Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York to immigrant parents from the Caribbean. Her father was an unskilled laborer who sometimes worked in a factory that made burlap bags. But when he could not find factory employment, he worked as a baker's helper. Her mother was a skilled seamstress and domestic worker but she had trouble working and raising the children at the same time. Because of this, in November 1929, she and her two sisters were sent to Barbados to live with their maternal grandmother.

There they lived on their grandmother's farm where Shirley attended a one-room schoolhouse. She did not return to the United States until May 19, 1934. As a result, Shirley spoke with a recognizable West Indian accent throughout her life. In her 1970 autobiography, 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." Regarding the role of her grandmother, she 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 tell me that.”

In 1939, Shirley attended Girls' High School, a highly regarded, integrated school that attracted girls from throughout Brooklyn. Shirley met Conrad O. Chisholm in the late 1940s. He had come to the U.S. from Jamaica in 1946 and would later become a private investigator who specialized in negligence-based lawsuits. They married in 1949 in a large Caribbean-style wedding.

Shirley Chisholm earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1946, where she won prizes for her debating skills and was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. After graduating, she began her career as a teacher in a nursery school and went on to earn a master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University in 1952. Chisholm also served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center from 1953 to 1959 and as an educational consultant for New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964.

Chisholm was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968. During her time in the legislature, she succeeded in getting unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers. She also sponsored the introduction of a SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge) program to the state. This provided disadvantaged students the chance to enter college while receiving remedial education. In 1968, she ran for the United States House of Representatives from New York’s 12th congressional district. In general election, Chisholm managed up upset victory over James Farmer, Jr., who was the director of the Congress of Racial Equality (a civil rights organization) and had enormous Republican support. She won by an approximately two to one margin and became the United States' first African American congresswoman.

Chisholm was initially assigned to the House Agricultural Committee. Given her urban district, she felt the placement was irrelevant to her constituents. She expressed her feelings about the assignment to a rabbi who suggested that she use the surplus food to help the poor and hungry. Chisholm met with Bob Dole and worked to expand the food stamp program. She also helped create the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). For her hard work, she was eventually placed on the Education and Labor Committee, her preferred committee. She remained on this committee until she retired from congress.

In 1969, Chisholm became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. That same year, she became a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus. She said that she had faced much more discrimination during her legislative career because she was a woman than because of her race. Therefore, all those hired for her office were women, regardless of race.

On January 25, 1972, Chisholm formally announced her presidential bid. Calling for a “bloodless revolution”, she became the first major-party African American candidate to make a bid for the U.S. presidency. This also made her the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination, Senator Margaret Smith ran for the Republican nomination in 1964. Her campaign had plenty of struggles. People didn’t see her as a serious candidate, only a symbolic political figure. She was ignored by most of the Democratic Party and didn’t receive much support from her black male colleagues. She expressed frustration about the “black matriarch”. "They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn't mean the black woman must step back." Altogether during the primary season, Chisholm received 430,703 votes, which was 2.7 percent of the votes and represented seventh place among the Democratic contenders. Chisholm said she ran for the office "in spite of hopeless odds ... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo."

After leaving Congress in 1983, Chisholm taught at the all-women Mount Holyoke College. At Mount Holyoke, she taught politics and sociology. She focused on undergraduate courses that covered politics as it involved women and race. During this time, Chisholm continued to give speeches at colleges, visiting over 150 campuses. She told students to avoid polarization and intolerance: "If you don't accept others who are different, it means nothing that you've learned calculus." She also traveled to visit different minority groups, urging them to become a strong force at the local level.

Chisholm retired to Florida in 1991. In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her to be United States Ambassador to Jamaica, but she could not serve due to poor health and the nomination was withdrawn. In the same year she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Shirley Chisholm died on January 1, 2005, at the age of 80. In November 2015, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.