was No Chair, Giddings shares the story behind the accomplishments:
- The 2 a.m. prayers no one heard, and the faith that carried her through every room she entered alone.
- The fight against a liquor lobby that hired seventy lobbyists and passed her home address around like a flyer - all so a child could walk to school in safety.
- $1.3 million raised in thirty days to keep the doors of a historically Black college from closing.
- A university built where a city of millions had none, and Black history placed on the grounds of the Texas Capitol for the first time.
This is a memoir for every woman who has ever been underestimated. For the daughter who needs proof that the ceiling isn't where she thinks it is. For anyone who has stood at the edge of a room and wondered whether she belonged in it.
Helen Giddings' life is not the ceiling of what's possible. It's the floor. And if there isn't a chair waiting for you - build one.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII
Warnicke, Retha M.
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Erdoes, Richard
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover