On this day in New York · November 30, 1924
Shirley Chisholm Is Born in Brooklyn
The daughter of a Barbadian seamstress and a British Guianese factory hand grew up to become the first Black woman ever elected to Congress.
The facts
- Born
- November 30, 1924, Brooklyn, New York
- Birth name
- Shirley Anita St. Hill
- District
- New York's 12th, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
- Elected
- 1968, took office 1969, first Black woman in Congress
Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn to immigrant parents: her father, Charles, had come from British Guiana by way of Barbados to work in a burlap bag factory, and her mother, Ruby, was a seamstress from Barbados. As a child she spent several years living with her grandmother on a farm in Barbados, an education she credited for the rest of her life. She came back to Brooklyn, built a career in early childhood education, and in 1968 won the newly drawn 12th congressional district centered on Bedford-Stuyvesant. She took her seat in January 1969 as the first Black woman ever elected to the United States Congress, a title New York got to claim before anywhere else in the country.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados.
Shirley Chisholm, in her 1970 autobiography Unbought and Unbossed
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
A Bed-Stuy congresswoman broke a barrier no one in Washington had broken before her, and she did it representing the same Brooklyn blocks her parents had come to as immigrants.
Sources
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