Currently a features writer at Collider, Elisa Guimarães is an arts and entertainment journalist and a critic with over a decade of experience. Passionate about movies and TV shows as a whole, she started her career when she was still in college, writing for a local newspaper after a brief stint in film school.
The Big Picture The 1972 presidential election was a hot moment for American politics: President Richard Nixon was finishing his first term drowned by corruption scandals that would eventually contribute to his 1974 resignation and the Vietnam War was still raging on.
In this chaotic environment, people between the ages of 18 and 21 were given the right to vote for the first time, and the race to capture these young minds was on. It seemed like the perfect scenario for an unlikely candidate to come along and challenge everything, and no one represented this sentiment more than Shirley Chisholm, the subject of Netflix's newest political biopic, Shirley. Directed by John Ridley, Shirley features Regina King in the titular role of the first Black woman to be voted for Congress in the United States, a woman whose political achievements went all the way to the presidential race. Sure, Chisholm, who ran in the Democratic primaries, didn't win—she didn't even make it as the party’s official candidate, losing to Senator George McGovern. However, her candidacy was nonetheless a feat, as the people—particularly those most disenfranchised by the system—felt like they had power at their fingertips. Shirley PG-13BiopicDrama 710 Shirley Chisholm makes a trailblazing run for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination after becoming the first Black woman elected to Congress. Release Date March 22, 2024 Director John Ridley Cast Regina King , Lance Reddick , Lucas Hedges , Brian Stokes Mitchell , Andre Holland , Terrence Howard , Christina Jackson , Michael Cherrie Runtime 117 minutes Main Genre Biopic Who Was Shirley Chisholm Before the 1972 Presidential Race? Though Ridley’s movie begins with Chisholm taking office as a representative in 1968, her story in the realms of institutional politics begins a little earlier. A child of Barbadian immigrants and a school teacher with a Master of Arts from Columbia University, Chisholm was an educational consultant for the New York City Bureau of Child Welfare between the years of 1959 and 1964. She followed this position with a seat in the New York State Assembly, and from there she made the jump to the national landscape. In 1968, she defeated Republican civil rights leader, James Farmer, and won a seat in the House of Representatives, thus becoming the first Black woman to hold an elected position in U.S. Congress. Chisholm ran a tough campaign, marked by the slogan, “Fighting Shirley Chisholm - Unbought and Unbossed,” which eventually earned her the nickname, “Fighting Shirley”. While serving in Congress, Chisholm helped found the Congressional Black Caucus, became one of the few representatives to agree to hold hearings on the Vietnam War, and served on the Agriculture Committee and the Education and Labor Committee. According to the BBC’s History Extra, “Throughout her time serving on these committees, she consistently championed and battled for socially progressive legislation such as allowing greater education funding, access to food stamps, and the creation of a nutritional program for women, infants, and children.” This shift from one committee to the other is brought up in Shirley as a demonstration of its protagonist’s strength. Other characters make a point of stating how she fought the Speaker of the House until he finally caved in and assigned her to a more prestigious position, one that would be related to the day-to-day struggles of the Brooklyn people who actually voted for Chisholm. However, the film doesn’t actually show us how this went down. According to PBS, her seat on the Education and Labor Committee came at the cost of a very important vote: the one for Majority Leader. Instead of voting for a Black candidate, Chisholm aligned herself with a white one, and that’s what eventually earned her this coveted position. What Happened During the 1972 Presidential Campaign Portrayed in ‘Shirley’? Still with the strong slogan, “Unbossed and Unbought,” Shirley ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee against George McGovern, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Henry M. Jackson, and George Wallace. She was the first Black major-party candidate in a presidential election, and the first woman to run for said position in the Democratic Party, with Senator Margaret Chase Smith running in the Republican primaries in 1964. Though Chisholm eventually lost to McGovern, she managed to secure about half a million votes and 152 delegates. She also got a ton of influential minds on her side, including the notorious Black Panther Party leader, Huey Newton. It was a powerful message, and one that resonated with a lot of people, especially in a context such as the early 1970s, in which civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war sentiment, and the power of youth were all the rage. “I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that,” Chisholm said while announcing her candidacy. However, she never quite managed to consolidate support among those who she hoped would rally behind her. While Shirley shows images of both Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem speaking in favor of Chisholm, the real Steinem actually supported McGovern. Besides, the 1972 race was not a pretty one. Chisholm faced quite a bit of backlash, motivated mainly by sexism and racism, and there were many threats on her life, as shown in Shirley. In 1982, though, she stated that her gender weighed more heavily in her opponents' eyes than her race. This is probably best evidenced by the fact that, while Chisholm had a lot of support among Black women, Black men weren’t necessarily by her side, and she faced a ton of discrimination inside her own caucus. Related Netflix's 'Shirley' Trailer Reveals Regina King as First Black Congresswoman in The U.S. The movie premieres on March 22. What Happened to Shirley Chisholm After the 1972 Election? Close Shirley does a fine job of capturing the atmosphere of this remarkable period, as well as of portraying the key moments of Chisholm’s campaign; it's a faithful portrayal of a woman's fight to change the system from the inside. Shirley Chisholm’s story is a story that deserves to be told, and no one knows this better than Regina King herself, who spent 15 years of her life trying to get this movie made. Chisholm did not abandon her political career following her defeat in the 1972 Democratic primaries. Instead, she served as a congressional representative up until 1983, when she retired from politics. Ten years later, President Bill Clinton would nominate her to be the American ambassador to Jamaica; Chisholm, however, declined, citing her health. Shirley Chisholm passed away in 2005 at the age of 80, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015, a posthumous recognition of everything that she helped achieve. While she didn’t win the presidential race, Chisholm opened the doors of the Democratic Party and of American politics as a whole to women, Black people, and members of many other disenfranchised groups that wanted to run for office. “I ran because somebody had to do it first,” she’s credited with saying, and by doing so, she proved that it was possible.
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