In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress,
and in 1972, she became the first Black person to campaign seriously for the presidency on
a major party ticket. She maintained her independent spirit throughout her career,
sometimes to her detriment. Here is her story.
Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on Nov. 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
to Charles St. Hill and Ruby Seale St. Hill. Her father, a baker's assistant and factory worker,
was originally from Guyana, and her mother, a seamstress, was from Barbados.
Charles was a devout follower of charismatic Jamaican activist and Black nationalist Marcus
Garvey, and Shirley Chisholm credited her father's political awareness with inspiring her own
and her desire to lead. Her defiant spirit and self-confidence were obvious from a young age.
She later recalled,
"I would always have playmates that would be three and four years older than I am, and
I would be the leader. My grandmother says that there was leadership in me even at a tender age."
Shirley Chisholm was invited to attend Oberlin and Vassar colleges, but since her family couldn't
afford either, she instead went to Brooklyn College, which had offered her a full scholarship.
Some of her professors told her she was a natural fit for politics, but Chisholm
focused on other subjects, graduating cum laude with a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1946,
with a minor in Spanish — a qualification which would help with her later political campaigns.
After college, Chisholm worked as a nursery school teacher for seven years, until 1953.
She earned her master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University in 1952
and became the director of two New York daycare centers. From 1959 to 1964,
she worked as an educational consultant for New York City's bureau of child welfare.
At the same time, Chisholm was involved in various local and national political groups,
including the Seventeenth Assembly District Democratic Club,
the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League, the National League of Women Voters, and the NAACP.
In 1964, Shirley Chisholm became the second Black woman elected to the New York State Assembly.
Four years later, redistricting opened up a seat in the national House of Representatives for her
district of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Chisholm decided to run for the Democratic nomination.
Chisholm took her campaign and her slogan "Unbought and Unbossed" to the streets,
where the strength of her personality helped put her over the top — in the primaries,
she beat her closest opponent, state Senator William C. Thompson, by just 800 votes.
Given that her district was 80% Democratic, the general election should have been a walkover.
But Chisholm was up against James Farmer, an independent running as a Republican,
who was famous as a civil rights campaigner. He'd co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality
and took part in the Freedom Rides. However, Farmer also held some outdated views on women,
declaring that Black people needed a man in Congress, not a, quote, "little schoolteacher."
Chisholm fought back, arguing that it was time that a Black woman got a
chance to act in government, that Farmer was an outsider who didn't even live in the district,
and using her Spanish skills to directly address Hispanic voters.
She won 67% of the vote, becoming the first Black woman elected to Congress.
Being the only Black woman in Congress was difficult. According to NPR,
Shirley Chisholm later said that her colleagues wouldn't even sit with her
in the lunchroom. For the first few months, she said, she was miserable.
However, she never lost her fighting spirit. First-term "freshman" House
members are traditionally expected to stay quiet, follow orders,
and take the assignments they're given. But Chisholm continued to defy expectations.
Chisholm used her first floor speech, in March 1969, to criticize the Vietnam War
and said she would vote against any bills funding the military. When she was assigned
to the Agriculture Committee, she rebelled, arguing that it wasn't relevant to her district.
According to the New York Times, she said,
"Apparently all they know here in Washington about Brooklyn is that a tree grew there."
Chisholm's persistence eventually landed her on the Veterans' Affairs Committee.
Starting in her second term, she served on the Education and Labor Committee,
which had always been her first choice, given her background in education.
In 1971, during her second term, Chisholm co-founded the National
Women's Political Caucus with the aim of increasing women's political involvement.
Women have been running for president since before they could vote. A white women's
suffrage campaigner, Victoria Woodhull, was nominated by the Equal Rights Party exactly
100 years before Shirley Chisholm ran, in 1872. And in 1968, Charlene Mitchell,
became the first Black woman to run for president, as a member of the Communist Party.
However, Chisholm was, as she put it, the first Black person to seriously run for president
for a major party and the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination. She announced
her candidacy in January 1972, declaring herself as the candidate of the marginalized,
especially poor people, women, Black people, and young people.
"The time had come when a black person or a female person
could and should be President of these United States of America. "
Chisholm knew that she probably wasn't going to win. Instead,
she aimed to get enough votes that she and the marginalized people she hoped
to represent would have some influence at the Democratic National Convention.
For example, she wanted to force the candidate to name a Black vice president and a Native American
secretary of the interior. But above all, she wanted to prove that Black people, women, and
particularly Black women have as much right to run for president as white men. Chisholm maintained,
"Because a white male has always been the person who has entered into the White House,
I don't see why it is that I should step back."
From the moment Shirley Chisholm announced her campaign for president,
she was bombarded with sexist commentary, racism, ridicule, and a basic lack of respect.
"A new hat, or rather a bonnet, was tossed into the Democratic presidential race today."
She was excluded from appearing in a televised debate alongside rival
candidates George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey — until
she successfully filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.
During the campaign, rumors were circulated that Chisholm had previously been hospitalized
in a mental asylum. Chisholm also received at least three death threats, and was once
shockingly close to a man with a knife who reportedly intended to stab her in the back.
Plenty of white people openly refused to vote for a Black candidate. But Chisholm felt that her
gender was used against her more than her race. In 1982, she told the Associated Press,
"When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president,
I met more discrimination as a woman than for being Black."
"I didn't have many signs that indicated I was doing the right thing,
really. I really didn't. People were looking at me astonished."
Shirley Chisholm inspired many people around the country to volunteer for her
underfunded campaign. They managed to get her name on the ballot in 12 states.
She also received an endorsement from the Black Panther Party — and accepted it, despite backlash.
However, Chisholm struggled to convince many Black men and white feminists to commit to her when it
mattered at the DNC. She delivered emotional speeches to the Women's Caucus and the Black
Caucus, promising that if they united behind her they could influence the party's program.
But only two other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which she had co-founded in 1971,
ended up endorsing her — and even they dropped their support by the time the DNC convened.
The National Organization of Women, which Chisholm was an early member of,
refused to officially endorse her. White feminists like Gloria Steinem and Bella
Abzug ultimately supported George McGovern, who was more progressive than his fellow
frontrunner Hubert Humphrey. (McGovern later betrayed the feminists' faith by
refusing to put a reproductive rights plank up for a floor vote at the last minute.)
"It was a hell of a position to be in, really.
I wonder how I got as far as I did during the presidential campaign."
Chisholm finally collected 151 delegates, which was respectable given her underfunded
grassroots campaign but nowhere near enough. Yet she maintained,
"My greatest achievement... is that I had the audacity and the nerve to
make a bid for the presidency of the United States of America."
On May 15, 1972, Democratic presidential primary candidate George Wallace was shot and paralyzed
while giving a speech in Laurel, Maryland. Then-governor of Alabama, Wallace was infamous for
being an ardent segregationist and racist. Which was why many of Shirley Chisholm's supporters
were appalled when she temporarily suspended her campaign to visit him in the hospital.
Wallace was apparently shocked too, especially when she told him, quote,
"I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone."
Wallace's daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, told the Washington Post,
"Daddy was overwhelmed by... her willingness to
face the potential negative consequences of her political career because of him."
Despite the backlash from her supporters, Chisholm maintained that she had done the right thing.
One campaign worker, Barbara Lee, now a California congresswoman,
recalled to the Post that Chisholm told her,
"I may be able to teach him something, to help him regain his humanity,
to maybe make him open his eyes to make him see something that he has not seen."
It seems she did. Wallace renounced his former beliefs, publicly asked Black
leaders and communities for forgiveness, and appointed a record number of African Americans
to state positions. Kennedy credited Chisholm with starting this change, saying she, quote,
"planted a seed of new beginnings in my father's heart." Wallace also repaid Chisholm directly,
helping her gather Southern votes for her 1974 bill to extend minimum wage
laws to domestic workers, many of whom were Black.
Shirley Chisholm championed the marginalized throughout her seven terms in Congress.
Before her presidential run, she and Bella Abzug introduced a bill that would have funded high
quality childcare for all families. It passed the House but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon.
Chisholm later sponsored a bill extending and amending the school lunch program and
introduced an amendment that made it possible for 5 million more children to access free lunches.
When President Gerald Ford tried to veto the bill, Chisholm convinced her
colleagues to override him. She also championed a guaranteed minimum annual income for families,
a Farmworkers Bill of Rights, a bill to amend asylum procedures, and a bill that would have
returned areas of the Black Hills National Forest to the Sioux Nation for 10 years.
In 1977, Chisholm co-founded the Congressional Women's Caucus and became the Secretary of the
House Democratic Caucus. She also gave up her hard-won seat on the Education and Labor Committee
to become the first Black woman and second woman ever to sit on the powerful Rules Committee.
In 1978, she demonstrated her independent spirit when she became the lone Democratic
holdout in the Committee on the Natural Gas Regulation bill,
arguing that it would disproportionately impact the poor. Throughout her career,
she refused to automatically endorse candidates or colleagues just because they were female,
Black or a Democrat, and she made deals with Republicans to get what she wanted.
In 1982, Shirley Chisholm announced that she wouldn't seek re-election. Her decision was
partly based on the general political shift to the right, which she felt impacted her ability
to pass the progressive legislation she wanted. And partly it came down to personal reasons.
Chisholm's second husband, Arthur Hardwick, was badly injured in a motorcycle accident in 1979.
Nearly losing him made Chisholm realize that she'd given so much of herself to
her political career that she'd neglected her personal life.
She told the New York Times,
"I had no time for privacy, no time for my husband, no time to play my beautiful grand piano.
After he recovered, I decided to make some changes in my life."
She told the Washington Post that she didn't decide to leave
Congress immediately after Hardwick's accident,
and that he encouraged her to go back to work. But the job she had once enjoyed began to wear on her,
especially as she felt that she was no longer able to be as effective as she used to be.
Chisholm's retirement was greeted with mixed emotions. The independent streak
that had seen her occasionally break with the Democratic party line and expectations
of many in the Black political community had made her enemies. But she also received
thousands of letters and visits from people who were devastated that she was leaving,
and she felt some guilt — but true to form, she never wavered on her decision.
Shirley Chisholm didn't spend all her retirement playing piano.
From 1983 to 1987, she taught politics and sociology at Mount Holyoke College.
In 1984, she co-founded the National Congress of Black Women and campaigned for Jesse Jackson's
presidential bid — even though he had been one of her main detractors during her own campaign.
Chisholm died, aged 80, on Jan. 1, 2005, after a series of strokes. Today,
more people are acknowledging Chisholm's legacy and her impact on American politics.
In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2019, the largest state park in New York City, the Shirley Chisholm State Park,
opened in her former district and childhood home, Brooklyn, in her honor.
She was played by Uzo Aduba in FX's miniseries on the Equal Rights Amendment, Mrs. America,
in 2020. And Danai Gurira is set to play her in
a movie following her presidential bid, The Fighting Shirley Chisholm.
As someone who became a "first" many times in her life, Chisholm knew that she'd made history.
But in an interview shortly before her death, she said,
"I want history to remember me not that I was the first black woman to be elected to the Congress,
not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States,
but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself."
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