As America Votes Harris vs. Trump, One Woman’s Legacy Looms Especially Large
How Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president against all odds, forever altered the landscape for women in U.S. politics.
In 1972, Shirley Chisholm—a Black Barbadian American woman from Brooklyn—ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.
She wasn’t the first woman to run for U.S. president, but her candidacy was nonetheless extraordinary.
The odds of Chisholm being selected among a slate of candidates dominated by white men, for a post that had only ever been held by a white man were, to borrow Chisholm’s words from her memoir, “hopeless.” But this reality didn’t deter her. Chisholm ran “to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.”
She also ran because she knew that even a defeat would be a victory. She was the first Black candidate for a major party nomination for president of the United States, meaning that those who came after her had someone to follow. In that sense, she would be a catalyst for change.
Election Day, And All the Days Before It
Today, Nov. 5, 2024, is a momentous day. It’s momentous for American voters, of course. And it’s momentous for people around the world who are watching and wondering what this all means for them.
But it’s also momentous from a historical perspective. There are many reasons why Kamala Harris is on this stage, but it's partly thanks to the many women in the past who laid the groundwork for it to happen.
Today’s election day is the culmination of the bravery and boldness of so many over so long. We’re here because of Lydia Maria Child and Lucretia Mott who, in 1847, at the convention of the Liberty League—a caucus of the abolitionist Liberty Party—each garnered a single vote for president.
We’re here because of Victoria Woodhull’s much-ridiculed run for president in the 1872 election. We’re here because of Febb Burn’s history-changing letter to her son that ultimately made the all-important 19th Amendment—the right for (many) women to vote—a reality. We’re here because of people like Patsy Mink, who was the first Asian American woman to run for president, and Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated for vice president by a major political party.
We’re here because of Lenora Fulani who, in the 1988 presidential election, became the first woman and the first African American to appear on the ballot in all 50 states, and who received more votes for president in a general election than any other woman before her. And of course—unequivocally—we’re here because of Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote in 2016, but lost the necessary swing states in an election that was so surprising even the winner seemed flabbergasted.
Squarely in this esteemed line-up is Shirley Chisholm, whose legacy permeates the U.S. She may never have come close to running a nation, but her ambition, grit and hard work had a profound effect on American politics.
‘Fighting Shirley’
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was born in Brooklyn a hundred years ago this month. Her parents were both immigrants. Ruby Seale St. Hill, her mother, was a seamstress from Barbados, which was where Chisholm spent much of her childhood. Her father, Charles St. Hill, was a factory worker from Guyana.
Chisholm was the oldest of four daughters. She attended Brooklyn Girls High School and then graduated from Brooklyn College cum laude, in 1946. Even as a student, some of her professors urged her to go into politics. Ever the realist even then, Chisholm declined, citing the double whammy of being Black and being a woman. She became a nursery school teacher instead.
By 1960, armed with a Master’s degree in early childhood education from Columbia University’s Teachers College, Chisholm was serving as a consultant to New York City on childcare. She had become acutely aware of how racial and gender divides and inequality were shaping the lives of New Yorkers, luring her to politics and activism after all.
Chisholm joined local chapters of the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League, another civil rights organization dedicated to economic and social justice. She also became a member of the Democratic Club in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
And then, in 1964: a run for state legislature. Chisholm won, making her the second ever African American in the New York State legislature, and paving the way for her to win a congressional seat. In January 1969, she started serving in the House of Representatives as the first Black woman in Congress.
Chisholm soon earned herself a moniker that stuck: “Fighting Shirley.” Because, fight, she did. During her years in Congress, she introduced 55 pieces of legislation. The causes she fought for varied, but many followed a common thread: racial and gender equality, support for the poor, and ending the Vietnam War.
In 1971, Chisholm became one of five co-founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus. The others were activists with names you’ve certainly heard of, including Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, the civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, and the congresswoman Bella Abzug. The Caucus’s mission was—and still is—simple but ambitious: “Increase women’s participation in all political and public life roles.”
Unbought and Unbossed
On January 26, 1972, under the headline “New Hat In Ring: Mrs. Chisholm’s,” The New York Times announced that, for the first time ever, a Black woman was seeking a major‐party presidential nomination. (At that point, no Black man had ever sought it, either.)
In homage to a theme that would dominate her campaign, Chisholm chose an unconventional setting to announce her candidacy: an elementary school auditorium in her Congressional district of Bedford‐Stuyvesant. To a crowd of—according to The Times—about 500 people, most of them Black women, and flanked by community leaders and Betty Friedan, Chisholm declared that she sought “to repudiate the ridiculous notion that the American people will not vote for a qualified candidate simply, because he is not white or because she is not a male.”
Here is some of what she said:
“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud.”
“I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and I’m equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political policies or fatcats or special interests. I stand here now, without endorsements from many big name politicians or celebrities or any other kind of prop, I do not intend to offer you the tired clichés that have too long been an accepted part of our political life.”
“I am the candidate of the people of America.”
Unlike so many other presidential hopefuls, Chisholm also acknowledged on that day—though not explicitly—that winning would be a long shot. But that didn’t seem to perturb her at all; she couldn’t let it.
In the weeks that followed, Chisholm’s courage and determination became increasingly apparent. She sued the Federal Communications Commission (and won) in order to be allowed to take part in televised debates. The commission had initially refused to include her in the debate between Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota and Sen. Hubert Humphrey, the former vice president, who were also vying for the Democratic nomination.
She also survived several assassination attempts. And through it all, she endured a day-after-day barrage of racist and sexist jibes. If these phased her, she never let it show.
‘I am not looking back’
In the end, Chisholm didn’t win a single primary, but she stayed in the race, not withdrawing until the Democratic party’s convention. McGovern was nominated to run against Richard Nixon. The latter, as you know, won in a landslide to become the 37th president of the United States.
Despite all she had to endure, Chisholm never expressed regret. In her memoir she wrote that she ran, “because someone had to do it first.”
“In this country everybody is supposed to be able to run for president, but that’s never really been true,” she observed. “I ran because most people think this country is not ready for a black candidate, not ready for a woman candidate.”
By 1982, Chisholm had turned away from politics. After seven terms in the House, she told interviewers that she’d become disappointed by “moderate and liberal” lawmakers who were “running for cover from the new right.”
As she departed Washington for a life of teaching, playing the piano, and spending time with her loved ones, Chisholm asserted that she was “at peace.” Of her career she told The New York Times: “It's been a remarkable challenge. I am not looking back.”
Standing On Her Shoulders
Almost five decades after Chisholm’s run for the presidency, Kamala Harris, in her own bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, (long before she would find herself running against Donald Trump in 2024) entered the race, under the slogan, “For the People.” Her campaign explicitly acknowledged this to be a nod to Chisholm, who died on Jan. 1, 2005.
“Shirley Chisholm’s activism, advocacy and willingness to persistently remind the nation of the work to be done on behalf of its people is an enduring legacy that lives on in [Harris],” a campaign spokeswoman for Harris told The Guardian in 2019. “To honor that legacy in her own campaign for President was a no-brainer.”
And now, here we are.
Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney, was elected in 2011 as the first Black woman to serve as California’s attorney general. In 2016, she became the second Black woman to be elected a U.S. senator, more than three decades after Carol Moseley Braun became the first. In January 2021, Harris was sworn in as both the country’s first female and first Black vice president.
Despite her obvious successes, Harris has repeatedly paid tribute to those who have come before her. She’s honored Chisholm, in particular. And she’s not the only one to have done so.
“She opened up a portal for many to follow,” Yvette Clarke, a congresswoman whose district in Brooklyn contains part of Chisholm’s old one, recently told The Economist. Clarke said she remembers, when she was seven, the excitement in her home about Chisholm’s candidacy. “If she didn’t have the courage to take on the battle,” Clarke added, “who knows when we would have come to this day.”
“Shirley Chisholm’s influence as a legislator can’t be overestimated,” Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, told The Washington Post in 2020. “As the first Black woman elected to Congress and the founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, she was on the vanguard of helping Black Americans.”
And Robert Gottlieb, who was first an intern in Chisholm’s congressional office and then hired as the student coordinator for her presidential campaign, in 2016 told Smithsonian Magazine: “She was unafraid of anybody. Her slogan was 'unbought and unbossed.' She was really unbossed.”
Undoubtedly, Chisholm changed the political landscape. She chipped away at the staid and tired model of what a politician should look like and sound like—a model we’re still wrestling with today. She fearlessly challenged outdated stereotypes and norms. She was unafraid of treating women’s rights and racial justice as what they are: political, economic, social and cultural imperatives.
But perhaps above all else, Chisholm showed America that in politics and beyond, losing does not mean defeat. A victory can supercharge progress, but not winning can also provide a catalyst for change.
Whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s election, don’t underestimate how far women have come and the power and determination of those—the populous crowd of fierce and principled fighters—who have come before. They marched and campaigned and refused to be silenced, even in the face of pain—even in the face of loss. It’s now on us to keep going.
Emma Haslett
Naomi Cahn
Ruchi Kumar
