Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). Her motto and title of her autobiography—Unbought and Unbossed—illustrates her outspoken advocacy for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. She graduated from Brooklyn Girls' High in 1942 and from Brooklyn College cum laude in 1946, where she won prizes on the debate team. Despite professors encouraging her to consider a political career, she replied that she faced a "double handicap" as both Black and female.
Shirley Chisholm worked as a nursery school teacher and earned a master's degree from Columbia University in early childhood education in 1951. She joined local chapters of the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, as well as the Democratic Party club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. In 1964, she ran for and became the second African American in the New York State Legislature. In 1968, she sought and won a seat in Congress, where she introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and championed racial and gender equality, the plight of the poor, and ending the Vietnam War. She was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus and served on the House Rules Committee. In 1977, she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York State legislator.
Shirley Chisholm's quest for the 1972 Democratic Party presidential nomination was met with discrimination and legal action. Despite this, she entered 12 primaries and garnered 152 delegates' votes, despite an under-financed campaign and contentiousness from the Congressional Black Caucus. She retired from Congress in 1983 and taught at Mount Holyoke College and co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women. She later declined the nomination to become U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica due to ill health. Of her legacy, she said she wanted to be remembered as a woman who dared to be a catalyst of change.
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