04 January 2005
Shirley Chisholm Dead At 80
First African-American female member of Congress
"You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."
— Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005)
Washington -- In a career that boasted a number of impressive ‘firsts,’ Shirley St. Hill Chisholm first seized and later expanded the political opportunities available to both women and African-Americans in the aftermath of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
The first African-American woman elected to Congress (1968), Chisholm subsequently mounted the first large-scale presidential campaign by a woman or person of color, capturing 151 delegate votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She would serve seven terms in Congress, co-found the National Organization for Women (NOW), and champion civil rights, women’s causes and anti-poverty efforts before retiring in 1982.
Her fiery rhetoric notwithstanding, Chisholm’s life reflected a number of traditional American themes: the importance of education, close neighborhood ties, civic engagement and great personal determination in surmounting humble origins.
The daughter of a factory worker and a seamstress, Chisholm graduated from Brooklyn College with honors in 1946. When prejudice blocked her from pursuing other career paths, Chisholm turned her job in a local child day care facility into a strength. She earned a master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University, consulted for the New York City Bureau of Child Welfare, and championed the cause of local, decentralized control of neighborhood schools to build a political base in her home neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
That base helped Chisholm overcome more established candidates in her successful campaigns for the New York State Assembly in 1964, and for Congress four years later, when she ran on the slogan “unbought and unbossed.”
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Chisholm championed efforts to increase the political influence of African-Americans and of women. In a 1969 address, Chisholm told the House "prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable."
"Why,” she continued, "is it acceptable for women to be secretaries, librarians, and teachers, but totally unacceptable for them to be managers, administrators, doctors, lawyers, and members of Congress?"
Chisholm’s 1972 presidential run afforded a national audience for these themes. The New York Times called Chisholm’s effort "a venture in the politics of hope” and a chance to expand “the boundaries of the possible."
"She was an activist and she never stopped fighting," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson upon learning of Chisholm’s death on January 1. "She refused to accept the ordinary, and she had high expectations for herself and all people around her."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
