Did you know?: Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress 56 years ago – Essence

Fifty-six years ago, on November 5, 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress.

On Election Day 2024, when a Black woman is the Democratic presidential nominee, ESSENCE looks back on her historic campaign and political profession.

The New York native of Barbados and Guyana began her political profession in 1953, campaigning for Lewis Flagg Jr., who was in search of to change into the first black judge in Brooklyn. More than a decade later, she ran her own campaign, successfully securing a seat in the New York State Assembly.

Chisholm then took off running Congress “[u]sing the motto “unbought and disempowered,” which she later titled her 1970 autobiography.

Her opponent: James Farmer, a black civil rights leader running for the Republican Party. Newly assigned 12^vol The congressional district “consisted primarily of the community of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and a few other parts of the borough. The residents of Bed-Stuy are predominantly African American and Puerto Rican.” NPR reports. It also gave Chisholm a house-court advantage, as that was where she called home.

Farmer Labeling, Manhattanite“outsider” Chisholm used her knowledge of Spanish to talk to voters and “took her campaign to the streets, literally, driving a truck with a loudspeaker. Making multiple stops, she commonly began her remarks with, “This is a Shirley Chisholm fight,” as NPR reported.

Chisholm soundly outplayed Farmer by over a “2 to 1 margin.” Having discovered about her victoryChisholm made remarks that evening by which he stated, “My dear friends, tonight is very important… not so much for me, but for you, the people of this community.”

She would go on to serve seven conditionsstarting together with her first in 1969. Additionally, she was one in all the founding members of the Congress of Black Caucuses that yr. Even as a freshman, Chisholm wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted. She made a splash by demanding that she be transferred from the House of Representatives Forestry Committee.

Then, “[s]was assigned to the Committee on Veterans Affairs, eventually ending up serving on the Committee on Education and Labor, now called the Committee on Veterans Affairs Education and Labor Committee.

In 1972 she crashed one other one glass ceilingbecoming “the first African American woman to run for President of the United States when she sought the Democratic nomination in 1972.”

Chisholm’s legacy won’t ever be forgotten. Since her victory in New York, she says, only twenty-two other states have also elected a black woman to Congress Pew Research Center. Virginia just elected its first black congresswoman this yr. A complete of 58 “Black women… have ever been elected to the national legislature, counting both voting and non-voting members of Congress.”