This week, the 2020 U.S. Democratic VP election pick was chosen, Kamala Harris. As a millenial, without knowing my history it would seem that Kamala would be the first woman and woman of color to be nominated in such a position, but after reading tweets about the Kamala victory, I was happily mistaken. Shirley Chisholm was the actual first black woman in history to run for president of the United States of America in 1972.  In addition to running for president, Chisholm was the first in many areas of her political career which should not go unnoticed and quite frankly is not celebrated enough. She performed a feat that was only a dream to some Americans in just some years prior.

The Foundational Years

Shirley Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 30, 1924, as Shirley Anita St. Hill to two immigrant parents from the West Indies. Her mother was from Barbados and her father from Guyana by way of Cuba. Both of her parents met in New York. Her father was sometimes a laborer and a bakers helper, while her mother was a seamstress who struggled to keep a job while taking care of Shirley, and her siblings. As both of her parents struggled to keep work, Shirley and her siblings were sent to live with her grandmother in Barbados. Her grandmother would be her rock and give her the confidence that she needed as a young black woman. 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.” She would stay in Barbados for five years, returning to the U.S. with a noticeable Barbadian accent that never left her. She would go on to attend Brooklyn College, getting her Bachelor of Arts. There she would become a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Harriet Tubman Society. As a member of the Harriet Tubman Society, Chisholm advocated for the representation and inclusion of Black Americans. In addition to her exposure in college, Chisholm was surrounded by politics as her father was an avid supporter of Marcus Garvey and the rights of trade union members. While in Barbados Chisholm also witnessed the Barbados workers’ and anti-colonial independence movements.

After graduating from college in 1946, Chisholm became a nursery teacher while furthering her education. During this time she met her husband, Conrad Chisholm who had migrated to NY from Jamaica in 1946 and got married to him in 1949. She then graduated with her Masters in Arts in Elementary School education from Columbia University in 1952. From 1953 to 1964 she excelled in the education sector, becoming known as an authority on issues involving early education and child welfare. On the side, Chisholm entered politics in 1953 when she joined the effort to elect Lewis Flagg Jr. to the bench as the first black judge in Brooklyn. The Flagg election group later transformed into the Belford-Stuyvesant Political League (BSPL). Chisholm would stay an active member of the league until 1958 after clashing with the political league’s organizers who did not want to give female members of the group more input in decision making. In addition to the BSPL, Chisholm worked as a volunteer for white-dominated political clubs in Brooklyn where her involvement resulted in her being able to recruit more people of color into local politics.

Start to a Political Career

In 1960, Chisholm joined the Unity Democratic Club (UDC) led by former Elect Flagg member Thomas Jones. Jones won an assembly seat in 1963, becoming Brooklyn’s second black assemblyman on the New York State Assembly. In 1964, when Jones left his seat for a judicial appointment, Chisholm ran for his now open seat in 1964. Knowing that she would lack support from the male delegation, she focused on the support of her women voters. Her tactic worked because she won the democratic primary, going on to win Jones’s seat in December with over 18,000 votes over Republican and Liberal party candidates, neither of which received more than 1,900 votes. She would be a member of the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968. While on the Assembly she argued against the state’s literacy test requiring English, holding that just because a person “functions better in his native language is no sign a person is illiterate”. She pushed for the statewide black representation on key committees in the Assembly. She successfully had unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers and sponsored the introduction of a SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge) to the state, which provided disadvantaged students the chance to enter college while receiving intensive remedial education. 

In 1968, Chisholm ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and her campaign slogan was “Unbought and Unbossed”. In August 1968, she was elected as the Democratic National Committeewoman from New York State. In the general election, she staged an upset victory over James Farmer, the former director of the Congress of Racial Equality who was running as a Liberal Party candidate with Republican support, winning by an approximately two-to-one margin. Chisholm thereby became the first black woman elected to Congress and was the only woman in the freshman class that year.

Chisholm was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee. After initially being upset and insulted by her assignment, given her urban district, she was able to use the appointment to her advantage by expanding the food stamp program. She later played a critical role in the creation of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Chisholm was then also placed on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and later the Education and Labor Committee, which was her preferred committee. While in office, Chisholm only hired women for her office; half of them were black. Chisholm said that she had faced much more discrimination during her New York legislative career because she was a woman than because of her race. 

In 1971, Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus as one of its founding members. In the same year, she was also a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus. In May 1971 she, along with fellow New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug, introduced a bill to provide $10 billion in federal funds for child care services by 1975. A less expensive version introduced by Senator Walter Mondale eventually passed the House and Senate as the Comprehensive Child Development Bill (supporting single parents) but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon in December 1971, who said it was too expensive and would undermine the institution of the family. 

A Run For President

On January 25th, 1972 she announced her presidential bid for the presidency of the United States. Chisholm became the first black major-party candidate to run, making her also the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. During her presidential announcement, Chisholm described herself as representative of the people and offered a new articulation of American identity: “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 the candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolizes a new era in American political history.” 

Her campaign was underfunded, only spending $300,000 in total. She also struggled to be regarded as a serious candidate instead of as a symbolic political figure; she was ignored by much of the Democratic political establishment and received little support from her black male colleagues. In particular, she expressed frustration about the “black matriarch thing”, saying, “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.” Her husband, however, was fully supportive of her candidacy and said, “I have no hangups about a woman running for president.” Security was also a concern, as during the campaign three confirmed threats were made against her life; her husband served as her bodyguard until U.S. Secret Service protection was given to her in May 1972. Chisholm’s base of support was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization for Women. Altogether during the primary season, she received 430,703 votes, which was 2.7 percent of the total of nearly 16 million votes were cast and represented seventh place among the Democratic contenders. She was blocked from participating in televised primary debates, and after taking legal action, was permitted to make just one speech. In June, Chisholm became the first woman to appear in a United States presidential debate. Racial Discrimination followed Chisholm’s quest for the 1972 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Still, students, women, and minorities followed the “Chisholm Trail.” Chisholm won no national primaries, and the Democrats lost the election to Republican Richard Nixon, who resigned two years later in a political scandal.

Back To Regular Life

Chisholm’s first marriage ended in divorce in February 1977. Later that year she married Arthur Hardwick, Jr., a former New York State Assemblyman whom Chisholm had known when they both served in the Assembly. From 1977 to 1981, during the 95th Congress and 96th Congress, Chisholm was elected to a position in the House Democratic leadership, as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus. Throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She was a vocal opponent of the military draft and supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending. Chisholm worked for the revocation of Internal Security Act of 1950 also known as the Concentration Camp Act which required Communist organizations to register with the United States Attorney General and investigate persons suspected of engaging in subversive activities or otherwise promoting the establishment of a “totalitarian dictatorship,” either fascist or communist. She opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War. During the Jimmy Carter administration, she called for better treatment of Haitian refugees.

In the wake of the Reagan Revolution, Chisholm decided to retire from Congress in 1982, being the third highest-ranking member of the committee to take care of her husband who had been injured in an automobile accident, in addition to her dissatisfaction with the course of liberal politics. After leaving Congress, she resumed her career in education, being named to the Purington Chair at the all-women Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, teaching classes in a variety of areas. In 1984, Chisholm and C. Delores Tucker co-founded the National Congress of Black Women. During her time at Holyoke, she 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”. In 1984 and 1988, she campaigned for Jesse Jackson for the presidential elections. Unfortunately in 1986 her second husband, Arthur Hardwick passed away.

In 1990, Chisholm, along with 15 other black women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. In 1991, Chisholm officially retired. 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. Chisholm died on January 1, 2005, in Ormond Beach, Florida. She did not have any children. She is buried in the Oakwood Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, NY, where on her vault an inscription reads: “Unbought and Unbossed”.

Her Legacy

In February 2005, Shirley Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary film was released. The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 and won a Peabody Award in 2006. In 2014, the first adult biography of Chisholm was published, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change, by Brooklyn College history professor Barbara Winslow. Chisholm’s speech “For the Equal Rights Amendment“, given in 1970, is listed as No. 91 in American Rhetoric’s Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century. Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women’s Activism exists at Brooklyn College to promote research projects and programs on women and to preserve the legacy of Chisholm. The Shirley Chisholm State Park opened on July 2, 2019, a 407-acre state park in Brooklyn, NY. A memorial monument of Chisholm is planned for the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn as well. 

In November 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Chisholm’s legacy still lives on in modern-day politics. She was mentioned during the 2008 political campaign by both President Obama and Hillary Clinton – one running as a Black American and the other a woman. Kamala Harris recognized Chisholm’s presidential campaign by using a similar color scheme and typography in her own 2020 presidential campaign. The red-and-yellow design could be seen in a video announcing Harris’s run for president. Harris launched her presidential campaign forty-seven years to the day after Chisholm’s presidential campaign. To date, 47 Black women have served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Only two, including Kamala Harris, have served in the U.S. Senate. Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics says in 2019, women of color made up 8.8 percent of all members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 4 percent of the Senate. Among the nation’s 7,383 state legislators, 7.3 percent are women of color. And in the nation’s 100 largest cities, 10 women of color serve as mayors, including in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.  

Shirley Chisholm cemented her name in history as the woman whose campaign opened minds and doors for other women of color in politics. Of her legacy, Chisholm said, “I want to be remembered as a woman … who dared to be a catalyst of change.”

P.S. Shirley Chisholm wrote two books while still alive. If you are interested in reading, here are the books on Amazon.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/shirley-chisholm

https://www.voanews.com/2020-usa-votes/shirley-chisholms-groundbreaking-run-president