Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1924, to Caribbean immigrant parents. She spent part of her childhood in Barbados with her grandmother, where she received a rigorous British colonial education — an experience she later credited with giving her the academic foundation that American segregated schools often denied Black students. She returned to Brooklyn, excelled academically, and earned her bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College in 1946 and a master's from Columbia University in 1952.

She became a nursery school teacher and director, then an educational consultant for New York City's Bureau of Child Development. Her expertise in early childhood education shaped her legislative priorities throughout her political career — she consistently prioritized education funding, child nutrition, and social services.

Chisholm entered New York state politics in 1964, winning a state assembly seat. In 1968, she ran for Congress in Brooklyn's newly redrawn 12th Congressional District — and won, becoming the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. Her campaign slogan: "Unbought and Unbossed."

When the House assigned her to the Agriculture Committee — a useless assignment for an urban Brooklyn district — she protested loudly and publicly until she was reassigned to the Veterans' Affairs Committee, then eventually to the Education and Labor Committee where she could actually serve her constituents. She served seven terms in Congress, consistently voting against the Vietnam War and for social programs.

In January 1972, Chisholm announced her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination — the first Black American (and first woman) to seek a major party's presidential nomination. She entered 14 primaries and won 152 delegate votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

She was largely excluded from campaign debates and faced opposition from within the Black political establishment — many Black male leaders backed other candidates, calculating that a Chisholm campaign was unwinnable and would waste political capital. The women's movement was also slow to coalesce around her. She ran anyway, arguing that the candidacy itself was the point: that visibility matters, that someone has to go first, and that the political imagination has to be expanded before the political reality can change.

George McGovern won the nomination. Richard Nixon won the election. Chisholm returned to Congress. But every candidate who has run since — including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — runs in a landscape she helped shape.