U.S. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm

The first African-American Congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm represented a U.S. House of Representatives district centered in Brooklyn, New York. First elected in 1968, Chisholm was catapulted into the national limelight by virtue of her race, gender, and an outspoken personality that she balanced with deft skill as a political insider. 

Four years later, in 1972, she campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination.  She became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. From her seat on the powerful Rules Committee, “Fighting Shirley,” as she was known, moved into Democratic leadership and advocated for increased federal spending and expanded programs to help aid low-income and working-class Americans. “I am the people’s politician,” she once told the New York Times. “If the day should ever come when the people can’t save me, I’ll know I’m finished. That’s when I’ll go back to being a professional educator.”

Shirley Chisholm was born Shirley Anita St. Hill on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the oldest of four daughters of Charles St. Hill, a factory worker from Guyana, and Ruby Seale St. Hill, a seamstress from Barbados. 

For part of her childhood, Chisholm lived in Barbados on her maternal grandparents’ farm and received a British education while her parents worked during the Great Depression to settle the family in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The most apparent manifestation of her West Indies roots was the slight, clipped British accent she retained throughout her life. She attended public schools in Brooklyn and graduated with high marks. 

Shirley later said, "Granny gave me strength, dignity, and love. I learned from an early age that I was somebody. I didn't need the black revolution to teach me that." Shirley and her sisters lived on their grandmother's farm in the Vauxhall village in Christ Church, where Shirley attended a one-room schoolhouse. 

In her 1970 autobiography, Unbought and Unbossed, she wrote: "Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason." In addition, she belonged to the Quaker Brethren sect found in the West Indies, and religion became important to her; however, later in life, she attended services in a Methodist church. As a result of her time on the island, and despite her U.S. birth, she always would consider herself a Barbadian American. 

 In 1977, she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York state legislator. 

Beginning in 1939, she attended Girls' High School in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, a highly regarded, integrated school that attracted girls from throughout Brooklyn. She did well academically at Girls' High and was chosen to be vice president of the Junior Arista honor society. She was accepted at and offered scholarships to Vassar College and Oberlin College, but the family could not afford the room-and-board costs to go to either school; instead, she selected Brooklyn College, where there was no charge for tuition and she could live at home and commute to the school.

Chisholm attended Brooklyn College on scholarship and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and minoring in Spanish (a language that she would employ at times during her political career) in 1946. She won prizes for her debating skills and graduated cum laude. During her time at Brooklyn College, she was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Harriet Tubman Society. As a member of the Harriet Tubman Society, she advocated for inclusion (specifically in terms of the integration of black soldiers in the military during World War II), the addition of courses that focused on African-American history and the involvement of more women in the student government. 

However, this was not her first introduction to activism or politics. Growing up, she was surrounded by politics, as her father was an avid supporter of Marcus Garvey's and a dedicated supporter of the rights of trade union members. She saw her community advocate for its rights as she witnessed the Barbados workers' and anti-colonial independence movements.

She married Conrad Q. Chisholm, a private investigator, in 1949; they later divorced. 

From 1946 to 1953, Shirley Chisholm worked as a nursery school teacher and then as the director of two daycare centers. Three years later, she earned a master’s degree in early childhood education from Columbia University. 

From 1953 to 1954, she was director of the Friend in Need Nursery, located in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and then, from 1954 to 1959, she was director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center, located in Lower Manhattan. At the latter, there were 130 children between the ages of three and seven, and 24 employees reported to her. 

From 1959 to 1964, she was an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare. There, she was in charge of supervising ten day-care centers as well as starting up new ones. She became an authority on early education and child-welfare issues.

New York State Legislature 

Chisholm was heavily involved in Democratic clubs in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, including the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League and the Unity Democratic club. In 1964, Chisholm was elected to the New York state legislature; she was the second African-American woman to serve in Albany. 

Chisholm was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968, sitting in the 175th, 176th and 177th New York State Legislatures. By May 1965, she had already been honored in a "Salute to Women Doers" affair in New York. One of her early activities in the Assembly was to argue against the state's literacy test requiring English, holding that just because a person "functions better in his native language is no sign a person is illiterate". By early 1966, she was a leader in a push by the statewide Council of Elected Negro Democrats for black representation on key committees in the Assembly.

Her successes in the legislature included getting unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers. She also sponsored the introduction of a SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) to the state, which provided disadvantaged students with the chance to enter college while receiving intensive remedial education.

In August 1968, she was elected as the Democratic National Committeewoman from New York State.

U.S. House of Representatives 

A court-ordered redistricting—that carved a new Brooklyn congressional district with a slight Black majority and a large Puerto Rican population out of Chisholm’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood—convinced her to run for Congress. The influential Democratic political machine, headed by Stanley Steingut, declared its intention to send an African-American candidate from the new district to the House. 

Chisholm’s freshman class included two African Americans of future prominence, Louis Stokes of Ohio and William Lacy “Bill” Clay Sr. of Missouri, and boosted the number of African Americans in the House from six to nine, the largest total at that time. Chisholm was the only new woman to enter Congress in 1969. 

Chisholm did not receive a warm welcome in the House because of her refusal to abide by long-standing House expectations for first-term Members to fly under the radar. “I have no intention of just sitting quietly and observing,” she said. “I intend to focus attention on the nation’s problems.” She did just that, criticizing the Vietnam War in her first House Floor speech on March 26, 1969. Chisholm vowed to vote against any defense appropriation bill “until the time comes when our values and priorities have been turned right-side up again.” She was assigned to the Committee on Agriculture, a decision she appealed directly to House Speaker John W. McCormack of Massachusetts, bypassing Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Daigh Mills of Arkansas, who oversaw Democratic committee appointments. McCormack told her to be a “good soldier,” at which point Chisholm brought her complaint to the Democratic caucus and the press. She was reassigned to the Veterans’ Affairs Committee which, though not one of her top choices, was more relevant to her district’s makeup. “There are a lot more veterans in my district than trees,” she quipped.

Chisholm was on the Veterans’ Affairs committee during the 91st and 92nd Congresses (1969–1973). From 1971 to 1977, she served on the Committee on Education and Labor, having won a place on that panel with the help of Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. of Louisiana, whom she had endorsed as Majority Leader. She also served on the Committee on Organization, Study, and Review (known as the Hansen Committee), which recommended reforms for the selection of committee chairmen that the Democratic Caucus adopted in 1971. In the 94th Congress (1975–1977), Chisholm was elected assistant secretary of the Democratic Caucus, and from 1977 to 1981, she served as secretary of the Democratic Caucus. She eventually left her Education Committee assignment to accept a seat on the Rules Committee in 1977, becoming the first Black woman—and the second woman ever—to serve on that powerful panel. Chisholm also was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in 1971 and the Congressional Women’s Caucus in 1977. 

As a legislator, Chisholm prioritized educational and labor policies that aided African Americans, women, and the working class and poor. She joined New York Representative Bella Savitzky Abzug in cosponsoring legislation to increase federal funding for and oversight of childcare centers. She also opposed President Richard M. Nixon’s proposed guaranteed minimum annual income for families, arguing that the plan’s proposed income was not adequate to meet the needs of a family, nor did the legislation provide “day care, job training, and job development which will be necessary if the family assistant plan is to work.” She was a fierce defender of federal assistance for education. In 1975, Chisholm successfully added an amendment to a national school lunch bill to expand participation by increasing the family income of students eligible for free or reduced lunch. She helped lead her colleagues in overriding President Gerald R. Ford’s veto on the measure. Chisholm said she did not view herself as “an innovator in the field of legislation.” In her efforts to address the needs of the “have-nots,” she often chose to work outside the established system. At times she criticized Democratic leadership in Congress as much as she did the Republicans in the White House. 

Despite her reputation, not unjustly earned, for independence, Chisholm was willing to form coalitions and build connections with powerful lawmakers in the House. In 1973, Chisholm was a leading proponent of an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that increased the minimum wage and brought domestic workers, a profession that disproportionately employed women of color, under minimum wage regulations. Her colleagues applauded Chisholm for her behind the scenes work on behalf of the legislation. Chisholm insisted that one of her strengths was in bringing legislative factions together. “I can talk with legislators from the South, the West, all over,” she said. “They view me as a national figure and that makes me more acceptable.” Chisholm gained the trust of her colleagues and was rewarded with a spot on the influential Rules Committee, whose members were chosen by the party leader, and she was elected to a position in the Democratic leadership. 

Despite her promotion to influential roles in the House, Chisholm maintained her independence. In 1978, as a member of the Rules Committee, she voted against a Rules package that bundled several energy bills, including legislation to deregulate the sale of natural gas. Amid pressure from Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. of Massachusetts and President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Chisholm refused to support the package. Chisholm claimed she voted against the rule because higher rates caused by deregulation would fall hardest on people with low incomes. Ultimately, the bundle passed the Rules Committee after another Democrat switched his vote and supported the rule. 

Even as Chisholm gained influence, she continued to feel slighted because of her race and gender. As part of Democratic leadership, she went to a breakfast meeting every week with President Carter. However, she eventually stopped attending the meetings, believing the men in the room, especially the President, ignored her. One staffer explained, “She would come back furious . . . because they had considered her invisible.” 

Later in her career, Chisholm was a vocal advocate for the humane treatment of Haitian refugees. In the late 1970s, human rights violations by the Haitian government and a poor economy led to an increase in immigration from Haiti to the United States. In 1979, she and Walter E. Fauntroy, the Delegate for Washington, DC, founded and co-chaired the CBC Task Force on Haitian Refugees, later renamed the Task Force on Haiti. Chisholm was particularly concerned with refugee policies of both the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, which she argued privileged Cuban refugees fleeing Communist-controlled Cuba over Haitian refugees. “It is clear to the Congressional Black Caucus that the [Carter] administration has no intention of ending its invidious discrimination against Haitians,” Chisholm explained to her colleagues in a congressional hearing. In 1980, Chisholm proposed legislation to end the inequity in the federal government’s refugee policy and give Haitian migrants a better chance of remaining in the United States. 

From the late 1970s onward, Brooklyn Democrats speculated that Chisholm was losing interest in her House seat. Her name was widely floated as a possible candidate for several jobs related to education, including president of the City College of New York and chancellor of the New York City public school system. In 1982, Chisholm declined to seek re-election. “Shirley Chisholm would like to have a little life of her own,” she told the Christian Science Monitor, explaining that she wanted to spend more time with her husband, Arthur. 

Other reasons, too, factored into Chisholm’s decision to leave the House. She had grown disillusioned over the conservative turn the country had taken with the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980. Additionally, she said that many Democrats, particularly African-American politicians, misunderstood her efforts to build alliances. While her rhetoric about racial inequality could be passionate, Chisholm’s actions toward the White establishment in Congress were often conciliatory. Chisholm maintained that many members of the Black community did not understand the need for negotiation with White politicians. “We still have to engage in compromise, the highest of all arts,” Chisholm noted. “Blacks can’t do things on their own, nor can whites.” 

In the primary, Chisholm faced three African-American challengers: civil court judge Thomas R. Jones, a former district leader and New York assemblyman; Dolly Robinson, a former district co-leader; and William C. Thompson, a well-financed state senator. Thompson received the endorsement of the Steingut machine, which usually guaranteed the candidate a primary victory. Chisholm, however, received the support of community organizers with whom she had worked for more than a decade. Chisholm roamed the new district in a sound truck that pulled up outside housing projects while she announced: “Ladies and Gentlemen . . . this is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through.” Chisholm capitalized on her personal campaign style. “I have a way of talking that does something to people,” she noted. “I have a theory about campaigning. You have to let them feel you.” In the primary in mid-June 1968, Chisholm defeated Thompson, her nearest competitor, by about 800 votes in an election characterized by light voter turnout. 

In the general election, Chisholm faced James Farmer, who ran as the candidate of both the Republican Party and the Liberal Party. Farmer was one of the principal figures of the civil rights movement, a cofounder of the Congress of Racial Equality, and an organizer of the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s. The two candidates held similar positions on housing, employment, and education issues, and both opposed the Vietnam War. Farmer charged that the Democratic Party “took [Black voters] for granted and thought they had us in their pockets. . . . We must be in a position to use our power as a swing vote.” Farmer focused on Chisholm’s gender, arguing that “women have been in the driver’s seat” in Black communities for too long and that the district needed “a man’s voice in Washington,” not that of a “little schoolteacher.” Chisholm, whose campaign motto was “unbought and unbossed,” met that charge head-on, using Farmer’s rhetoric to highlight discrimination against women and to explain her unique qualifications. “There were Negro men in office here before I came in five years ago, but they didn’t deliver,” Chisholm countered. “People came and asked me to do something . . . I’m here because of the vacuum.” Chisholm portrayed Farmer, who had lived in Manhattan, as an outsider and used her fluent Spanish to appeal to the growing Hispanic population in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The deciding factor, however, was that more than 80 percent of the district’s registered voters were Democrats. Chisholm won the general election by a resounding 67 percent of the vote. 

By 1976, Chisholm faced a stiff challenge from within her own party primary by a longtime political rival, New York city councilman Samuel D. Wright. He criticized Chisholm for her absenteeism in the House, brought on by the rigors of her presidential campaign, and for what he said was a lack of connection with the district. Chisholm countered by playing on her national credentials and her role as a reformer of Capitol Hill culture. “I think my role is to break new ground in Congress,” Chisholm noted. Two weeks later, Chisholm turned back Wright and Hispanic political activist Luz Vega in the Democratic primary, winning 54 percent of the vote to Wright’s 36 percent and Vega’s 10 percent. She won the general election handily with 83 percent of the vote. 

In 1972, Chisholm declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President, charging that none of the other candidates represented the interests of Black and minority voters or those of Americans living in poverty. She campaigned across the country and succeeded in getting her name on 12 primary ballots, becoming as well known outside her Brooklyn neighborhood as she was in it. At the Democratic National Convention she received 152 delegate votes, or 10 percent of the total—a respectable showing given her modest funding. A 1974 Gallup poll listed her as one of the top 10 most-admired women in America. 

But while the presidential bid enhanced Chisholm’s national profile, it also stirred controversy among her House colleagues. Chisholm’s candidacy split the CBC. Many Black male colleagues felt she had not consulted them or that she had betrayed the group’s interests by trying to create a coalition of women, Hispanics, White liberals, and welfare recipients. Pervasive gender discrimination, Chisholm noted, cut across racial lines: “Black male politicians are no different from white male politicians. This ‘woman thing’ is so deep. I’ve found it out in this campaign if I never knew it before.” Furthermore, there were strategic differences, and many CBC members thought it wiser to support the frontrunner, South Dakota Senator George Stanley McGovern, and to try to influence the likely Democratic nominee. Her presidential campaign also strained relations with other women Members of Congress, particularly Bella Abzug of New York, who endorsed Senator McGovern. 

After leaving Congress in January 1983, Chisholm cofounded the National Political Congress of Black Women and campaigned for Jesse Jackson’s presidential bids in 1984 and 1988. She also taught at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1983. Though nominated as U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica by President William J. Clinton, Chisholm declined due to ill health. She settled in Palm Coast, Florida, where she wrote and lectured. Chisholm died on January 1, 2005, in Ormond Beach, Florida.

In February 2005, Shirley Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary film, aired on U.S. public television. It chronicled Chisholm's 1972 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was directed and produced by independent African-American filmmaker Shola Lynch. The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. On April 9, 2006, the film was announced as a winner of a Peabody Award.

In 2014, the first biography of Chisholm for an adult audience was published, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change, by Brooklyn College history professor Barbara Winslow, who was also the founder and first director of the Shirley Chisholm Project. Until then, only several juvenile biographies had appeared.

Chisholm's speech "For the Equal Rights Amendment", given in 1970, is listed as number 91 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank).

Monuments 

The Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women's Activism (formerly known as the Shirley Chisholm Center for Research) exists at Brooklyn College to promote research projects and programs on women and to preserve Chisholm's legacy. The Chisholm Project also houses an archive as part of the Chisholm Papers in the college library Special Collections.

In January 2018, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his intent to build the Shirley Chisholm State Park, a 407-acre (165 ha) state park along 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of the Jamaica Bay coastline, adjoining the Pennsylvania Avenue and Fountain Avenue landfills south of Spring Creek Park's Gateway Center section. The state park was dedicated to Chisholm that September. The park opened to the public on July 2, 2019.

In April 2023, the Vauxhall Primary School in Christ Church, Barbados, which was built in 1976 to replace the school where Chisholm received her elementary education, was renamed the Shirley Chisholm Primary School. The renaming ceremony was attended by Chisholm's relatives, and a plaque was unveiled by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the island's first female premier. The school's Shirley Chisholm Memorial Garden contains a bust of Chisholm and a colorful mural showcasing her achievements.

A memorial monument of Chisholm is planned for the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn by Parkside Avenue station, designed by artists Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous. After four years of delays and revisions, the project gained approval from the New York City Public Design Commission during 2023. 

The Shirley Chisholm Legacy Project 

The Shirley Chisholm Legacy Project, founded by Jacqueline Patterson, aims to advance climate justice for black communities through the Just Transition Framework. This initiative links frontline black leaders, especially women, with the necessary resources to drive systemic change from harmful extractive practices to an economy that acknowledges the principles of sustainable living. The project aims to address the interconnected challenges of environmental issues, poverty, racial discrimination and gender inequality. 

Political 

Chisholm's legacy came into renewed prominence during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton staged their historic "firsts" battle – where the victor would either be the first major-party African-American nominee, or the first female nominee – with at least one observer crediting Chisholm's 1972 campaign as having paved the way for both of them.

Chisholm has been a major influence on other women of color in politics, among them California Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who stated in a 2017 interview that Chisholm had a profound impact on her career. Lee had worked for Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign. 

By the time of the 50th anniversary of Chisholm entering Congress, The New York Times was headlining "2019 Belongs to Shirley Chisholm", saying that "Chisholm was a one-woman precursor to modern progressive politics" and that she was "enjoying a resurgence of interest 14 years after her death".

Chisholm has also inspired Vice President Kamala Harris, who recognized Chisholm's presidential campaign by using similar typography and red-and-yellow color scheme in her own 2020 presidential campaign's promotional materials and logo. Harris launched her presidential campaign 47 years to the day after Chisholm's presidential campaign. 

Popular Culture 

Actress Uzo Aduba portrayed Chisholm in the FX on Hulu miniseries Mrs. America, released in April 2020, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series.

In November 2020, Danai Gurira was cast as Shirley Chisholm in The Fighting Shirley Chisholm, directed by Cherien Dabis, about her 1972 run for president. However, as of 2024, the film had not appeared, and it was still considered to be in development.

Another film, Shirley, was announced in February 2021, with Regina King as Chisholm and John Ridley directing. Also announced in the cast were Lance Reddick, Lucas Hedges, Amirah Vahn, André Holland, Christina Jackson, Michael Cherrie, Dorian Missick, W. Earl Brown and Terrence Howard. Shirley was released on Netflix in March 2024.

Chisholm was also heavily featured in Mel Brooks's 2023 satirical television series History of the World, Part II, played by Wanda Sykes. Segments throughout the series loosely detailed Chisholm's presidential bid stylized as episodes of Shirley!, a fictional 1970s sitcom. The episodes "starred" other members of Chisholm's family and friends, including Conrad Chisholm (Colton Dunn), Florynce Kennedy (Kym Whitley) and Ruby Seale (Marla Gibbs).

• US Office of the Historian