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History > USA > Civil rights > Activists
Shirley Chisholm 1924-2005
Photograph: Meyer Liebowitz The New York Times
Shirley Chisholm, Political Pioneer and Census Taker
She had already surprised everyone by becoming the first black woman in Congress after an upset victory in 1968.
Then Shirley Chisholm signed up for work as a census taker in Brooklyn, where she represented a range of struggling neighborhoods.
It was a thankless task; many of the “enumerators” for the 1970 census quit because so many poor black and Hispanic residents refused to answer questions or even open the door.
Their distrust in government ran deep, The Times reported, with some fearing that giving up their personal information would lead to genocide.
Ms. Chisholm, a daughter of immigrants from Barbados who studied American history with the zeal of a woman determined to shape it, understood such sentiments.
She also embodied what was needed to bring those New Yorkers into the fold. It wasn’t pontificating. It wasn’t condescending, or scolding; it required the same charm and resolve she showed first as an educator, then as a politician.
“I do not see myself as a lawmaker, an innovator in the field of legislation,” she wrote in her 1970 autobiography, “Unbought and Unbossed.”
“America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take.”
Our census article that ran on Aug. 1, 1970, relegated Ms. Chisholm’s role to a footnote, a single line in a lengthy story told from cities across the country.
As a result, this photograph of her looking resolute and formal, with her census bag and buttoned-up dress, was never published. NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/national/unpublished-black-history/
Shirley Chisholm talking with youngsters and constituents in 1969 at a Police Athletic League block party on Rodney Street in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Photograph: Jack Manning The New York Times
2019 Belongs to Shirley Chisholm A feature film. A monument. Tattoos in her honor. People looking for a hero have found one in this one-woman precursor to today’s progressive politics. NYT July 6, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/
A pamphlet advertising Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign.
Photograph: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History
2019 Belongs to Shirley Chisholm A feature film. A monument. Tattoos in her honor. People looking for a hero have found one in this one-woman precursor to today’s progressive politics. NYT July 6, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/
Shirley Anita Chisholm 1924-2005
first black woman to serve in Congress and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination,
(...)
Mrs. Chisholm was an outspoken, steely educator-turned-politician who shattered racial and gender barriers as she became a national symbol of liberal politics in the 1960's and 1970's.
Over the years, she also had a way of making statements that angered the establishment, as in 1974, when she asserted that "there is an undercurrent of resistance" to integration "among many blacks in areas of concentrated poverty and discrimination" -- including in her own district in Brooklyn.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/22/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/11/04/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/21/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/05/
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/06/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/
https://www.npr.org/templates/
https://www.npr.org/templates/
https://www.npr.org/templates/
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jan/04/
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/
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