Shirley Chisholm was an educator, author and politician. She was the first African-American woman elected to the United States Congress, the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States, and the first woman ever to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Chisholm was born Shirley St. Hill in 1924 in Brooklyn, New York to Charles Christopher St. Hill, who was born in British Guiana and Ruby Seale, born in Christ Church, Barbados. At the age of three, Chisholm went to live with her Grandmother in Barbados, returning to the U.S. as a teenager. She attended the Girls’ High School in Brooklyn, after which she began training as a teacher at Brooklyn College. While at the College, she became a part of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which provided her with opportunity to learn organising and fundraising skills. She also won prizes for her debating ability. In 1946, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and began teaching in a nursery school while studying for an MA in elementary education from Teachers College at Columbia University, which she was awarded with in 1952. In 1949, she became Shirley Chisholm after marrying Conrad Chisholm.
From 1953 – 1959, Chisholm served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center and the Friends Day Nursery in Brownsville Brooklyn. After this, she worked as an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care for New York City’s Bureau of Child Welfare where she became known as an authority on issues involving early education and child welfare. While running a day care, she became interested in politics and in 1960 she helped to form a Unity Democratic Club in New York. She also worked as a volunteer for the League of Women Voters, the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League and white-dominated political clubs in Brooklyn.
In 1964, Chisholm was elected to the New York State Assembly, she sat in the 175th, 176th and 177th New York State Legislatures from 1965 – 1968. She successfully fought for causes important to her, including getting unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers and sponsored the introduction of a program called SEEK which provided disadvantaged students the chance to enter college while receiving intensive remedial education.
In August 1968, after a campaign using the slogan “Unbought and unbossed”, Chisholm was elected to Congress from the new 12th District, becoming the first African American woman elected to Congress. Chisholm was initially assigned to the House Agricultural Committee, but demanded to be reassigned as it seemed irrelevant to her urban constituency. She was reassigned first to the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and then the Education and Labor Committee. In 1969, Chisholm became one of the founding members the Congressional Black Caucus, a year later she became a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus and a co-founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She also published her first book, Unbossed and Unbought. Chisholm only hired women for her office, stating that she faced more discrimination during her legislative career because of her gender than her race.
During her time as a New York City educator and child care manager, Chisholm had seen the problems of the poor every day and used her time in congress to try and improve inner city life and opportunity. She worked to expand the food stamp program, and played a critical role in the creation of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. She campaigned for the end of the military draft and a reduced defense budget, arguing that social programs were far more important and should not be allowed to suffer. She also supported improved employed and educational programs, especially for minorities as well as the expansion of day care, pro-choice legislation and argued that women, particularly black women be admitted into traditionally male dominated professions.
In 1972, Chisholm made history once again, becoming the first major-party black candidate to run for President of the United States and the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. She survived three assassination attempts during her campaign, and spoke out about civil rights for black people, women and the poor, police brutality, prison reform, gun control, political dissent, and drug abuse and the U.S judicial system. Chisholm won 151 of the delegates’ votes, with George McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination. Chisholm’s candidacy lead to her being voted one of the ten most admired women in the world. Her campaign paved the way for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in their bids for the presidency in 2008.
After her campaign, Chisholm continued to serve in the U.S House of Representatives and in 1977 she joined the House Rules Committee. The same year, she was elected as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus, a position she held until 1981. Chisholm continued to work to make life better for inner city residents, working on a bill to give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage. In addition to this, she worked for the revocation of Internal Security Act of 1950, opposed the American involvement in the Vietnam War and called for
better treatment of Haitian refugees during the Jimmy Carter administration. As a member of the Black Caucus, Chisholm saw black representation in the Congress grow and was able to welcome other black women as US representatives. In 1984, she co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women.
Chisholm ended her term as congresswoman in 1983 and was named to the Purington Chair at the all-women Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts where she taught politics and women’s studies. In 1985, she was a visiting scholar at Spelman College and two years later, she retired from teaching. During this time, she worked for the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, and continued to speak at colleges. In 1990, Chisholm and 15 other African-American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom.
Chisholm retired to Florida in 1991, two years later President Bill Clinton nominated her to be United States Ambassador to Jamaica but she was unable to serve to to ill health. She was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame that year. In 2005, Chisholm died after suffering several strokes. Her activism lives on in the The Shirley Chisholm Center for Research on Women at Brooklyn College and is celebrated in the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women’s Activism. In 2015, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama at a ceremony in the White House. Due to her success as a political trailblazer, she will be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.