Last Updated: March 2026
Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress and the first Black candidate for a major-party presidential nomination. Born Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn, New York, to Caribbean immigrant parents, she turned a childhood split between New York and Barbados into a lifetime of barrier-breaking firsts. Her campaign slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed,” was not just a catchy phrase. It was a lived philosophy that carried her from a one-room schoolhouse on a Barbadian farm to the floor of Congress, from a childcare consultant’s desk to a presidential debate stage, and from the margins of American politics to its center. Chisholm served seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1969–1983), co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus, championed the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and in 2015 was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2024, she became only the second Black woman featured on a U.S. quarter, following Maya Angelou.
How Did Shirley Chisholm’s Childhood Shape Her Life?
In 1929, most five-year-olds in Brooklyn were learning to tie their shoes. Shirley St. Hill was boarding a steamship bound for Barbados, sent across the Atlantic because her parents could not afford to raise four daughters and work full-time in Depression-era New York. That voyage would shape everything that followed.
Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York City. Her father, Charles Christopher St. Hill, had emigrated from British Guiana via Barbados and Cuba, arriving in New York in 1923. Her mother, Ruby Seale, came from Christ Church, Barbados, reaching New York in 1921. Charles worked in a burlap bag factory and as a baker’s helper. Ruby was a skilled seamstress and domestic worker. Together, they struggled to support a growing family during some of America’s hardest years.
When Shirley was five, she and her two younger sisters were sent to live with their maternal grandmother, Emaline Seale, on a farm in the Vauxhall village of Christ Church, Barbados. For four years, Shirley attended a strict, British-style one-room schoolhouse that drilled reading, writing, and arithmetic with a rigor that would serve her for the rest of her life. In her 1970 autobiography, Unbought and Unbossed, she wrote: “Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason.”
Her grandmother gave her something even more important than discipline. “Granny gave me strength, dignity, and love,” Chisholm later said. “I learned from an early age that I was somebody. I didn’t need the black revolution to teach me that.” She returned to Brooklyn in 1934 aboard the SS Nerissa, carrying a West Indian accent she would keep for life and a self-assurance that no amount of political opposition would shake.
Back in Brooklyn, Shirley attended Girls’ High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a highly regarded integrated school that drew students from across the borough. She excelled academically, becoming vice president of the Junior Arista honor society. She won scholarships to both Vassar College and Oberlin College, but her family could not afford room and board at either institution. Instead, she enrolled at Brooklyn College, where tuition was free and she could commute from home.
At Brooklyn College, Chisholm graduated cum laude in 1946 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in Spanish, a language she would later use on the campaign trail to connect with Latino voters in her district. She won prizes for her debating skills and joined Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Harriet Tubman Society, where she advocated for the integration of Black soldiers during World War II and the addition of African American history courses. Her political education was also happening at home. Her father was a devoted follower of Marcus Garvey and a fierce supporter of trade union rights, and growing up in a Caribbean immigrant household meant Shirley witnessed the Barbados workers’ and anti-colonial independence movements from close range.
She later earned her Master of Arts in childhood education from Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1951, attending classes at night while working full-time. She married Conrad O. Chisholm, a Jamaican immigrant and private investigator, in 1949. The marriage would last until 1977.
What Led Shirley Chisholm Into Politics?
Before Chisholm became a politician, she became an expert. From 1946 to 1953, she worked as a teacher and then teacher’s aide at the Mt. Calvary Child Care Center in Harlem. She directed the Friend in Need Nursery in Brownsville, Brooklyn (1953–1954), then the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center in Lower Manhattan (1954–1959), where she managed 130 children and 24 employees. From 1959 to 1964, she served as an educational consultant for New York City’s Bureau of Child Welfare, supervising ten day-care centers and establishing new ones. By the time she entered politics, she knew more about early childhood education and the needs of working families than most of the men who would try to stop her.
Her political career began in 1953 when she joined Wesley “Mac” Holder’s effort to elect Lewis Flagg Jr. as the first Black judge in Brooklyn. That campaign group evolved into the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League, which pushed candidates to support civil rights and fought racial discrimination in housing. Chisholm eventually left the group around 1958 after clashing with Holder over her push to give women more decision-making power within the organization. It would not be the last time men tried to sideline her.
In 1960, she joined the Unity Democratic Club, a racially integrated, middle-class organization that included women in leadership. She campaigned for the club’s leader, Thomas R. Jones, who won an assembly seat in 1962. When Jones accepted a judicial appointment in 1964, Chisholm wanted to run for his seat. The club hesitated to support a female candidate. Chisholm responded by mobilizing women directly, using her role as Brooklyn branch president of Key Women of America to rally female voters.
An older man confronted her at a Brooklyn housing project while she was collecting signatures: “Young woman, what are you doing out here in this cold? Did you get your husband’s breakfast this morning? Did you straighten up your house? What are you doing running for office? This is something for men.” She calmly explained her experience and commitment. He signed her petition.
She won the Democratic primary in June 1964 and the general election that December with over 18,000 votes, more than ten times the tally of each of her opponents. In the New York State Assembly, she sponsored the SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) at the City University of New York, which gave disadvantaged students access to college with intensive academic support. She also secured unemployment benefits for domestic workers, a group that had been systematically excluded from labor protections. In four years, she proved that she was not just a symbol. She was a legislator who got things done.
How Did Shirley Chisholm Become the First Black Woman in Congress?
In 1968, a court-mandated redistricting created a new version of New York’s 12th Congressional District centered on Bedford-Stuyvesant, a predominantly Black neighborhood. The district was widely expected to produce Brooklyn’s first Black member of Congress. The question was who.
Chisholm announced her candidacy with a slogan that would become legendary: “Unbought and Unbossed.” Her campaign sound truck rolled up to housing projects across Brooklyn blaring, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through.” In the June Democratic primary, she defeated State Senator William S. Thompson and labor official Dollie Robertson. In the general election, she faced James Farmer, the former director of the Congress of Racial Equality, who ran with Republican and Liberal Party backing. Chisholm won by a two-to-one margin.
On January 3, 1969, Shirley Chisholm was sworn in as the first Black woman ever elected to the United States Congress. She was also the only woman in her freshman class.
House Speaker John McCormack assigned her to the Agriculture Committee, a posting she considered irrelevant to her urban constituents. When she confided her frustration to Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitch leader suggested she use the committee’s jurisdiction over food surplus to help the poor and hungry. She took his advice. Working across the aisle with Kansas Republican Bob Dole, she helped expand the food stamp program. She later played a critical role in creating the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which to this day provides nutrition assistance to millions of low-income pregnant women, new mothers, and children. Chisholm would credit Schneerson for the fact that “so many poor babies have milk and poor children have food.”
She was later moved to the Education and Labor Committee, her preferred assignment, after supporting Hale Boggs for House Majority Leader. By the time she retired, she was the committee’s third-highest-ranking member.
In 1971, Chisholm co-founded both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women’s Political Caucus, establishing herself as a bridge between the civil rights and women’s movements at a time when many treated those causes as separate. She co-sponsored the Health Security Act, a bipartisan universal healthcare bill, and joined Congresswoman Bella Abzug in introducing legislation for $10 billion in federal childcare funding. The bill passed both chambers but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon.
What Happened When Shirley Chisholm Ran for President?
On January 25, 1972, Shirley Chisholm stood in a Baptist church in her Brooklyn district and announced something that no Black American and no woman had ever done: she was running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States.
“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud,” she declared. “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 from the start, spending only $300,000 total, a fraction of what her opponents raised. The Democratic establishment ignored her. Her Black male colleagues in Congress provided little support. She later reflected: “When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.” She expressed frustration about what she called “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, Conrad, served as her bodyguard until Secret Service protection was granted in May 1972, after three confirmed threats were made on her life. She campaigned in fourteen states, gathering her largest vote total in California (157,435 votes, fourth place) and her strongest percentage finish in North Carolina (7.5 percent, third place). She won 28 delegates during the primaries and arrived at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach with 152 delegate votes on the first ballot.
She did not win the nomination. George McGovern did, and he went on to lose to Richard Nixon in a historic landslide. But Chisholm’s candidacy planted a flag. It proved that a Black woman could run for the highest office in the land, raise real issues, attract real support, and force the political establishment to take notice. Every Black presidential candidate and every female presidential candidate who followed walked on ground she cleared. The stories of trailblazing Black women like Chisholm are exactly the kind of history the Black Women Word Search Book by Imani Oliver was designed to celebrate, honoring 100 women who refused to accept the limits the world tried to place on them.
What Were Shirley Chisholm’s Greatest Accomplishments in Congress?
Chisholm served seven terms in Congress from 1969 to 1983, and her legislative accomplishments had lasting impact far beyond her district:
The WIC Program. Chisholm was instrumental in creating the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, signed into law in 1972. The program provides federal grants to states for supplemental food, healthcare referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and children up to age five. As of 2024, WIC serves approximately 6.3 million participants monthly.
Expanding the Food Stamp Program. Working with Senator Bob Dole across party lines, Chisholm helped expand the food stamp program to reach more Americans living in poverty. Her work on the Agriculture Committee, which she initially resented, became one of her most consequential contributions.
The SEEK Program. While still in the New York State Assembly, Chisholm sponsored the Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge program at the City University of New York, providing disadvantaged students with access to higher education and intensive academic support. The program continues to operate today.
Domestic Workers’ Rights. She secured unemployment benefits for domestic workers, a largely Black and brown female workforce that had been deliberately excluded from labor protections since the New Deal era.
Co-founding the Congressional Black Caucus (1971). The CBC became the leading legislative voice for Black Americans in Congress, growing from 13 founding members to over 60 members today.
Co-founding the National Women’s Political Caucus (1971). Alongside Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Bella Abzug, Chisholm created the organization dedicated to increasing women’s participation in politics at every level.
Desegregation advocacy. In Congress, Chisholm pushed to integrate U.S. Army regiments and supported legislation requiring equal accommodations for Black and white passengers on interstate transportation.
From the House Education and Labor Committee, she fought consistently for increased funding for education, healthcare, and social services. She was, as she put it, a “people’s politician” whose measure of success was not power accumulated but lives improved.
Why Is Shirley Chisholm Important to Black History?
Chisholm’s importance extends far beyond her list of firsts, though the firsts alone are staggering.
She proved Black women could lead at the highest levels. When Chisholm entered Congress in 1969, the idea of a Black woman serving in the nation’s legislature was so unprecedented that many colleagues did not know how to address her. She answered that question with seven consecutive terms of effective, principled legislation.
She bridged the civil rights and women’s movements. At a time when many civil rights leaders dismissed feminism and many feminists overlooked racial justice, Chisholm insisted on fighting both battles simultaneously. Her co-founding of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women’s Political Caucus in the same year was not a coincidence. It was a statement that justice is indivisible.
She redefined what a presidential candidate could look like. Chisholm’s 1972 campaign did not win the nomination, but it changed the calculus of American politics permanently. Jesse Jackson, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988, credited Chisholm with paving the way. Barack Obama, who became the first Black president in 2008, acknowledged her legacy. Kamala Harris, who in 2021 became the first Black woman to serve as Vice President, explicitly honored Chisholm by wearing pearls (a Delta Sigma Theta tradition Chisholm shared) on inauguration day.
She fed millions of children. The WIC program she helped create has provided nutrition assistance to over 200 million women and children since its inception. That is not a symbolic achievement. It is a material one, measured in milk, formula, and healthy births.
She refused to be a token. Chisholm rejected every attempt to reduce her to a symbol. “I want to be remembered as a woman who dared to be a catalyst for change,” she said. Not the first Black woman in Congress. Not the first Black presidential candidate. A catalyst. The distinction matters. For anyone exploring the vast tapestry of Black women who shaped America, the Black Heritage Collection offers a hands-on way to engage with these stories through themed word search puzzles celebrating Black history, culture, and achievement.
10 Surprising Facts About Shirley Chisholm
1. What accent do you picture when you imagine a congresswoman from Brooklyn? Probably not a Caribbean one. But Shirley Chisholm spoke with a Barbadian lilt her entire life, a relic of the four years she spent on her grandmother’s farm in Christ Church, Barbados, between the ages of five and nine. Despite being born in Brooklyn, she always considered herself a Barbadian American.
2. Think about who gets credit for feeding America’s poorest children. The answer should include Shirley Chisholm. She was instrumental in creating the WIC program, which has served over 200 million women and children since 1972. The program’s origins trace back to an unlikely source: a Hasidic rabbi who told her to use the Agriculture Committee to feed the hungry. She did.
3. To understand how Chisholm campaigned in New York’s most diverse district, know that she spoke fluent Spanish. She minored in the language at Brooklyn College and used it throughout her career to connect with Latino constituents. In a district where no single ethnic group held a majority, that skill was not a bonus. It was a bridge.
4. Black women are the most politically active demographic in the United States, consistently turning out to vote at higher rates than any other group in presidential elections. That pattern did not emerge in a vacuum. Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 presidential run and her decades of grassroots organizing helped build the infrastructure that made that participation possible.
5. Most people assume George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, and Shirley Chisholm had nothing in common. That assumption is wrong. When Wallace was shot and paralyzed during the 1972 campaign, Chisholm visited him in the hospital. It was an act that baffled her supporters and enraged some. She said simply: “He said to me, ‘What are your people going to say?’ I said: ‘I know what they’re going to say. But I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.’” Wallace later supported legislation extending the Voting Rights Act.
6. Chisholm once said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” That was not an abstract principle. When she was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee instead of a committee relevant to her Brooklyn district, she did not complain publicly. She turned surplus food into one of the most important nutrition programs in American history.
7. The baobab tree can survive for millennia in the harshest conditions on earth. Chisholm’s political career operated on a similar principle. She survived three assassination threats during her presidential campaign, was sabotaged by her own party, faced sexism from Black male colleagues and racism from white female allies, and still served fourteen years in Congress without losing a single election.
8. Want to introduce a child to political history without making it feel like a civics lecture? Start with Chisholm’s campaign sound truck: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through.” That one sentence, rolling through housing projects in Brooklyn, tells a child everything about audacity, persistence, and showing up when nobody expects you. Pair it with a Black Women Word Search puzzle about political trailblazers, and the conversation builds itself.
9. The five most recent Black women to serve in the U.S. Senate all entered office after 2016. That is not because Black women suddenly became qualified for the Senate. It is because it took decades of groundwork, starting with Chisholm’s refusal to stay in her assigned lane, to make their elections possible. Progress is never as sudden as it looks.
10. If you could ask Shirley Chisholm one question over dinner, what would it be? Before you decide, consider this: she reportedly had a wicked sense of humor, loved Caribbean cooking, and once told a reporter that the two things she was proudest of were winning her congressional seat and her recipe for rum cake. She also kept a poster in her office that read, “Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.” Choose your question wisely. She might answer with a question of her own.
What Was Shirley Chisholm’s Later Life and Legacy?
Chisholm retired from Congress in January 1983, citing her frustration with the rightward shift of American politics under the Reagan administration and her desire to spend more time with her second husband, Arthur Hardwick Jr., whom she had married in 1977. (Her first marriage to Conrad Chisholm ended in divorce that same year.) Hardwick, a former New York State Assemblyman, died in 1986.
After leaving Congress, Chisholm accepted a position as Purington Professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she taught politics and women’s studies for four years. She continued her political organizing, co-founding the National Political Congress of Black Women in 1984. In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica, but declining health forced her to withdraw from consideration.
Chisholm spent her final years in Ormond Beach, Florida. She suffered a series of strokes in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She died on January 1, 2005, at the age of 80.
Her recognition continued to grow after her death. In 2015, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 2024, the U.S. Mint released a quarter featuring Chisholm’s image as part of the American Women Quarters Program, making her only the second Black woman (after Maya Angelou) to appear on American currency. A bronze statue of Chisholm was unveiled in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in 2020, the first public monument honoring a Black woman in New York City.
Frequently Asked Questions About Shirley Chisholm
When was Shirley Chisholm born and when did she die?
Shirley Chisholm was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York City, and died on January 1, 2005, in Ormond Beach, Florida, at the age of 80.
What was Shirley Chisholm the first to do?
Chisholm holds multiple historic firsts: she was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress (1968), the first Black candidate for a major-party presidential nomination (1972), and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. She served seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1983.
What was Shirley Chisholm’s famous quote?
Her most famous quote is “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” Her campaign slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed,” which also became the title of her 1970 autobiography, is equally well known. She also said, “I want to be remembered as a woman who dared to be a catalyst for change.”
What is a meaningful gift for someone who admires Shirley Chisholm and Black women’s history?
For someone inspired by trailblazers like Shirley Chisholm, the Black Women Word Search Book by Imani Oliver celebrates 100 remarkable Black women who changed history, from political pioneers to cultural icons. Each of the 100 themed puzzles includes educational facts and curated playlists via QR codes. With over 900 five-star reviews, it’s a gift that combines learning with relaxation. The full Black Heritage Collection includes five titles covering Black history, culture, and achievement.
How did Shirley Chisholm help create the WIC program?
When Chisholm was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee despite representing an urban district, she used the committee’s jurisdiction over food surplus to advocate for nutrition assistance for low-income families. Working with Republican Senator Bob Dole, she expanded the food stamp program and played a critical role in establishing the WIC program in 1972, which provides supplemental food and nutrition education to millions of pregnant women, new mothers, and young children annually.
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Explore Black History the Fun Way
Shirley Chisholm is one of the 100 remarkable Black women celebrated in the Black Women Word Search Book, part of the Black Heritage Collection by Imani Oliver. Each book features 100 themed puzzles, 2,000 carefully researched words, educational facts, and curated playlists you can access through QR codes.
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Shirley Chisholm
- National Women’s History Museum — Shirley Chisholm Biography
- U.S. House of Representatives — Shirley Anita Chisholm
- Wikipedia — Shirley Chisholm
- Chisholm, Shirley. Unbought and Unbossed. Houghton Mifflin, 1970.