50 Fun Facts About Shirley Chisholm

Elected from inner-city Brooklyn, Shirley Chisholm protested being put on which House committee?

Agriculture made no sense for a city district, she argued, and party leaders moved her to Veterans' Affairs. A Brooklyn rabbi had urged her to use the seat to get surplus food to the hungry.

Which segregationist rival did Shirley Chisholm visit in the hospital after he was shot in 1972?

George Wallace was her ideological opposite, and the visit angered many of her backers. Years later he helped win Southern votes for one of her minimum-wage bills.

Which Oscar winner plays Shirley Chisholm in Shirley, the 2024 film about her presidential campaign?

Regina King signed on in 2021 with John Ridley writing and directing, and the film arrived three years later.

Which 2020 presidential candidate's logo echoed the red and yellow of Shirley Chisholm's 1972 run?

Kamala Harris chose the colors as a tribute, and she launched her run in January 2019, 47 years after Chisholm announced hers in January 1972.

Brooklyn-born Shirley Chisholm spent ages five through nine living on which Caribbean island?

Barbados gave her a strict British-style schooling that she credited for her ease with words, and an accent she kept for life.

Shirley Chisholm's husband Conrad, her bodyguard for part of the 1972 campaign, had which job?

Private investigator Conrad Chisholm specialized in negligence lawsuits. He fully backed his wife's run for the White House.

Shirley Chisholm State Park, opened in Brooklyn in 2019, was built on top of two former what?

Landfills that once took nearly 40 percent of the city's trash now lie under the largest state park in New York City.

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm became the first woman to seek the presidential nomination of which party?

Democratic voters gave her about 430,000 primary votes, and she was also the first Black candidate to seek a major party's nomination for president.

Three threats on Shirley Chisholm's life in 1972 led which federal agency to begin protecting her?

The Secret Service took over in May 1972, months into her campaign; until then her husband had been her only guard.

In 2014, Shirley Chisholm became the 37th honoree in the Black Heritage series of what?

Postage stamps bearing her portrait were issued as Forever stamps, which stay valid for first-class mail whatever the price becomes.

Which Brooklyn neighborhood formed the heart of the district that sent Shirley Chisholm to Congress?

Bedford-Stuyvesant anchored a district that a court had ordered redrawn, opening the way for Brooklyn's first Black member of Congress.

Which language, her minor at Brooklyn College, did Shirley Chisholm use to court voters in 1968?

Spanish helped her reach the district's large Puerto Rican population, and she kept using it throughout her time in politics.

At five, Shirley Chisholm was sent with her sisters to a Caribbean farm run by which relative?

Her grandmother, Emaline Seale, raised the girls for about five years while their parents worked and saved in Brooklyn.

Before politics, Shirley Chisholm spent years directing and supervising what kind of facility?

Day care centers were her specialty: by the early 1960s she oversaw ten of them for New York City and was a recognized authority on early education.

At which school did Shirley Chisholm earn her master's degree, taking classes at night after work?

Columbia University's Teachers College awarded her the degree while she held a full-time job in Harlem.

Before going to Washington, Shirley Chisholm won her first election in 1964 to which New York body?

State Assembly work in Albany made her only the second Black woman in the legislature, after her own political club had hesitated to back a female candidate.

Which Freedom Rides organizer and civil rights leader lost the 1968 House race to Shirley Chisholm?

James Farmer ran with Republican and Liberal backing and argued the district needed a man in Washington; she beat him by about two to one.

Shirley Chisholm's first speech on the House floor, in 1969, attacked U.S. involvement in what?

The Vietnam War drew her vow to vote against every military spending bill until the country's priorities were put right.

Shirley Chisholm was the only woman among the 13 founders of which Capitol Hill group in 1971?

Congressional Black Caucus founders were snubbed by the White House at first, so they boycotted the 1971 State of the Union address.

Which South Dakota senator beat Shirley Chisholm and others to the 1972 presidential nomination?

George McGovern won 1,728 delegates to her 152, a tally that still placed her fourth on the roll call.

Which slogan from Shirley Chisholm's first House race became the title of her 1970 autobiography?

Unbought and Unbossed told voters that neither money nor party bosses controlled her. The same words are inscribed on her burial vault.

Which book did Shirley Chisholm publish in 1973, the year after her run for the White House?

The Good Fight followed a shoestring campaign that had spent only about $300,000 in total.

Shirley Chisholm won 152 delegate votes for president at the 1972 convention held in which city?

Miami Beach hosted both major parties' conventions that summer, and Ohio's delegation gave her more votes than any other state's.

Which future Republican presidential nominee worked with Shirley Chisholm to expand food aid?

Bob Dole, then a new senator from Kansas farm country, became her unlikely partner in widening the program that helps poor families buy groceries.

Shirley Chisholm played a key role in creating which federal food program for mothers and babies?

WIC began as a pilot program in 1972 and was operating in 45 states within two years.

Which famous feminist journalist tried to run as a Shirley Chisholm delegate in New York in 1972?

Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan both tried to become Chisholm delegates in New York, and both fell short.

In 1993, Bill Clinton nominated Shirley Chisholm as U.S. ambassador to which Caribbean nation?

Jamaica never received her: poor health forced her to withdraw before she could take up the post.

Which president gave Shirley Chisholm a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House?

Barack Obama presented the medal in 2015, a decade after her death; Congress added its own Gold Medal in 2024.

Which actress won an Emmy for playing Shirley Chisholm in the 2020 miniseries Mrs. America?

Uzo Aduba had already won two Emmys as Crazy Eyes in Orange Is the New Black before taking the role.

Which comedian plays Shirley Chisholm in a spoof 1970s sitcom within History of the World, Part II?

Wanda Sykes also co-wrote and produced the Mel Brooks series, whose running sketch retells the 1972 campaign as a sitcom called Shirley!

After leaving Congress in 1983, Shirley Chisholm spent four years teaching at which women's college?

Mount Holyoke gave her a chair once held by W. H. Auden and Bertrand Russell, and she taught across departments rather than in one.

Although she represented Brooklyn, Shirley Chisholm is buried in which upstate New York city?

Buffalo was home to her second husband, and she lies in the same cemetery as President Millard Fillmore and the singer Rick James.

Shirley Chisholm's father was an avid follower of which Black nationalist leader of the 1920s?

Marcus Garvey's message of Black pride filled her childhood home, where her father, a factory laborer, also championed trade unions.

Which historically Black sorority did Shirley Chisholm join as a student at Brooklyn College?

Delta Sigma Theta was founded at Howard in 1913, and its members marched in that year's women's suffrage parade in Washington.

At Brooklyn College, Shirley Chisholm joined a student society named for which Black heroine?

Harriet Tubman Society members pressed for Black history courses and for integrating Black soldiers into the military during World War II.

As a New York legislator, Shirley Chisholm won unemployment benefits for which excluded group?

Domestic workers included her own mother, and in Congress she later helped bring maids and housekeepers under the federal minimum wage.

Which president vetoed a bill built on a Shirley Chisholm plan, saying it would weaken the family?

Richard Nixon called the plan too expensive; Chisholm and Bella Abzug had first asked for $10 billion to help working parents.

Which proposed change to the Constitution did Shirley Chisholm back, opposing any added exceptions?

Equal Rights Amendment supporters heard her argue that its biggest effects would be social and psychological rather than legal.

Which rapper declared in a popular late-1980s song that he had voted for Shirley Chisholm?

Biz Markie's shout-out introduced her to many young listeners, and rappers including LL Cool J later borrowed the line.

In which state, far from her Brooklyn district, did Shirley Chisholm spend her final years?

Florida became her home in 1991, five years after her second husband died, and she kept writing and lecturing there.

Shirley Chisholm's father was born in which South American country before moving to the Caribbean?

Guyana was still the colony of British Guiana when he left, and he reached New York by way of Cuba in 1923.

Shirley Chisholm campaigned in the 1980s for which civil rights leader's two presidential bids?

Jesse Jackson ran in 1984 and 1988; in the first of those years she also co-founded a national political group for Black women.

In what kind of Brooklyn building did Shirley Chisholm announce her 1972 run for president?

A Baptist church in her own district was the setting, and she used the speech to call for a peaceful revolution at the coming convention.

Shirley Chisholm died in 2005 at the age of 80 on which holiday?

New Year's Day 2005 came months after a series of small strokes had weakened her.

During her 1972 White House run, Shirley Chisholm became the first woman ever to appear in what?

A presidential debate featured a woman for the first time in June 1972, weeks before the party's convention.

Shirley Chisholm grew up as one of four sisters; where did she fall in the birth order?

The oldest of four girls, she had three younger sisters, two of them born within three years of her.

Which future California congresswoman worked on Shirley Chisholm's 1972 campaign as a student?

Barbara Lee had invited Chisholm to speak at Mills College, registered to vote because of the visit, and ended up a convention delegate.

Shirley Chisholm graduated with honors from Brooklyn College in 1946 after majoring in what?

Sociology was her major at a school she picked because tuition was free and she could live at home.

Shirley Chisholm toured Brooklyn housing projects in her 1968 House race in what kind of vehicle?

A sound truck let her pull up outside the buildings and introduce herself over a loudspeaker; she won the primary by about 800 votes.

Shirley, the 2024 film on Shirley Chisholm's run for president, debuted on which streaming platform?

Netflix began streaming it on March 22, 2024, a week after a limited release in theaters.