On January 20, 2021, Senator Kamala Harris will be sworn-in as Vice President of the United States. She will be the first woman to serve in this role. Her ground-breaking achievement is notable not only for her gender, but also for her Caribbean and South Asian heritage. This historic moment reminds us of Shirley Chisholm, also a woman with a Caribbean background, and her ground-breaking run for the presidency almost fifty years ago.
“I am the candidate of the people of America.” With these words, on January 25, 1972, Shirley Chisholm launched her candidacy at a news conference in a Baptist Church in her Brooklyn district. Chisholm was then serving as a representative to Congress from Bedford Stuyvesant.
Shirley Chisholm (left) and Coretta Scott King, join Eleanor Holmes Norton as she is sworn-in at City Hall by Mayor Beame as the Commissioner of the City Commission on Human Rights, March 8, 1974. Mayor Beame Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Born in Brooklyn in 1924 to Caribbean-immigrant parents, Chisholm began her political career in 1964 winning an election to the New York State Assembly. In 1968, she became the first the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress. And in 1972, she became the first African-American woman to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination to the office of the U.S. President. During the press conference announcing her candidacy she clearly stated who she was:
“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 equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests. I am the candidate of the people of America…”
Although her candidacy was ultimately unsuccessful, Chisholm did receive 430,703 votes during the primary season, 2.7 percent of the total. She outpolled candidates like U.S. Senator Scoop Jackson, former North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford and New York City Mayor John Lindsay. And in June 1972, she became the first woman to participate in a presidential debate. Chisholm said she ran for the office “in spite of hopeless odds... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.” Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982, and died in Florida in 2005.
Municipal Archives mayoral collections include correspondence from federal offices and officials. Member of Congress Shirley Chisholm wrote to Mayor Koch to express her support for the “trade-in” of federal funding for the controversial Westway Highway to support mass transit. September 23, 1980. Mayor Edward Koch Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
More recently, New Yorkers have celebrated Chisholm’s achievements. On July 2, 2019, the Shirley Chisholm State Park opened in Southeast Brooklyn. Located on 407 acres adjacent to Jamaica Bay, the new park occupies some of the highest ground in the city and offers spectacular panoramic views of the Empire State Building and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. And soon, a statue of Chisholm will be erected in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, thanks to the work of the She Built NYC Commission dedicated to creating monuments in city parks to honor notable and historical women.
When Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982, she said she did not want to go down in history as “the nation’s first black congresswoman” or, as she put it, “the first black woman congressman.... I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts,” she said. “That’s how I’d like to be remembered.”
And we will remember her. Long-time WNYC cameraman Frank Rosa captured Chisholm’s memorable presidential candidacy announcement on 16mm-color film. The original footage is one of the stellar items in the Municipal Archives’ collection of WNYC films. It recently has been digitized as through a Local Government Records Management Improvement Grant from the New York State Archives.
The Archives’ WNYC film collection has long enticed historians, filmmakers, and researchers with its wide-ranging subject matter and visual appeal. Previously, providing access was a challenge. Using a projector could easily scratch the film. Viewing footage manually is cumbersome and potentially damaging. Beginning in the 1980s, the Archives received grant funds to reformat selected footage onto various videotape formats, the only technology available at that time. However, those tapes are now reaching the end of their useful life and beginning to deteriorate. With the advent of more affordable digital technology in the 2000s, the Municipal Archives has endeavored to digitize films so that they can be safely viewed and copied. Over the course of this latest grant-funded project, more than 150 hours of original WNYC films dating from the 1960s and '70s has been digitized. When processing and cataloging is completed, the footage will be made available in the DORIS web gallery. Look for future blogs highlighting footage in this unique collection.
In the meantime, take a few minutes to watch a remarkable woman make history.