WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH: Shirley Chisholm Was My Congresswoman
During Women's History Month I pay homage to all women, but especially my sistahs. When Maya Angelou wrote her famous 1978 poem Still I Rise, she reminded us Black women that we come from a long lineage of movers and shakers—women who triumphed not in spite of their challenges, but because of them.
The profound contributions of Black women to American society were also acknowledged by Barack Obama in his keynote address at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 45th Annual Legislative Conference in 2015. He reminded the audience that all of us are beneficiaries of a long line of strong Black women who helped carry this country forward. One of those remarkable women—and someone I personally knew—was my congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), who helped form my activism.
Unbossed and Unbought
Shirley Chisholm represented my Brooklyn congressional district for seven terms, from 1969 to 1983. In our neighborhood, we kids affectionately called her Miss C. Al Sharpton—whom I grew up with—served as director of the youth division of her campaign, and I was proud to be part of it.
As Brooklyn's native daughter, Chisholm understood our plight. She was a grassroots insider whose multiracial coalition and multilingual approach resonated deeply in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which at that time comprised mostly disenfranchised African American and Puerto Rican residents. Chisholm connected with everyday people and the bread-and-butter issues that shaped our lives—childcare, education, unemployment, housing, food security, and opposition to the Vietnam War. She addressed these concerns in both English and Spanish while visiting our housing projects, churches, parks, and street corners—shaking hands and listening carefully to residents.
As the people's candidate, she branded herself "Fighting Shirley Chisholm." Throughout the neighborhood—and in the halls of power in New York City—she was known as a force to be reckoned with: "unbought and unbossed." Her campaign slogan and motto "Unbought and Unbossed"—also the title of her 1970 memoir—captured her fierce independence and integrity. With it, Chisholm presented herself as a bold alternative to a corrupt and moneyed political establishment.
Backbone of the Democratic Party
Black women voters are lauded as "the backbone" of the Democratic Party. Shirley Chisholm was instrumental in bringing Black women into the DNC, national politics, and getting us to the polls. Chisholm co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971, and the National Political Congress of Black Women in 1984 with Dr. C. DeLores Tucker.
As a voting bloc, Black women have long exercised agency and developed powerful voter-mobilization strategies to support our candidates. Our strong voter turnout is rooted in a long history of confronting voter suppression—barriers that the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920, did not fully protect us from. Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory practices meant many Black women in the South were still prevented from exercising that right for decades. Even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, tactics designed to suppress minority voting persist to this day.
Black women are a powerful voting bloc in both local and national races. Our representation in leadership roles must be supported with funding and resources from the DNC—support that Shirley Chisholm herself struggled to secure during her campaigns.
Chisholm insisted that our voices must be essential in political debates and in shaping government policy. We are issue voters, and we vote for the world we hope to see. Because our votes matter, our concerns must be addressed—among them reproductive justice, health disparities, gang violence, educational equity, urban environmental racism, and police brutality, to name just a few.
The Politics of Being the First
Chisholm inspired generations of Black women in politics, including Kamala Harris.
When I heard the news that Vice President Kamala Harris was running for president, I immediately thought about how Chisholm would be proud of this moment. Within hours of the announcement hitting the newswires, enthusiasm surged. A national Zoom call organized by the Washington, D.C.—based Black women's organization #WinWithBlackWomen drew more than 40,000 sistahs. In just three hours, these women raised over $1 million to support Harris.
In 1972, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black candidate and the first woman to seek the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Confronted with fierce racist and sexist opposition, she ultimately lost the nomination. In 2024, Kamala Harris did as well. Yet Harris ran a superb 107-day campaign that injected hope and excitement about what might be possible. It is the way Black women have always moved through history—"making a way out of no way." And it was Chisholm who paved the path for those who followed.
In her 1973 book The Good Fight, Chisholm explained why she ran for president. She wrote:
"The next time a woman runs, or a Black, or a Jew, or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start... I ran because somebody had to do it first."
And those "next times" came. In 1984, Queens Representative Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman nominated for vice president by a major party. In 1984 and 1988, Jesse Jackson ran for president. In 2008, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sought the Democratic nomination. In 2016, Clinton ran again. And in 2024, Kamala Harris carried the torch forward.
Today, Representative Ayanna Pressley—who represents my district—occupies Shirley Chisholm's old office in Washington, D.C. Pressley is the first Black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, another milestone in the long arc of representation.
Black women have helped change America even as the nation remains mired in its Original Sin and the enduring legacy of injustice. Time and again, Black women have stood at the forefront of social change—leading coalition building, organizing communities, and modeling intersectional activism.
From Shirley Chisholm, I learned that democracy cannot remain an abstract ideal proclaimed in campaign slogans. It must be grounded in the bread-and-butter issues of the day that connect us to the promise of the American dream—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Democracy begins to work only when those relegated to the margins of society—people Chisholm tirelessly fought for—can begin to experience the rights and opportunities that others take for granted as inalienable. Chisholm taught me that the path toward that democracy begins at the ballot box.