"I am a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I make that statement proudly, in the full knowledge that, as a black person and as a female person, I do not have a chance of actually gaining that office in this election year. I make that statement seriously, knowing that my candidacy itself can change the face and future of American politics — that it will be important to the needs and hopes of every one of you — even though, in the conventional sense, I will not win."
— June 4, 1972

The Brooklyn-born daughter of Caribbean immigrants, Shirley Chisholm spent her early years on her grandmother’s farm in Barbados. Later at Brooklyn College, Chisholm joined the debate team and developed her “cut and thrust oratory style.” A short compendium of Chisholm Quotes will relate her values and temperament:

"Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt."

"Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth."

"Of my two “handicaps” being female put more obstacles in my path than being black."

"At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else."

"I am, was, and always will be a catalyst for change."

"... rhetoric never won a revolution yet."

Shirley Chisholm worked in the childcare field from 1949-1959. Campaigning for better education in Brooklyn, she began to build a political base amongst her neighbors. Those neighbors became her constituents when she was elected to serve in the NY State Assembly in 1964. In 1968, she campaigned to represent New York’s 12th Congressional District in Washington, DC. Running with the campaign slogan “Unbought and Unbossed”, Chisholm won and was the first African-American woman elected to Congress. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women, declared her candidacy for President. She did not win the Democratic nomination, and she knew that she would not. Shirley Chisholm understood that, as an entering wedge, she played a part in opening a door that could nevermore be shut in the faces of American women.