Shirley Chisholm Research Paper

Shirley Chisholm Biography
As a new member of a Barbadian family Shirley Chisholm was born in Brooklyn in the city of New York, at the early age of three years old Chisholm moved to the Barbados Island that at the time was a British colony, there she took a well-rounded early education which stressed the traditional British teachings of reading, writing, and history.
She returned to New York when she was ten years old during the height of the Great Depression, a severe economic shortage, therefor life was not easy for her and her seven brothers, so she attended to the New York Public School, where she did it well. Then she assisted to the Girls’ High School. But because of the economic hardship the country was affronting she lost tuition scholarships that she had won to several distinguished colleges
so she stayed at home and attended Brooklyn College.
At college she studied to be a teacher, there she met some campus and community groups where she learned the arts of organizing and fund-raising while she developed an especial interest in the politics.
Chisholm cultivated a deep resentment against the role of women in politics; she believed that men and women were equal so for her it seemed unfair that their role in politics were always a secondary role, she find a way to voice her opinion about economic and social structures through campus politics and working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.)
She began to work, in 1946, after her honors graduation, as a teacher in a nursery school, later she became director of early childhood education schools. She engaged with the Democratic Party became that way politically active, there she build a reputation as a person who challenged the traditional roles of women, African American and the poor. She married Conrad Chisholm in 1949 and settled together in Brooklyn. While she developed as an excellent teacher she involved in many organizations like the League of Women Voters as well as in the Seventeenth Assembly District Democratic
Club.
As in the mid-1960s the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing her ideals were perfect for the time, so she decided to run for the New York State Assembly and in 1964 Chisholm was elected to the assembly; there Chisholm sponsored fifty bills but only eight of them passed, in which she reiterated the same value that every person had, she stayed at the assembly until 1968 when she decided to run for the U.S. Congress, this time she was elected against her opponent, the Civil Rights Leader James Farmer, this way she began his long career in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the congress she attempted to focus her attention on the needs of the people, mainly the voters she represented, or constituents. Therefor she had protested about the amount of money spent in the Vietnam War while the social programs suffered. But in the other hand she fought for the women rights, black women specially; on the subject of the abortion she supported the woman’s right to choose, She spoke about the women professions arguing that women were capable of entering many other professions, for black women she fought against the stereotypical roles the society gave them like maids and nannies all that made Chisholm a popular speaker on college campuses.
Her political career became successes such way that she decide to run for the highest office in the land, President of the United States of America but she did not got it.
In 1983 she became Purington Professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts teaching politics and women’s studies, in 1985 she was the visiting scholar at the Spelman College and finally in 1987 she left away his teacher career and continued that way involving in politics, later she participated co-funding the National Political Congress of Black Women in 1984.
Although Chisholm broke ground as the nation's first black congresswoman and the first black presidential candidate, she has said she would rather be remembered for continuing throughout her life to fight for rights for women and African-Americans.