Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on 30 November 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant parents from Barbados and British Guiana. As a child she spent several years living with her grandmother in Barbados, an experience she later credited with giving her the strong educational foundation and formal speaking style that would define her political career. She returned to Brooklyn for high school and went on to graduate cum laude from Brooklyn College before earning a master's degree in early childhood education from Columbia University.

Chisholm began her career as a nursery school teacher and later a director of early childhood education programmes, becoming an authority on childcare policy in New York City. She entered politics through Brooklyn's Democratic clubs, working her way up despite resistance from an entrenched, male-dominated party machine, and in 1964 was elected to the New York State Assembly, where she sponsored legislation expanding unemployment benefits to domestic workers.

In 1968 Chisholm ran for the newly created 12th Congressional District in Brooklyn under the campaign slogan 'unbought and unbossed,' defeating a well-known civil rights figure in the general election to become the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In the House, she quickly established herself as an independent voice, famously refusing an assignment to the Agriculture Committee — seen as irrelevant to her urban district — and successfully demanding reassignment.

In January 1972, Chisholm announced her candidacy for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, becoming the first Black candidate and the first woman to seek a major party's nomination for President. Her campaign faced open hostility, exclusion from televised debates, and even multiple assassination threats, and she received limited institutional support even from established civil rights and feminist organisations wary of her long-shot bid. She persisted regardless, eventually receiving 152 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention.

Chisholm served seven terms in Congress, from 1969 to 1983, during which she co-founded both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women's Political Caucus, and became the first Black woman on the powerful House Rules Committee. She championed legislation on food assistance, minimum wage extension to domestic workers, and educational funding, consistently positioning herself as a voice for the poor, for women, and for racial minorities regardless of party pressure.

After retiring from Congress in 1983, Chisholm taught politics and women's studies at Mount Holyoke College and remained active in Democratic politics, though she declined a later offer to serve as US Ambassador to Jamaica due to declining health. She died in 2005 at age 80. In 2015 President Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, recognising a career that opened political doors for the generations of Black and female candidates who followed.