Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm, née Shirley Anita St. Hill, (born November 30, 1924, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died January 1, 2005, Ormond Beach, Florida), American politician, the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress.

Shirley St. Hill was the daughter of immigrants; her father was from British Guiana (now Guyana) and her mother from Barbados. She grew up in Barbados and in her native Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Brooklyn College (B.A., 1946). While teaching nursery school and serving as director of the Friends Day Nursery in Brooklyn, she studied elementary education at Columbia University (M.A., 1952) and married Conrad Q. Chisholm in 1949 (divorced 1977). An education consultant for New York City’s day-care division, she was also active with community and political groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and her district’s Unity Democratic Club. In 1964–68 she represented her Brooklyn district in the New York state legislature.

In 1968 Chisholm was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating the civil rights leader James Farmer. In Congress she quickly became known as a strong liberal who opposed weapons development and the war in Vietnam and favored full-employment proposals. As a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 1972, she won 152 delegates before withdrawing from the race.

Chisholm, a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, supported the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortions throughout her congressional career, which lasted from 1969 to 1983. She wrote the autobiographical works Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973).

After her retirement from Congress, Chisholm remained active on the lecture circuit. She held the position of Purington Professor at Mount Holyoke College (1983–87) and was a visiting scholar at Spelman College (1985). In 1993 she was invited by President Bill Clinton to serve as ambassador to Jamaica but declined because of poor health. Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.