Shirley Chisholm, 80
Posted: Monday, January 3rd, 2005 4:52 pm
MIAMI, Jan. 2 — Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and a candidate for the presidency in 1972, died Saturday in Florida, friends said. She was 80.
“She was our Moses that opened the Red Sea for us,” Robert E. Williams, president of the NAACP in Flagler County, told the Associated Press late Sunday. …
Chisholm was elected to the House from Brooklyn in 1968 and was an outspoken advocate for women and minorities during her seven terms. She was a riveting speaker who often criticized Congress as being too clubby and unresponsive.
“My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn’t always discuss for reasons of political expediency,” she once said.
Chisholm became a congresswoman the same year Richard M. Nixon was elected to the White House and served until two years into Ronald Reagan’s tenure as president. She was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969. … Read full obituary
