Shirley Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed

By Logan Langlois

NASHVILLE, TN — The first African American woman ever elected to the United States Congress in 1968, the first woman and African American to seek presidential nomination from a major American political party in 1972, and co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, Shirley Chisholm’s birthday yesterday is most certainly one of importance.

On November 30, 1924, Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York, as the oldest of four daughters to her mother Ruby Seale St. Hill, a seamstress from Barbados, and father Charles Christopher St. Hill, a factory worker from Guyana. She received her diploma from Brooklyn Girls’ High in 1942, then graduated cum laude from Brooklyn College with several debate team prizes in 1946.

Whenever encouraged by her professors to consider a career in politics, she would reply that she faced a “double handicap” as both being Black and a woman. However, after receiving a master’s in early childhood education in 1951 from Columbia University and working as a consultant to the New York Division of Day Care in 1960, she stepped into politics as an activist. Chisholm joined the League of Women Voters, the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, and the Democratic Party club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

In 1964, Chisholm was elected as the second African American in the New York State Legislature. In 1968 she was elected to Congress after a court-ordered redistricting in her neighborhood created a new, Democratic-leaning district, where she would introduce over 50 pieces of legislation. While serving New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms, between 1969 to 1983, Chisholm fought against racial, gender, and class inequality.

Chisholm would also favor full-employment proposals, oppose weapons development, and fight to end the Vietnam War. Chisholm fought for women in supporting the Equal Rights Amendment as well as legalizing abortions throughout her Congressional term. She would release her first autobiographical work in 1970, Unbought and Unbossed, a book that chronicled her rise from her birth in Brooklyn to serving as the first African-American Congresswoman.

After the founding of the National Women’s Political Caucus, Chisholm sought the 1972 presidential nomination for the Democratic Party. She was not allowed to participate in the televised primary debates and was only permitted one speech after taking legal action. Before withdrawing from the race, and with a largely underfunded campaign, Chisholm would win the nomination of 152 delegates, 10 percent of the total.

She would author her second autobiographical work in 1973, The Good Fight, a book which documented her historic Congressional service and presidential run. In 1977 she became the first Black woman, and second-ever woman, to serve on the House Rules Committee and was elected as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus. It was here where she would work to expand the food stamp program and help to create the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or (WIC).

After retiring from Congress in 1983, Chisholm taught at Mount Holyoke College as well as co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women. In 1991 she moved to Florida, afterwards declining her nomination by former president Bill Clinton for the U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica citing bad health.

On January 1, 2005, Shirley Chisholm passed away in Ormond Beach, Florida at the age of 80. In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When asked about her legacy before her death, Chisholm said, “I want to be remembered as a woman … who dared to be a catalyst of change.”