Shirley Chisholm: The Last Interview
by JP Poole

Before I talk about how inspiring Shirley Chisholm is, how her impact can be felt today (at this very moment), I should tell you that once a man called her “a little schoolteacher.” Now, during her political career she had been called a lot of things, much worse, but “little” she was not. In fact, even when she was little, growing up in Barbados, she was a leader amongst her peers and watchful of her younger sisters. Her mother recounted that at age three, Chisholm gathered the six- and seven-year-olds in the neighborhood, and shouted “Listen to me.” She would not be ignored.

Born in Brooklyn in 1924, Chisholm moved back to the U.S. at age eleven to live with her parents, who had been working hard to build a solid foundation for their children to thrive.

Chisholm did become a teacher, she loved kids. She went to Brooklyn College, and then got a master’s degree in early education from Columbia University. In the late sixties, she launched a bid for Congress in her neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, running against James Farmer—the man who called her “a little schoolteacher”—and won. Then, in 1972, she announced she was running for President.

Never, in her life, did Chisholm do anything small. She fought for children, struggling mothers, students, and teachers. She fought against racism, sexism, and poverty, and opposed the Vietnam War. She stood up for immigrant rights and spoke fluent Spanish. Her motto was simple: “unbought and unbossed.” All too often, she had witnessed politicians fall prey to their own self-interests. She said, “Many people don’t understand that when you’re going to bring about change in a society, that change has to come from individuals who have a really deep commitment to what they’re doing.”

Of all The Last Interview books that I’ve read, Shirley Chisholm is one of my favorites. Her last interview in 2002 has some spot on and eerie predictions that I won’t reveal here. She did not want history to remember her as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, or the first black woman to run for President, “but as a black woman who lived in the twentieth century and who dared to be herself.” She added, “I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change.” If you pick up this book, you’ll read for yourself how the electrically-charged change that Chisholm brought about is a strong current that’s only getting stronger with each individual who learns her name.