Happy 100th, Congresswoman Chisholm!

by Liana Cassar, FV@W Interim Executive Director & OASIS Director

“The door is not open yet,” she said, “but it is ajar.”

The words of the first Black woman elected to Congress, Shirley Chisholm, reflect her wisdom, her awareness of her impact, and her love of a good metaphor. I expect that she imagined that by the time the United States was marking her 100th birthday that we would have pushed the door much further open than we have.

I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘firsts’ and my fascination with Congresswoman Chisholm has been no exception. She was not only the country’s first Black Congresswoman, but also the first Black woman to run for President. Her campaign slogan for her congressional and presidential races was ‘Unbought and Unbossed’.

In Family Values @ Work’s OASIS program, we sometimes talk about being part of the ‘trailblazer ecosystem’, a term brought to us by Jean Sinzdak from the Center for American Women in Politics. We so often celebrate the trailblazers, like Congresswoman Chisholm, and rightly so. But they do not blaze the trail just so we can continue to praise them, and treat their work, as organizers, as campaigners, as elected officials, as superhuman work that ordinary mortals cannot replicate or expand on. They blaze the trails so we can more clearly see a path to where we need to go.

In a year when for the first time in history, two Black women were elected to the US Senate, Angela Alsobrooks, MD, and Lisa Blunt Rochester, DE, who will serve simultaneously, we can see progress and we can see the development of the trailblazer ecosystem that has developed in Congresswoman Chisholm’s wake. Senators-elect Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester are the legislative descendants of their unbought and unbossed legislative ancestor.

Congresswoman Chisholm was a champion for workers, for caregivers, for educators, for families and for children. She fought to give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage, worked to expand the food stamp program, supported universal healthcare and advocated for federally funded child care. She was a trailblazer, not just for Black women interested in higher office, but also for those of us who continue to fight for an equitable care economy and investments in that economy.

Congresswoman Chisholm blazed a trail that has widened greatly and 100 years after her birth and 19 years after her passing there are many leaders – elected officials, advocates, activists, caregivers and organizers – who are walking, marching and widening the trail she blazed, so that we can continue in her footsteps to, as she put it during her presidential race, “demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo”.

Congresswoman Chisholm, we are deeply grateful for the path you have set us on and joyfully celebrate you on your 100th birthday. We promise to continue to do everything we can to push the door open a bit wider.