S hirley Chisholm (1924 – 2005) was the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress (1968) and the first Black woman to seek the nomination for President of the United States (1972) from a major political party.

She was born Shirley Anita St. Hill on November 30, 1924, the eldest of four daughters, to immigrant parents—father was a factory worker from Guyana, mother a seamstress from Barbados. Due to work and childcare challenges, Chisholm was sent to live with her maternal grandmother in Barbados, from ages five to ten. As a result, she spoke with a West Indian accent for the rest of her life and considered herself a Barbadian-American. “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.” She returned to New York to live with her parents and graduated from Brooklyn Girls High in 1942. For college, she received scholarships from Vassar and Oberlin College, but because of her parents’ inability to afford room and board, Chisholm lived at home and attended Brooklyn College where she graduated cum laude in 1946 with a sociology degree and Spanish language minor. Five years later, she earned a master’s degree in elementary education from Columbia Teachers College.

Chisholm worked as a teacher at Mt. Calvary Child Care Center in Harlem from 1943 to 1952. During that time, she married Conrad O. Chisholm in 1949; they divorced in 1977. That same year, she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York State legislator.

She was an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964, becoming an authority on early education and child welfare. She began her political life with the Bedford–Stuyvesant Political League, working on a campaign to elect the first black judge in Brooklyn and subsequently became an active member of many other organizations: Brooklyn Democratic Clubs, National Association of College Women, the League of Women Voters, Unity Democratic Club, and the Brooklyn branch of Key Women of America.

From 1965 to 1968, Chisholm served as a New York State Assembly-woman, only the second Black to serve in the Assembly. In 1968, she won a seat in the U.S. Congress, representing the newly formed Bedford–Stuyvesant district. Her campaign slogan was the same as her 1970 book title: Unbought and Unbossed. Throughout her political career, Chisholm influenced change and broke barriers: she supported expanded daycare, racial and gender equality, women’s reproductive rights, the end of the military draft, immigrant workers’ rights, the broadening of food stamp programs, and the increase in domestic workers’ minimum wage. In 1973, she wrote her second book entitled The Good Fight.

“I want to be remembered as a woman … who dared to be a catalyst of change.” Following her retirement from Congress in 1983, Shirley Chisholm taught at Mount Holyoke College, lectured widely, and co-founded the National Congress of Black Women and African American Women for Reproductive Freedom.

Biography provided by the National Women’s Hall of Fame