Young Eyes on the Past

Unbought & Unbossed

THE SHIRLEY CHISHOLM STORY

YOUNG EYES ON THE PAST BY LOREN WILLHIGHT AND MICHAEL GRAY

Shirley Chisholm once said, “In the end anti-Black, anti-female and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.” Having experienced discrimination ourselves, we thought that diving deeper into her specific history as our History Day project would be interesting as well as informative.

Chisholm was a Black woman who continuously experienced adversity while trying to diversify American politics. Chisholm broke barriers in history by trying to transform her community’s issues into solutions. All of these things combined are what inspired us to make such a project about her.

CHISHOLM SPEAKS

When we began our research, we tried to find sources that were credible, but also not just boring facts about her life. We started with the most obvious and bought her memoir, Unbought and Unbossed. (The title came from her 1968 campaign slogan in her successful run for Congress.) This book was informative because it was from her perspective and went all the way from her early life on to her career and what she planned to do in the future after publication. After trying to find important quotes and facts about her from her book, we tried to find professional journal articles that were written by others about Chisholm herself. We wanted to have this project focus on how the intersection of her being a woman and Black made her job more difficult in every way. A lot of journal articles that we found were about how she forged a path for every other Black woman in politics. We found articles explaining how she was a congresswoman and why she decided to run for the presidency at one point. CREATING A WEBSITE

After gathering all this research, we had to find ways to break it up into different parts of the website we were creating so the content would be well-organized. We gave a background first for people who might not have heard of her before because we didn’t know much about her before this project, either. We knew that it would be helpful for everyone and then we went on to explain her short-term impacts on the country. She was instrumental in the development of the government’s food stamp program and later played a critical role in the creation of the Special Supplemental Nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, also known as WIC.

TO THE CAPITOL!

As we looked deeper, we found many more long-term impacts, which makes sense since she was the first to do something as important as serving in the House of Representatives. As the first Black congresswoman, she forged a path for Black people, and Black women specifically. Chisholm was a pioneer in politics, and she was the precursor for a lot of things that are happening today. This project was fun and interesting because we were so excited to learn more about everything that Chisholm did and went through. She was very inspiring, and everything we learned about her motivates us to make a change in this world.

Loren Willhight is a

junior at Toledo Early College High School. She has played violin for six years and performs in the Toledo Symphony Youth Orchestra. She is in Toledo Excel, a scholarship incentive program administered by the high school and the University of Toledo. She would like to become a pharmacist.

Michael Gray attends

the same school and wants to be an engineer.

LEARN MORE

Shirley Chisholm once famously said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” In their biography Shirley Chisholm Is a Verb, author Veronica Chambers and illustrator Rachelle Baker “illuminate how Chisholm was a doer, an active and vocal participant in our nation’s democracy, and a force to be reckoned with.” Aimed at young readers, the biography covers Chisholm’s “early years, her time in Congress, her presidential bid and how her actions left a lasting legacy that continues to inspire, uplift, and instruct.”

On the 40th anniversary of the publication of Unbought and Unbossed in 2010, publisher Take Root Media issued Chisholm’s memoir with essays by Donna Brazile, Shola Lynch and others “exploring Shirley Chisholm’s impact on today and tomorrow’s world.”

LEARN MORE

Left: Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm announcing her candidacy for the presidency in 1972. Above: A campaign poster for Chisholm’s 1972 run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

She was very inspiring, and everything we learned about her motivates us to make a change in this world.