Fifty years after she became the first black woman elected to Congress, Shirley Chisholm is finally being put on a pedestal amid a wider re-examination of her achievements and significance.
New York City will erect a statue of Chisholm – also the first black person and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination – outside Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, officials recently announced.
The city estimates there are 150 statues of male historical figures on city property – but just five of historical women. In Manhattan’s Central Park alone, there are 23 statues – and the only female figure is Alice in Wonderland, a fictional girl.
“That’s pretty illustrative of just how screwed up the situation is,” said deputy mayor Alicia Glen. “Central Park is the most visited park in the United States. If the only woman people see in the most visited park in the United States is a made-up woman, we have a serious problem on our hands.”
On what would have been her 94th birthday, Chisholm became the first winner in a program launched to commission more monuments to women.
The drive to honor more women came after another statue commission, formed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to root out what he called “symbols of hate” on city property. It stirred debate over the fate of monuments to controversial historical figures like Christopher Columbus, but in the end led to the removal of just one statue, of a gynecologist who experimented on slaves.
For Glen, all the fighting about statues of controversial men drove home what was missing from the city’s places of honor, an omission she called a “low-level burn” that bothered her for years.
“It’s a really important body of work, but 52% of New Yorkers are women. That’s the biggest, most glaring problem we have in the public realm,” she said. “I was like, let’s get real, people. Sexism has been the single most successful and pervasive form of discrimination in the history of the world. Let’s do something about correcting the public realm for women.”
An artist for the Chisholm statue will be chosen next year. The monument is expected to be completed in 2020.
Chisholm is also the subject of a newly announced film. The Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis will play Chisholm in the Amazon biopic The Fighting Shirley Chisholm.
Lawmakers have also launched an effort to award her the Congressional Gold Medal.
“It’s about time,” Zinga Fraser, a Brooklyn College professor and director of the school’s Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn women’s activism, said of the spate of recent recognition for Chisholm’s legacy.
Chisholm was born and bred in Brooklyn, her mother hailing from Barbados. She was elected to Congress in 1968 after serving in the state legislature, and launched her bid for president in 1972. She died in 2005 at age 80.
The Brooklyn representative was known for her slogan, “unbought and unbossed”, and memorably said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
When House leadership shunted her to the agriculture committee – leading her to quip that the only thing they knew about Brooklyn was that a tree grew there – she used the position to help create the food stamp program to feed hungry families.
Her run for president sparked opposition among both white feminists and black political leaders, Fraser said.
“Shirley Chisholm, being African American and being a woman, understood what it means to be on the outside,” she said. “When she says she’s unbought and unbossed, that means she will make the decision for herself and those she represents, regardless of what the political fallout may be.”
Chisholm was chosen for the first statue from among 274 women nominated by New Yorkers to the She Built NYC initiative. She ranked third in the vote count, after Francesca Xavier Cabrini, a Catholic saint who aided immigrants, and famed urbanist Jane Jacobs.
Plans for her monument come in a year of other historic firsts for women elected to Congress, making her a particularly relevant pick for the current political moment.
Officials plan to choose more honorees and commission additional statues. “This is not just about one woman. We’ll be back,” she said.