Review by Choice Review
Curwood (Univ. of Kentucky) has written a new biography of Shirley Chisholm, a towering figure in American politics from the 1960s through the 1980s, which doubles as a primer on the American political system, covering the good, the bad, and the ugly. Shirley Chisholm was born Shirley Anita St. Hill to working-class Barbadian immigrants in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York, on November 20, 1924. As a child, she lived with her grandmother in Bridgetown, Barbados, where for six years, between the ages of four and ten, she was surrounded by stalwart, independent Black women who instilled in her a strong work ethic that Chisholm carried throughout her life. In particular, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Chisholm's grandmother Emmeline Chase Seale formed the foundation of her political philosophy of Black feminist power politics. As First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled the country to spread her husband's message of renewal and hope while simultaneously pushing for equal rights to be extended to Black Americans specifically and the downtrodden universally. Following FDR's death, President Harry Truman appointed Eleanor as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, where she chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Humanitarian Mary McLeod Bethune devoted her life to education, women's rights, and civil rights. Both women's humanitarian work is well documented. Largely unknown, however, Emmeline Chase Seale, Chisholm's grandmother, emphasized independence and the strength of family to her young granddaughter. Curwood identifies each of these women as seminal to Chisholm's development, yet she offers little background on the work they did that so influenced Chisholm. Back in Brooklyn, despite facing debilitating segregation and discrimination daily, Chisholm excelled in school, eventually earning her bachelor's degree, cum laude, in sociology and Spanish from Brooklyn College in 1946. She began her professional career as a primary school teacher before moving into administration. Believing education to be the best avenue through which to overcome or at least mitigate society's ills, she later earned a master's degree in education from Teacher's College, Columbia University, in 1951. Her belief in the importance of education shaped her worldview and political career. Following the end of World War II, Brooklyn's Black community grew increasingly politically active. Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, Chisholm's stomping grounds, saw their communities change from largely white to Black, improving Chisholm's chances for a life in electoral politics. Coinciding with second-wave feminism, she began her political career by serving in local Democratic organizations before winning election to the New York State Legislature in 1964, where she aligned with the rank and file rather than the leadership. Though dedicated to principles over politics, she "certainly employed politicking to accumulate power" (p. 62). After representing Brooklyn's Seventeenth Assembly District in Albany for four years, she was elected to represent Brooklyn's then newly created Twelfth District in the U.S. House of Representatives, a seat she held for seven terms. With her election to the House in 1968, Chisholm became the first Black woman representative, paving the way for many others to come. Of course, being the first of anything often comes with many challenges, and Chisholm's experience was no exception. Early in her tenure in the House of Representatives, she faced a racist tirade from an older white male colleague who represented a district in the South and felt it unfair that the two of them should earn the same salary. She suggested that he get used to her, as she represented the beginning of a change in politics. Additionally, as a first-term member in a system steeped in seniority, Chisholm did not initially get the committee assignments she desired, but over time, she did get a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee by forming connections with leadership. Here, it would have helped had Curwood taken more time to describe for readers the organizational structure of the House, which today has twenty standing committees, each of which has subcommittees and professional staff to assist the representatives. A clear explanation of how legislation is created and moved forward would also have benefited readers because, while Chisholm proposed bills, many of them never went forward. She did support the Equal Rights Amendment proposed by Alice Paul in 1923 and reintroduced regularly until it passed the House and Senate to be approved by the states in 1972, but its time limit was not met, so it has not been added to the Constitution at this time. While in Congress, Chisholm was also among those who called for a withdrawal from the war in Vietnam and for shifting funds from defense to domestic aid for the disadvantaged. A founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Chisholm understood the need for Black members to join together to further their agenda. Throughout her political career, she knew the importance of alliances and coalitions to draw together as many supporters as possible, regardless of gender, race, or political persuasion. As Curwood points out, at one point this included segregationist George Wallace who shared with Chisholm an interest in those who lacked power to improve their position. In fact, Chisholm regularly worked across the aisle to move legislation forward--a phenomenon that seems unlikely in today's Congress--for instance, when she joined a bipartisan coalition to pass Title IX legislation in 1972, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. During her tenure in the House, Chisholm associated with the smallest Democratic coalition: the party's most progressive representatives. Her early opposition to the Vietnam War, her Black feminist power politics agenda, and her association with the Black Panthers all fit that bill. Throughout her life Chisholm joined or founded multiple organizations to further Black feminism, and like so many pioneering spirits she was ahead of her time. Not only was she the first Black woman elected to the House of Representatives, she was also the first Black woman to run in the presidential primaries for a major party, entering the Democratic primaries as a candidate for the presidency in 1972. Although her campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, she ran with the hope of winning, which made a serious statement for future candidates, both Black and female. Sadly, however, despite the election of a Black female vice president in 2020, progress has been excruciatingly slow. Shirley Chisholm remained devoted to the cause of Black feminism throughout her career, first in education and later in politics. After retiring from politics she returned to education, this time at the college level, accepting a position at Mount Holyoke College in 1983 and later teaching courses at Spelman College in Atlanta, a historically Black women's college. Throughout her career and even in retirement, she frequently delivered public speeches locally, nationally, and around the world to further justice and equality for all. In this biography, Curwood provides incredibly detailed descriptions of virtually everyone who ever worked on Chisholm's staff, from legislative aides to chauffeurs to the women who took her wigs to be refreshed--so much so that it becomes hard to see the forest for the trees, making the book ponderous at times. This reviewer wonders whether Curwood is channeling Chisholm herself--clearly a workaholic with a 24/7/365 work ethic. Still, the book is very nicely illustrated, and the photographs indicate that Chisholm knew how to have a good time, particularly one depicting her dancing with fellow Democratic lawmaker Anthony Travia in Governor Rockefeller's Albany, New York, mansion, demonstrating her joie de vivre. This well-written volume is a treasure trove for researchers and advanced students interested in the workings of American politics. The minutia may, however, overpower lay readers. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. --Duncan R. Jamieson, Ashland University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
University of Kentucky historian Curwood (Stormy Weather) delivers a comprehensive and admiring biography of U.S. congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (1924--2005). Born into a family of Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn, N.Y., Chisholm was "opinionated, self-assured, and confident" as a young child. After graduating from Brooklyn College, she launched a career in early education, and later claimed that the discrimination she faced while interviewing for a teaching job at an affluent private school in a predominantly white neighborhood helped sparked her interest in political organizing. She became the first African American congresswoman in 1968 and the first to run for president in 1972. Despite receiving numerous credible death threats during the Democratic primary, Chisholm had no Secret Service protection and struggled to be taken seriously by party officials. Curwood also spotlights Chisholm's coalition building with antiwar, Native American, and LGBTQ activists; her controversial visit to see her primary opponent, segregationist George Wallace, in the hospital after he was shot; her advocacy for "raising and expanding minimum wage protections," passing the Equal Rights Amendment, and boycotting South Africa's apartheid government; and the backlash sparked by her support for Ed Koch and other white politicians over Black candidates. Accessible and enlightening, this is a well-rounded portrait of a pioneering politician. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In her latest work, Curwood (African American and Africana studies, Univ. of Kentucky; Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars) takes on firebrand Shirley Chisholm (1924--2005), the first Black woman to serve in Congress, and later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate. Before becoming known as the "people's politician," Chisholm, the daughter of immigrants, spent her childhood in Barbados and Brooklyn, before being catapulted onto the national stage through her work in the Democratic party. This thorough biography of Chisholm is a welcome addition to the fields of political science and women's studies, particularly due to Chisholm's involvement in bolstering the Black feminist movement in the mid-20th century. Readers will be left with a greater understanding of her impact on the U.S. political landscape and the personal and political toll of her efforts; they'll also develop a deeper understanding of the work to close inequality gaps that remains. VERDICT Strongly recommended for social science students and public collections where similar titles circulate well.--Mattie Cook
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A well-rounded portrait of the late politician, who, half a century ago, helped set the tone for contemporary Black and feminist politics. The child of Black Caribbean immigrants--"her very person," writes historian Curwood, "was at the intersection of race, gender, ethnic, and class identities"--Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) decided early in life on a career in politics. She first attained influence in New York and then captured a formerly gerrymandered district in Brooklyn to enter the House of Representatives. There, she served for seven terms, where she defended issues of interest not just to her constituency, but also to an increasingly restive national community. She was prescient in many ways. Early on, writes the author, she worked to diversify the Democratic Party, pressing for a Black vice presidential candidate, a Native American secretary of the interior, and so forth--a vision realized only with the Biden administration half a century later. Chisholm fought what she considered the restrictiveness of terms such as women's liberation and Black Power, which "created reactivity and a lack of critical thinking about how the movements could connect, especially through and among Black women"--again, a vision realized in the Black Lives Matter movement and with the rise of successors such as Stacey Abrams. Curwood deftly reveals Chisholm's complexities and sometimes secretive nature as well as her tenacity in political struggles with Richard Nixon, who finally gave in to her campaign for raising the federal minimum wage in 1974; and Jimmy Carter, whom she faulted for calving off a separate Department of Education from the former Health, Education, and Welfare. As to welfare reform, Chisholm decried efforts to do away with federal aid to the needy even as she viewed welfare itself as "a symptom and direct cost of the corrosive effects of racism and sexism." With the growth of reactionary conservatism in the Reagan years, Chisholm left institutional politics--but by no means political work. A model political biography that all modern activists should read. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
