Jo Freeman Reviews Shirley Chisholm, Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics

 

by Jo Freeman

 

Shirley Chisholm was a Brooklyn girl. She was also Bajan, shorthand for Barbadian. 

 

Best known for her 1972 campaign for President, where she received over 400,000 votes in multiple primaries, she always represented the views of her constituents in Brooklyn – poor, Black and disadvantaged.  Neither the first woman to run for President nor the only woman to run that year, her campaign was highly publicized at a time when the emerging women’s liberation movement was making waves.  It put her into the history books.

 

Although Curwood devotes four of the 19 chapters in this book to 1972, she tells us a lot about the rest of Chisholm’s life.

 

Born Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn in 1924 to immigrant parents, she spent six formative years of her childhood living on her grandmother’s farm in Barbados.  She credits that experience not only for her West Indian accent but to her devotion to and success in education.

 

When she returned to Brooklyn she became her father’s favorite daughter.  She talked politics with him and got her confidence from his approval.  In turn, that loosened her relationship with her mother and sisters.

 

A strong interest in education led to her work in daycare after graduating from Brooklyn College in 1946.  She continued with her own schooling, receiving an M.A. in early childhood education from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1951.  

 

As she moved into politics in the 1950s she ran into the attitude that woman’s place was supporting men. She turned this on its head when she ran for office, making a special appeal to women to vote for her. In 1964, she was elected to the New York State Assembly.

 

Her famous last name came from her marriage to Conrad, an immigrant from Jamaica, when she was 25.  She kept the name when she switched spouses in 1977.  She was still a Member of Congress from Brooklyn, adding commuting to Buffalo to be with her second husband to the many demands on her time.