Serendipity Remembers: November 2026

Shirley Chisholm made history on 5 November 1968 when she became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York’s 12th congressional district.  Her election took place against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, widespread racial inequality, and the systematic exclusion of women, particularly Black women, from formal political power.

Chisholm’s achievement was not only symbolic but structural.  She entered Congress at a time when Black women were largely absent from national decision-making spaces and immediately used her platform to challenge racial injustice, gender discrimination, poverty and militarism.  She was a founding member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women’s Political Caucus, ensuring that Black political representation and feminist politics were institutionally embedded rather than marginal.

Famously describing herself as “unbought and unbossed”, Chisholm rejected political conformity and party control, advocating instead for accountability to the communities she represented.  Her presence in Congress disrupted entrenched assumptions about who could govern and whose voices were legitimate in American democracy.  Her later run for the Democratic presidential nomination further cemented her legacy as a figure who expanded the boundaries of political possibility for Black women in the United States.                                                                 

Image: Shirley Chisolm reviewing political stats in 1965

Source: Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b44150

Author: Roger Higgins, World Telegram staff photographer

Permission: Public Domain