Shirley Chisholm

Born on Nov. 30, 1924 in New York, New York, Shirley Chisholm was a trailblazing American politician as the first Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress and the first Black person to seek a major party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency when she ran for the Democratic Party nomination in 1972. 

Chisholm was the oldest of four daughters to parents Ruby Seale and Charles St. Hill, who immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados and Guyana. After graduating from Brooklyn Girls’ High in 1942, Chisholm went on to study at Brooklyn College, graduating cum laude in 1946. Professors encouraged her to go into politics, but Chisholm replied that she faced a “double handicap” as a Black woman. 

While working as a nursery school teacher, director of a child care center, and an educational consultant with the city’s child care department, Chisholm worked towards and earned her Master of Arts in elementary education from Columbia University. 

1964 marked the beginning of her career in politics, as she ran for and was elected to the New York state legislature as an assemblyperson, becoming the second Black woman to serve in Albany.  

Within the next four years, Chisholm ran for Congress to represent a new Brooklyn congressional district out of her Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. In the primary, she went up against three Black candidates, former district leader and NY assemblyperson, and civil court judge Thomas R. Jones, former district co-leader Dolly Robinson, and state senator William C. Thompson. She won the primary race in mid-June 1968, finishing ahead of Thompson by around 800 votes. 

“Unbought and unbossed” was Chisholm’s campaign motto going into the general election, where she faced Liberal Party candidate James Farmer, who was backed by the Republican Party. Farmer was a prominent figure in the Civil Rights movement, co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, and an organizer for the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s. While the two held similar beliefs in regards to housing, employment, education issues, and opposing the Vietnam War, Farmer said that the Democratic Party took Black voters for granted and believed that Black communities should use their power as a swing vote. 

Farmer targeted Chisholm with misogyny, saying “women have been in the driver’s seat” in Black communities for too long and the district needed “a man’s voice in Washington,” not a “little schoolteacher.” Chisholm turned the tables back on Farmer, using his rhetoric to speak out on the discrimination against Black women, explain her qualifications for the job, and portray Farmer as a Manhattan outsider. Chisholm also used her fluent Spanish to connect with the Hispanic communities in the district. By the end of the election, Chisholm garnered 67 percent of the vote and became the first Black congresswoman in United States history. 

During her freshman year in Congress, Chisholm did everything but stay under the radar, having no intention of sitting quiet and observing, but rather focusing on the nation’s problems. She spoke out against the Vietnam War, vowing to vote against any and all defense appropriation bills until priorities and values aligned. Chisholm also served on the Veterans’ Affair Committee after appealing her assignment to the Committee on Agriculture because it wasn’t relevant to her district. She went on to serve on the Committee on Education and Labor, Democratic Caucus’s Committee on Organization, Study and Review, and as Secretary of the Democratic Caucus. In 1971, Chisholm co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Women’s Caucus in 1977. In that same year, Chisholm left her Education assignment for a seat on the Rules Committee, becoming the first Black woman to serve on that panel.  

Within her seven terms in Congress from 1969 to 1983, Chisholm continued her work that she fought for as a community activist, such as federal funding for daycare facilities, guaranteed minimum annual income for families, and federal assistance for education. She was just as critical Democrats in Congress as she was the Republicans, often working outside the established systems. In 1972, she declared her historic candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President. She campaigned across the country, receiving 10 percent of the total delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. 

For multiple reasons, including being disillusioned with the conservative uptake in the country with the Presidential election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Chisholm left Congress. She also felt misunderstood by other Black politicians, as she thought seeking negotiation with white politicians was needed in Congress. 

Chisholm went to co-found the National Congress of Black Women, campaign for Jesse Jackson for president in 1984 and 1988, and teach at Mount Holyoke College. While President Bill Clinton nominated her to be U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica, Chisholm declined to due ill health. While living in Palm Coast, Florida, Chisholm wrote, lectured, and made occasional speaking appearances. She passed away Jan. 1, 2005 in Ormond Beach, Florida. 

Learn more about Chisholm in her books Unbought and Unbossed and The Good Fight and the 2004 documentary Chisholm ‘72 directed by Shola Lynch.