Shirley Chisolm
By
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 10 of 31 and features Shirley Chisolm, the first Black Female to run for the presidential nomination of a major party.
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Shirley Chisolm was an outspoken politician, known as the first Black female representative to the United State House of Representatives and the first Black female to run for President of the United States on a major party ticket.
She was born Shirley Anta St. Hill in Brooklyn, New York on November 30, 1924. Her father Charles St. Hill was born in British Guiana, a former British colony in the British West Indies and is now known as Guyana before moving to Barbados, an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies moving to New York City in 1923.
Her mother Ruby Seale was born in Christ Church, Barbados and moved to New York in 1921.
Charles St. Hill like so many immigrants was a hard worker and worked in a factory making burlap bags. Determined to work, he worked as a baker’s helper when factory work could not be found. We often see people working in unskilled positions and make incorrect judgements as to their intelligence when the driving factor is the range of job open to them. They bring a determination to succeed despite this.
Shirley’s mother was a skilled seamstress and worked as a domestic. The family had difficulty raising 3 children (later a 4th child, another sister was born) so they were sent to live with their maternal grandmother in Barbados when she was 5 years old.
Shirley is quoted as making the following statement “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.” She attended a 1 room school in Barbados.
The girls returned to New York in 1934. She attributes much to her early education in a strict traditional British style school. She spoke with a distinct West Indian accent throughout her life.
St. Hill was a great student and attended Girls’ High School in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. It was an integrated school that attracted girls from throughout Brooklyn. She then went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn college in 1946. She demonstrated superior debating skills while at Brooklyn College.
She was a member of the Harriet Tubman Society which worked for inclusion of Blacks in the military during World War II, the inclusion of Black history and the involvement of women in student government. Her father was a supporter of Marcus Garvey (to be covered in a later post). She also advocated for the rights of trade union membership. In Barbados she had witnessed firsthand the Barbados workers’ and the anti-colonial independence movement.
She met Conrad Chisolm an immigrant from Jamaica in 1946. Chisolm was a private investigator specializing in negligence-based lawsuits. They married in 1949 in a West Indian style wedding.
She earned a Master of Arts degree from Teachers College of Columbia University in 1952. She worked as director of a Day Nursery and the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center in Lower Manhattan and became known as an authority on early education and child welfare.
Shirley Chisolm first became interested in politics when she worked to elect Lewis Flagg Jr. as the first Black judge in Brooklyn. They later turned their efforts towards fighting for candidates devoted to civil rights and fought against racial discrimination in housing and for efforts to improve the economic opportunities and services. She left the group in 1958 after clashing on the issue of giving female members of the group a voice in decision making.
While we look at civil rights in black and white, there were differences between men and women.
Shirley Chisolm was always looking for middle ground as shown by the groups that she worked with, including the Brooklyn Democratic Club and the League of Women Voters, the National Association of College Women, predominately White groups. She worked within these groups for meaningful changes in structure and make-up.
In 1960, she joined the Unity Democratic Club that included members of the Elect Flagg group. They were mostly middle class, racially integrated and had women in leadership positions. After the candidate backed by the UDC accepted a judicial appointment, she sought to run for that seat in the New York State Assembly in 1964. There was resistance from the UDC because of her gender. She then appealed directly to women using her role as Brooklyn branch president of Key Women of America to mobilize women voters. She won the seat with a landslide.
She served the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968. She was recognized in a “Salute to women Doers” in 1965. She was active in overturning the requirement of a literacy test in English only. Arguing that because a person functions better in their native language is not a sigh of a person being illiterate. She was also a leader in a push for Black representation on key committees in the Assembly.
She succeeded in getting unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers. This is important because of the effect on mostly immigrants, Black and Brown people forced into domestic jobs. She also sponsored the “Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge” SEEK program which provided disadvantaged students the chance to enter college while receiving intensive remedial education.
In 1968 she ran for the United States House of Representatives from New York. The 12th district was part of a court-mandated reappointment to focus on Bedford-Stuyvesant. She won and became the first Black woman elected to Congress and was the only woman in the freshman class that year. This means that there were no new women inducted into Congress from anywhere else in the Country.
Her first assignment was to the House Agriculture Committee which was not relevant to her constituents in the inner city. However, she used surplus food to help feed the poor and hungry. She expanded the surplus food to expand the food stamp program and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. She was astute and later assigned to the Education and Labor Committee, which was her preferred choice. She worked herself up to the 3rd highest-ranking member on the committee before retiring.
She only hired women to staff her office, half of them were Black. She said she had faced much more discrimination because she was a woman than because of being Black.
As a Doer, she joined the Congressional Black Caucus as one of it’s founding members in 1971. The same year, she was a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus.
She stoked a firestorm when she visited a rival and ideological opposite George Wallace after he was shoot in May of 1972. George Wallace is often remembered as the Governor who stood in the door in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama, blocking the path of Black students. Wallace was a staunch segregationist and well known for his stand “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. called Wallace “perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today”.
Years later she worked on a bill to give domestic workers a minimum wage, Wallace helped gain votes of enough Southern congressmen to pass the legislation.
She announced her presidential bid in January 1972, calling for a “bloodless revolution”. She became the Black female candidate to run for President on the Democratic ticket. Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to run when she ran for the nomination on the Republican ticket in 1964.
Margaret Chase Smith was a Republican and the first woman to serve in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. She represented Maine.
When Chisolm announced her candidacy, she stated “I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the Women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and equally proud of that. I am a candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolizes a new era in American political history.”
Her campaign faced many obstacles including being ignored by much of the Democratic establishment and little support from her Black male colleagues. This is why she said that being a woman was a bigger handicap than being Black. She also had death threats while running for office and her husband served as her security guard until the United States Secret Service started providing protection in May of 1972.
Her first marriage ended in February 1977. She later married Arthur Hardwick Jr. She had no children. Hardwick was later injured in an automobile accident and she devoted much time to him. She was also highly dissatisfied with the politics of Ronald Reagan and announced her retirement from Congress in1982. Her husband died in 1986.
After leaving Congress she resumed her career in education at the all-women Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts where she held the Purington Chair. In 1984 she and C Delores Tucker co-founded the National Congress of Black Women.
She continued to be sought out for speaking engagements and by her own count, delivered over 150 speeches on college campuses. Her message consisted of ‘avoid polarization and intolerance: “If you don’t accept others who are different, it means nothing that you’ve learned calculus.” Continue to be involved politically. She encouraged many different minority groups to become strong forces on the local level.
She retired to Florida in 1991. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated her to be United States Ambassador to Jamaica but she turned it down due to poor health. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of fame in 1993.
The Nation lost a great leader January 1, 2005 when she died in Ormond Beach, Florida after having suffered several strokes. Her burial is in the Birchwood Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo. Her vault is inscribed with the words “Unbought and Unbossed”.
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Continue to scroll for fascinating Videos and Books to enhance your learning experience.
Continue scrolling down for more amazing information, videos, books, and value items. Hear Shirley Chisolm in her own words.
Shirley Chisholm Had Guts | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Rachel Maddow looks at why former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm’s legacy is as much about her fighting spirit as the fact that she was the first African American Awoman elected to Congress.
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Unbought and Unbossed: Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition
Unbought and Unbossed is Shirley Chisholm’s account of her remarkable rise from young girl in Brooklyn to America’s first African American Congresswoman. She shares how she took on an entrenched system, gave a public voice to millions, and sets the stage for her trailblazing bid to be the first woman and first African American President of the United States. By daring to be herself, Shirley Chisholm shows us how she forever changed the status quo. This expanded edition, edited by Scott Simpson, digs deeper with analysis by experts like Donna Brazile and Shola Lynch exploring Shirley Chisholm’s impact on today and tomorrow’s world.
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Shirley Chisholm: First African American Congresswoman | Black History Documentary | Timeline
Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, and she represented New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983.
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Shirley Chisholm (Lives of American Women)
A staunch proponent of breaking down racial and gender barriers, Shirley Chisholm had the esteemed privilege of being a pioneer in many aspects of her life. She was the first African American woman from Brooklyn elected to the New York State legislature and the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1968. She also made a run for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972. Focusing on Chisholm’s lifelong advocacy for fair treatment, access to education, and equal pay for all American minority groups, this book explores the life of a remarkable woman in the context of twentieth-century urban America and the tremendous social upheaval that occurred after World War II.
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Shirley Chisholm speaking at UCLA 5/22/1972
From the archives of the UCLA Communications Studies Department. Digitized 2013.
The views and ideas expressed in these videos are not necessarily shared by the University of California, or by the UCLA Communication Studies Department.
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She Was the First!: The Trailblazing Life of Shirley Chisholm Hardcover – Picture Book
A timely, inspiring picture book biography of the dynamic twentieth-century educator, activist, and politician Shirley Chisholm.
Even as a young child growing up in the 1920s, Shirley Chisholm was a leader. At the age of three, older children were already following her lead in their Brooklyn neighborhood.
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Shirley Chisholm: The First Black Congresswoman
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Shirley Chisholm (You Should Meet)
Meet Shirley Chisholm. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm made history as the first African American woman elected to Congress. That same year, Shirley was voted one of the ten most admired women in the world. She also ran for president in 1972, the first African American woman to do so for one of the two big political parties. Shirley showed people it shouldn’t matter if you’re male or female or what the color of your skin is, everyone should be able to pursue their dreams. She lived out her life determined to be “unbossed and unbought” and remained a spokesperson for change. To this day she is still an inspiration to everyone who dreams of breaking boundaries.
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Conversation with Shirley A. Chisholm (Talking Leadership series)
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Shirley 4 President!
Shirley 4 President! was inspired by Shirley Anita Chisholm. Mrs. Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 30, 1924. She was a politician, an educator, and an activist. This story uses the inspiration of Congresswoman’s courage and determination to teach young people about the importance of believing in themselves and engaging in civic activity.
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Worth Quoting: Representative Shirley Chisholm
Former United States Representative Shirley Chisholm responds to questions from the audience about President Reagan’s political agenda, the importance of education, and her personal background and life in politics.
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