Shirley Chisholm, a Brooklyn early-childhood educator, became in 1968 the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, and four years later the first Black candidate and the first woman to run a national campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Campaigning as “unbought and unbossed,” she challenged both the seniority system of Congress and the political machines of her own party, and used her seven terms in the House to fight for poor families, children, and working women.
At a Glance
- Born
- 30 November 1924, Brooklyn, New York
- Died
- 1 January 2005, Ormond Beach, Florida
- Birth name
- Shirley Anita St. Hill
- Known for
- First Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress (1968); 1972 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination; founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus; Unbought and Unbossed (1970)
- HBCU ties
- Spelman College (Taught after leaving Congress, between 1983 and 1987)
- Fields
- Politics · Education · Civil Rights
- Era
- Civil Rights Era
Early Life
Chisholm was born Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn, New York, on 30 November 1924, the eldest daughter of Caribbean immigrants: her father, Charles St. Hill, a factory worker from British Guiana, and her mother, Ruby Seale, a seamstress and domestic worker from Barbados. Struggling to support the family during the Depression, her parents sent Shirley and her younger sisters to live with their maternal grandmother in Barbados. She attended school there for several years, returning to Brooklyn in 1934, and later credited the island’s strict British-style schooling for her command of reading and speech.
She graduated from Girls’ High School in Brooklyn and earned a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College in 1946, where she excelled in debate. While teaching at a Harlem nursery school she studied at Teachers College, Columbia University, earning a master’s degree in elementary education in 1952. From 1953 to 1959 she directed child-care centers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and from 1959 to 1964 she was an educational consultant to New York City’s Bureau of Child Welfare. She married Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican-born private investigator, in 1949.
Life and Work
Chisholm entered politics through the Democratic clubs of Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she challenged the white-led machine that controlled a largely Black district, and she helped build the insurgent Unity Democratic Club. In 1964 she won a seat in the New York State Assembly, where she served from 1965 through 1968. There she championed the SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge), which gave low-income students admission and academic support at the City University of New York, and a bill extending unemployment insurance to domestic workers.
After court-ordered redistricting created a new Brooklyn-based Twelfth Congressional District, Chisholm ran for the seat in 1968 under the slogan “Unbought and Unbossed.” She won the Democratic primary and then defeated the Republican-Liberal nominee, the civil rights leader James Farmer, becoming the first African American woman elected to Congress. Assigned to the Agriculture Committee, she publicly objected that it had little to do with her urban district and was moved to Veterans’ Affairs; she later served on Education and Labor and, from 1977, on the powerful Rules Committee, only the second woman to sit on it. She used her Agriculture experience to press for expansion of the food stamp program and helped create the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). She was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 and of the Congressional Women’s Caucus in 1977, and served as secretary of the House Democratic Caucus from 1977 to 1981.
In Brooklyn in late January 1972 — on 25 January by most accounts, 24 January by the House Historian’s — Chisholm announced her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Underfunded and largely dismissed by party leaders and by many Black male politicians, she raised only about $44,000, entered primaries from Florida to California, and received 152 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, which nominated George McGovern. When Governor George Wallace of Alabama, a segregationist rival for the nomination, was shot in May 1972, she visited him in the hospital, a gesture that drew criticism from some supporters.
Chisholm’s first speech on the House floor, in March 1969, attacked military spending on the Vietnam War while domestic programs went unfunded, and she pledged to vote against every defense appropriation until priorities changed. She supported the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights, served as honorary president of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, and worked to extend federal minimum-wage protections to domestic workers, a goal reached in the 1974 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Her independence cost her allies: several Black members of Congress resented her decision to run for president without the Congressional Black Caucus’s endorsement, and some Black male politicians openly questioned her emphasis on sex discrimination in politics.
Chisholm published two books on her career, Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973), an account of the 1972 campaign. She retired from Congress in January 1983, having served seven terms.
Legacy
After leaving the House she taught politics and women’s studies at Mount Holyoke College and lectured at Spelman College, and in 1984 she helped found the National Political Congress of Black Women. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated her as ambassador to Jamaica, but she withdrew because of poor health. She died in Ormond Beach, Florida, on 1 January 2005 and is buried in Buffalo, New York.
President Barack Obama awarded Chisholm the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in November 2015, and New York later named a state park in Brooklyn for her. Her 1972 campaign opened the way for later Black and women presidential candidates, and historians such as Barbara Winslow have emphasized how her career joined the civil rights, feminist, and anti-poverty movements of her era. Her alma mater, Brooklyn College, sustains the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women’s Activism in her name.
Shirley Chisholm challenged the seniority system of Congress and the machines of her own party, proving that a Black woman could compete for national power on her own terms. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- 30 November 1924 Born Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn, New York.
- 1934 Returns to Brooklyn after years of schooling in Barbados.
- 1946 Graduates from Brooklyn College.
- 1952 Earns a master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University.
- 1964 Elected to the New York State Assembly.
- 5 November 1968 Elected to the U.S. House, the first Black woman elected to Congress.
- 1971 Helps found the Congressional Black Caucus.
- January 1972 Announces her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
- January 1983 Retires from Congress after seven terms.
- 1 January 2005 Dies in Ormond Beach, Florida.
Sources and Further Reading
- Shirley Chisholm, Unbought and Unbossed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).
- Shirley Chisholm, The Good Fight (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
- Barbara Winslow, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014).
- U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives, “CHISHOLM, Shirley Anita.” Link
- National Park Service, “Shirley Chisholm.” Link
- U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives, “‘Catalyst for Change’: The 1972 Presidential Campaign of Shirley Chisholm.” Link
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