Shirley Chisholm
A well-known political leader, Shirley Chisholm, was one of the most efficient politician in
the mid-1960s. She was a successful political leader with courage to stand up for her
beliefs. Shirley Chisholm was born on November 30th, 1924 in a black neighbourhood in
Brooklyn, New York. She belonged to a family that had immigrated to United States from
the West Indies. Her father worked in factory that made burlap bags and her mother was
a domestic worker and a seamstress. Chisholm spent part of her childhood in Barbados
where she lived with her grandmother to receive higher education from the age of 3 to 10
in Vauxhall Primary School. When she returned, she continued rest of her primary
education in Brooklyn and after attended Brooklyn College. In 1946, after she graduated
from Brooklyn College, she began her career as a teacher and went on to earn a master’s
degree in elementary education from Columbia University. As years went by, Chisholm
worked as a director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center from 1953 to 1959 and
later as a nursery teacher for New York City’s Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964
while she helped to form a unity Democratic Club in 1960.
In 1964, Shirley Chisholm was elected to New York State Legislature where she worked
for four years. As the first black women to hold an assembly seat in New York, she fought
for programs that helped domestic workers and unfortunate student. Four years later in
1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first African-American women elected to Congress,
representing New York’s 12th District. She served as a congresswoman in the United
States House of Representatives from 1968-1983. Within the seven terms, she worked on
Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, Rules and Education, and Labor. During her fifteen year in
the house, she co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women and the
National Organization for Women, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and fought for
legalize abortions. Then in 1972, she was recognized as the first African-American
woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and the first black
candidate for a major party’s nomination for President of the United States. Shirley
These words inspired many women including Condoleezza Rice who was the first black
women to serve as U.S Secretary of State.
