Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholmwas an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first African American woman elected to the United States Congress, and represented New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth30 November 1924
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Women know, and so do many men, that two or three children who are wanted, prepared for, reared amid love and stability, and educated to the limit of their ability will mean more for the future of the black and brown races from which they come than any number of neglected, hungry, ill-housed and ill-clothed youngsters. Pride in one's race, as will simple humanity, supports this view.
Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.
... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.
There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.
My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.
At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.
Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them.
Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.
America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity ...
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.
I have never cared too much what people way. What I am interested in is what they do.
Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.