Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author. She was a Congresswoman, representing New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1968, she became the first African-American woman elected to Congress. On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination (Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination). She received 152 first-ballot votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

Read more about Shirley Chisholm:  Early Life, Career, Personal Life, Retirement and Death, In Popular Culture, Writings, Honors

Famous quotes by shirley chisholm:

    I don’t measure America by its achievement, but by its potential.
    Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)

    We Americans have the chance to become someday a nation in which all radical stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically. We can become a dynamic equilibrium, a harmony of many different elements, in which the whole will be greater than all its parts and greater than any society the world has seen before. It can still happen.
    Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)