Shirley Chisholm

Chisholm was born in Brooklyn in 1924 to immigrant parents, her father from British Guiana by way of Barbados, her mother a seamstress from Barbados itself. In 1929, with the family strained by the Depression, five-year-old Shirley was sent to live with her grandmother on the island and stayed until she was nine, in a one-room schoolhouse that taught British-style discipline and grammar she later credited with her command of language. She came back to Brooklyn on May 19, 1934, finished Brooklyn College in 1946 with a sociology degree, and took a master's in childhood education at Columbia's Teachers College in 1951. She spent the next 18 years running nursery schools and day-care centers before politics.

She won a seat in the New York State Assembly in 1964, and in 1968 a newly drawn Brooklyn district sent her to Congress, the first Black woman to serve there. She ran on the phrase unbought and unbossed and kept using it once she got there, joining the House Education and Labor Committee and pushing for expanded food stamps and subsidized child care. On January 25, 1972, she announced a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination — the first Black candidate, and the first woman, to seek a major party's nod — with almost no institutional money behind her. She took 152 first-ballot votes at the convention that August, placing fourth behind the eventual nominee, George McGovern.

The campaign nearly cost her more than the nomination. Three separate threats were serious enough that her husband served as her bodyguard until the Secret Service assigned her protection in May 1972, the first time it had covered a woman or a Black candidate for president. The money never came — the whole campaign spent about 300,000 dollars — and neither did much backing from Black male leadership, which she said gave her little support. She put it more bluntly herself: running for Congress and for president, she met more discrimination for being a woman than for being Black. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem ran as her delegates in New York. National Black political organizations, wary of splitting the party, mostly did not.

She served in Congress until 1983, then taught politics and women's studies at Mount Holyoke for four years. Her second husband, Arthur Hardwick Jr., died in August 1986. A series of small strokes took her own life on New Year's Day 2005, at her home in Ormond Beach, Florida. The recognition came late and mostly after her death: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, a Congressional Gold Medal in December 2024. Barbara Jordan and, decades later, Kamala Harris are routinely traced back to the district and the run she opened in 1968 and 1972, and her slogan outlived the campaign it was coined for.

Shirley Chisholm's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Unbought and Unbossed book
  Her campaign autobiography 1970
• Congressional Black Caucus company
  Co-founded with other Black members of Congress 1971
• National Women's Political Caucus company
  Co-founded with Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem 1971
• The Good Fight book
  Her account of the 1972 campaign 1973

• 1929 aged ~5 Sent to Barbados to live with her grandmother She was five, and stayed until she was nine.
• May 19, 1934 aged 9 Returns to Brooklyn
• 1946 aged ~22 Graduates from Brooklyn College
• 1951 aged ~27 Earns a master's at Columbia's Teachers College
• 1964 aged ~40 Wins a seat in the New York State Assembly
• 1968 aged ~44 Elected to Congress, the first Black woman to serve
• January 25, 1972 aged 47 Announces her run for the Democratic presidential nomination
• 1983 aged ~59 Leaves Congress and begins teaching at Mount Holyoke
• January 1, 2005 aged 80 Dies after a series of small strokes At her home in Ormond Beach, Florida.

• Barbara Jordan 1936–1996
  Texas congresswoman whose Watergate impeachment address made her a leading constitutional voice in Congress. Congressional successor movement
• Kamala Harris b. 1964
  First woman, first Black American, and first Asian American to serve as vice president. built on her 1972 run
• Gloria Steinem b. 1934
  Writer and organizer who became one of the most visible leaders of second-wave feminism. ran as her delegate
• George McGovern 1922–2012
  South Dakota senator and 1972 presidential nominee who led opposition to the Vietnam War. won the 1972 nomination she sought