HUSL Today Salutes

Shirley Chisolm

Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Shirley_Chisholm.jpg

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 30, 1924.  Chisholm earned her BA from Brooklyn College in 1946 and later earned her MA from Columbia University in elementary education in 1952. From 1953 to 1959, she was director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center. From 1959 to 1964, she was an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care.

In 1964, Chisholm ran for and was elected to the New York State Legislature. In 1968, she ran as the Democratic candidate for New York's 12th District congressional seat and was elected to the House of Representatives. Defeating Republican candidate James Farmer, Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969 as one of its founding members.

On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination (Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the Republican presidential nomination). She received 152 first-ballot votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.  In 1975, Chisholm was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Smith College.

Check out the footage below to see her declare her presidential bid: 

She represented New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983 as a Congresswoman. Chisholm wrote two books, Unbought and Unbossed (1970) which was expanded and re-released in 2010 and The Good Fight (1973). In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

She passed away on January 1, 2005. 

  HUSL Today Salutes Shirley Chisolm!!