Chisholm, Shirley, 1924-2005

<p>The first African-American Congresswoman, Shirley Anita Chisholm represented a newly reapportioned U.S. House district centered in Brooklyn, New York. Elected in 1968 with deep roots in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Chisholm was catapulted into the national limelight by virtue of her race, gender, and outspoken personality. In 1972, in a largely symbolic undertaking, she campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination. But “Fighting Shirley” Chisholm’s frontal assault on many congressional traditions and her reputation as a crusader limited her influence as a legislator in an institution long resistant to change. “I am the people’s politician,” she once told the New York Times. “If the day should ever come when the people can’t save me, I’ll know I’m finished. That’s when I’ll go back to being a professional educator.”</p>

<p>Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the oldest of four daughters of Charles St. Hill, a factory laborer from Guyana, and Ruby Seale St. Hill, a seamstress from Barbados. For part of her childhood, Shirley St. Hill lived in Barbados on her maternal grandparents’ farm, receiving a British education while her parents worked during the Great Depression to settle the family in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The most apparent manifestation of her West Indies roots was the slight, clipped British accent she retained throughout her life. She attended public schools in Brooklyn and graduated with high marks. Accepted to Vassar and Oberlin colleges, Shirley St. Hill attended Brooklyn College on scholarship and graduated cum laude with a BA in sociology in 1946. From 1946 to 1953, Chisholm worked as a nursery school teacher and then as the director of two daycare centers. She married Conrad Q. Chisholm, a private investigator, in 1949. Three years later, Shirley Chisholm earned an MA in early childhood education from Columbia University. She served as an educational consultant for New York City’s division of day care from 1959 to 1964. In 1964 Chisholm was elected to the New York state legislature; she was the second African-American woman to serve in Albany.</p>

<p>A court-ordered redistricting that carved a new Brooklyn congressional district out of Chisholm’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood convinced her to run for Congress. The influential Democratic political machine, headed by Stanley Steingut, declared its intention to send an African-American candidate from the new district to the House. The endorsement of the machine usually resulted in a primary victory, which was tantamount to election in the heavily Democratic area. In the primary, Chisholm faced three African-American challengers: civil court judge Thomas R. Jones, a former district leader and New York assemblyman; Dolly Robinson, a former district co-leader; and William C. Thompson, a well-financed state senator. Chisholm roamed the new district in a sound truck that pulled up outside housing projects while she announced: “Ladies and Gentlemen … this is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through.” Chisholm capitalized on her personal campaign style. “I have a way of talking that does something to people,” she noted. “I have a theory about campaigning. You have to let them feel you.” In the primary in mid-June 1968, Chisholm defeated Thompson, her nearest competitor, by about 800 votes in an election characterized by light voter turnout.</p>

CHISHOLM, Shirley Anita, a Representative from New York; born Shirley Anita St. Hill, November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, Kings County, N.Y.; first black woman elected to Congress; attended public schools of Brooklyn, N.Y.; B.A., Brooklyn College, 1946; M.A., Columbia University, 1952; nursery school teacher, 1946-1953; director, Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center, New York City, 1953-1959; educational consultant, Division of Day Care, New York City, 1959-1964; assemblywoman, New York State Legislature, 1964-1968; elected as a Democrat to the Ninety-first and to the six succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1969-January 3, 1983); was not a candidate for reelection to the Ninety-eighth Congress in 1982; unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 1972; died on January 1, 2005, in Ormond Beach, Fla.; interment in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, N.Y.

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, to immigrant parents. She was of Guyanese and Bajan descent. She had three younger sisters, two born within three years of her and one later. Her father, Charles Christopher St. Hill, was born in British Guiana before moving to Barbados. He arrived in New York City via Antilla, Cuba, in 1923. Her mother, Ruby Seale, was born in Christ Church, Barbados, and arrived in New York City in 1921.

Charles St. Hill was a laborer who worked in a factory that made burlap bags and as a baker's helper. Ruby St. Hill was a skilled seamstress and domestic worker, and had trouble working and raising the children at the same time. As a consequence, in November 1929 when Shirley turned five, she and her two sisters were sent to Barbados on the MS Vulcania to live with their maternal grandmother, Emaline Seale. 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." St. Hill and her sisters lived on their grandmother's farm in the Vauxhall village in Christ Church, where she attended a one-room schoolhouse. She returned to the United States on May 19, 1934, aboard the SS Nerissa in New York. As a result of her time in Barbados, Shirley spoke with a West Indian accent throughout 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." As a result of her time on the island, and regardless of her U.S. birth, St. Hill would always consider herself a Barbadian American. Beginning in 1939, St. Hill attended Girls' High School in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, a highly regarded, integrated school that attracted girls from throughout Brooklyn. St. Hill earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1946, where she won prizes for her debating skills. In addition, during her time at Brooklyn College, she was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Harriet Tubman Society. As a member of the Harriet Tubman Society, Chisholm advocated for inclusion, specifically in terms of the integration of black soldiers in the military during World War II, the addition of courses that focused on African-American history, and the involvement of more women in the student government. However, this was not her first introduction to activism or politics. Growing up, Chisholm was surrounded by politics as her father was an avid supporter of Marcus Garvey and a dedicated supporter of the rights of trade union members. Also, she was no stranger to seeing her community advocate for their rights as she witnessed the Barbados workers' and anti-colonial independence movements.

St. Hill met Conrad O. Chisholm in the late 1940s. He had migrated to the U.S. from Jamaica in 1946 and later became a private investigator who specialized in negligence-based lawsuits. They married in 1949 in a large West Indian-style wedding.

After graduating from college in 1946, Chisholm began working as a teacher's aide at a childcare center in Harlem. Chisholm taught in a nursery school while furthering her education, earning her MA in elementary education from Teachers College of Columbia University in 1952.

From 1953 to 1959, she was director of the Friends Day Nursery in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center in Lower Manhattan. From 1959 to 1964, she was an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care. She became known as an authority on issues involving early education and child welfare.

Chisholm entered the world of politics in 1953 when she joined Wesley "Mac" Holder's effort to elect Lewis Flagg Jr. to the bench as the first black judge in Brooklyn. The Flagg election group later transformed into the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League (BSPL). The BSPL pushed candidates to support civil rights, fought against racial discrimination in housing, and sought to improve economic opportunities and services in Brooklyn. Chisholm eventually left the group around 1958 after clashing with Holder over Chisholm's push to give female members of the group more input in decision making.

She also worked as a volunteer for white-dominated political clubs in Brooklyn, like the Brooklyn Democratic Clubs and the League of Women Voters. With the Political League, she was part of a committee that chose the recipient of its annual Brotherhood Award. She also was a representative of the Brooklyn branch of the National Association of College Women. Furthermore, within the political organizations she joined, Chisholm sought to make meaningful changes to the structure and make-up of the organizations, specifically the Brooklyn Democratic Clubs, which resulted in her being able to recruit more people of color into the 17th District Club and, thus, local politics.

In 1960, Chisholm joined a new organization, the Unity Democratic Club (UDC) led by former Elect Flagg member Thomas R. Jones. The UDC's membership was mostly middle class, racially integrated, and included women in leadership positions. Chisholm campaigned for Jones who lost the election for an assembly seat in 1960, but ran again two years later and won, becoming Brooklyn's second black assemblyman.

After Jones chose to accept a judicial appointment rather than run for reelection, Chisholm sought to run for his seat in the New York state assembly in 1964. Chishom faced resistance based on her sex with the UDC hesitant to support a female candidate. Chisholm chose to appeal directly to women voters, including using her role as Brooklyn branch president of Key Women of America to mobilize female voters. Chisholm won the Democratic primary in June 1964. She then won the seat in December with over 18,000 votes over Republican and Liberal party candidates, neither of which received more than 1,900 votes.

Chisholm was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968, sitting in the 175th, 176th and 177th New York State Legislatures. By May 1965 she had already been honored in a "Salute to Women Doers" affair in New York. One of her early activities in the Assembly was to argue 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". By early 1966 she was a leader in a push by the statewide Council of Elected Negro Democrats for black representation on key committees in the Assembly.

Her successes in the legislature included getting unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers. She also 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 August 1968, she was elected as the Democratic National Committeewoman from New York State.

In 1968 she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 12th congressional district, which as part of a court-mandated reapportionment plan had been significantly redrawn to focus on Bedford-Stuyvesant and was thus expected to result in Brooklyn's first black member of Congress. (Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. had, in 1945, become the first black member of Congress from New York City as a whole.) As a result of the redrawing, the white incumbent in the former 12th, Representative Edna F. Kelly, sought re-election in a different district. Chisholm announced her candidacy around January 1968 and established some early organizational support. Her campaign slogan was "Unbought and unbossed". In the June 18, 1968, Democratic primary, Chisholm defeated two other Black opponents, State Senator William S. Thompson and labor official Dollie Robertson. 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 began exploring her candidacy in July 1971, and formally announced her presidential bid on January 25, 1972, in a Baptist church in her district in Brooklyn. There she called for a "bloodless revolution" at the forthcoming Democratic nomination convention. Chisholm became the first Black major-party candidate to run for President of the United States, in the 1972 U.S. presidential election, making her also the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination (U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1964). In 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. She later said, "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." 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; Conrad Chisholm served as her bodyguard until U.S. Secret Service protection was given to her in May 1972.

Chisholm skipped the initial March 7 New Hampshire contest, instead focusing on the March 14 Florida primary, which she thought would be receptive due to its "blacks, youth, and a strong women's movement". But due to organizational difficulties and Congressional responsibilities, she only made two campaign trips there and ended with 3.5 percent of the vote for a seventh-place finish. Chisholm had difficulties gaining ballot access, but campaigned or received votes in primaries in fourteen states. Her largest number of votes came in the June 6 California primary, where she received 157,435 votes for 4.4 percent and a fourth-place finish, while her best percentage in a competitive primary came in the May 6 North Carolina one, where she got 7.5 percent for a third-place finish. Overall, she won 28 delegates during the primaries process itself. Chisholm's base of support was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization for Women. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem attempted to run as Chisholm delegates in New York. Altogether during the primary season, she received 430,703 votes, which was 2.7 percent of the total of nearly 16 million cast and represented seventh place among the Democratic contenders. In June, Chisholm became the first woman to appear in a United States presidential debate.

At the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, there were still efforts taking place by the campaign of former Vice President Hubert Humphrey to stop the nomination of Senator George McGovern. After that failed and McGovern's nomination was assured, as a symbolic gesture, Humphrey released his black delegates to Chisholm. This, combined with defections from disenchanted delegates from other candidates, as well as the delegates she had won in the primaries, gave her a total of 152 first-ballot votes for the nomination during the July 12 roll call. (Her precise total was 151.95.) Her largest support overall came from Ohio, with 23 delegates (slightly more than half of them white), even though she had not been on the ballot in the May 2 primary there. Her total gave her fourth place in the roll call tally, behind McGovern's winning total of 1,728 delegates. Chisholm said she ran for the office "in spite of hopeless odds ... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo".

It is sometimes stated that Chisholm won a primary in 1972, or won three states overall, with New Jersey, Louisiana, and Mississippi being so identified. None of these fit the usual definition of winning a plurality of the contested popular vote or delegate allocations at the time of a state primary, caucus, or state convention. In the June 6 New Jersey primary, there was a complex ballot that featured both a delegate selection vote and a non-binding, non-delegate-producing "beauty contest" presidential preference vote. Only Chisholm and former governor of North Carolina Terry Sanford were on the statewide preference ballot. Sanford had withdrawn from the contest three weeks earlier. Chisholm received the majority of votes in the non-binding statewide contest: 51,433, which was 66.9 percent. During the actual balloting at the national convention, Chisholm received votes from only 4 of New Jersey's 109 delegates, with 89 going to McGovern.

In the May 13 Louisiana caucuses, there was a battle between forces of McGovern and Governor George Wallace; nearly all of the delegates chosen were those who identified as uncommitted, many of them black. Leading up to the convention, McGovern was thought to control 20 of Louisiana's 44 delegates, with most of the rest uncommitted. During the actual roll call at the national convention, Louisiana passed at first, then cast 18.5 of its 44 votes for Chisholm, with the next best finishers being McGovern and Senator Henry M. Jackson with 10.25 each. As one delegate explained, "Our strategy was to give Shirley our votes for sentimental reasons on the first ballot. However, if our votes would have made the difference, we would have gone with McGovern." In Mississippi, there were two rival party factions that each selected delegates at their own state conventions and caucuses: "regulars", representing the mostly-white state Democratic Party, and "loyalists", representing many blacks and white liberals. Each slate professed to be largely uncommitted, but the regulars were thought to favor Wallace and the loyalists McGovern. By the time of the national convention, the loyalists were seated following a credentials challenge, and their delegates were characterized as mostly supporting McGovern, with some support for Humphrey. During the convention, some McGovern delegates became angry about what they saw as statements from McGovern that backed away from his commitment to end U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, and cast protest votes for Chisholm as a result. During the actual balloting, Mississippi went in the first half of the roll call, and cast 12 of its 25 votes for Chisholm, with McGovern coming next with 10 votes.

During the campaign, the German filmmaker Peter Lilienthal shot the documentary film Shirley Chisholm for President for the German television channel ZDF.

After leaving Congress, Chisholm made her home in suburban Williamsville, New York. She resumed her career in education, being named to the Purington Chair at the all-women Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. As such she was not a member of any particular department, but would be able to teach classes in a variety of areas; those previously holding the position included W. H. Auden, Bertrand Russell, and Arna Bontemps.=

In 1984, Chisholm and C. Delores Tucker co-founded the National Congress of Black Women.

During those years, she continued to give speeches at colleges, by her own count visiting over 150 campuses since becoming nationally known. 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." Continuing to be involved politically, she traveled to visit different minority groups and urging them to become a strong force at the local level. In 1984 and 1988, she campaigned for Jesse Jackson for the presidential elections. In 1990, Chisholm, along with 15 other black women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom.

Chisholm retired to Florida in 1991. 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 near Daytona Beach, after suffering several strokes. She is buried in the Birchwood Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, where the legend inscribed on her vault reads: "Unbought and Unbossed".