Brooklyn’s own Shirley Chisholm personified the definition of tenacious:
“persisting in existence, not easily dispelled”
The unfolding of her story that fuels my admiration of her & reminds me that the road we think we choose for ourselves is sometimes already preordained.
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Winning prizes on the debate team at Brooklyn College & graduating cum laude in 1946 where professors encouraged her to consider a political career. Chisholm declined stating she that faced a “double handicap” as both Black and female.
From there she works as a nursery school teacher, earns her masters from Columbia University in early childhood education. By 1960, she was a consultant to the New York City Division of Day Care. The racial and gender inequality she witnessed/experienced leads her join local chapters of the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Urban League, as well as the Democratic Party club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Ya’ll by 1964, Chisholm runs & becomes the second Black person in the New York State Legislature. By 1968 she has sought—and won—a seat in Congress. There, “Fighting Shirley” introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and championed racial and gender equality, the plight of the poor, and ending the Vietnam War. She was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971, and in 1977 became the first Black woman and second woman ever to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee.
In 1972, Shirley Chisholm becomes the first woman and Black American to seek the nomination for President of the United States.
