Postscript: Shirley Chisholm as Principled Political Strategist

“I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America.

“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud.

“I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that.” – Shirley Chisholm, January 25, 1972, Announcement of Run for the Presidency

What is the political and intellectual legacy of Shirley Chisholm? Recent coverage of Chisholm – especially after the announcement of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s choice of Vice-Present – emphasizes ‘trailblazer talk.’ Chisholm’s extraordinary career included being both the first African-American woman elected to the United States congress and the first to run for the U.S. presidency. But emphasizing these “firsts” obscures Shirley Chisholm’s political and intellectual significance. She was a brilliant political strategist who deftly cultivated relationships that allowed her to accomplish her principled and wide-ranging political agenda. Shirley Chisholm said of herself that her achievement was having the "audacity and nerve" to run for the presidency of the United States: "I want history to remember me not as the first black woman to have be elected to the Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the united states, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself." Chisholm spoke and acted forcefully throughout her long career – Her slogan was “unbought and unbossed” – and she defined empowerment in the second half of the 20th century. She is better understood in the context of #BLM and than Kamala Harris.

POSTSCRIPT, a new series from New Books in Political Science, invites authors to react to contemporary political developments that engage their scholarship. Dr. Anastasia Curwood and Dr. Zinga A. Fraser – imminent scholars of Shirley Chisholm’s political strategies and ideals – engage in a remarkable dialogue.

Shirley Chisholm is often “disremembered” and Drs. Curwood and Fraser emphasize the importance of evaluating her work in the context of the Black Power movement of the 1970s, Black Women’s history, and Black feminism. Chisholm’s feminism was central to both her principles and her practice. She spoke the language of intersectionality – emphasizing the overlapping identities of gender, race, and class – decades before it was a popular term in Critical Race Theory. She had a majority woman staff with a woman as her top legislative aid. Political Science often equates political strategy with masculinity – failing to adequately explore Chisholm’s brilliant strategy of cultivating relationships that allowed her to deftly construct cross-cutting alliances. Her understanding of power was complex. She did not care who got credit and artfully created unlikely coalitions that allowed her to accomplish her political goals – always her priority.

Dr. Anastasia Curwood is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and the Director of African-American and Africana Studies in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences. 

Dr. Zinga A. Fraser is an Assistant Professor in the Africana Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College. In addition to her academic responsibilities she is also the Director of the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women’s Activism at Brooklyn College. 

Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (July 2020). Email her comments at [email protected] or tweet to @SusanLiebell.

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