Before Obama, There was Shirley Chisholm

(video)

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author.  She was a Congresswoman, representing New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1968, she became the first African American woman elected to Congress.  On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born in Brooklyn, New York, of immigrant parents.  Her father, Charles Christopher St. Hill, was born in British Guiana and her mother, Ruby Seale, was born in Christ Church, Barbados.  At age three, Chisholm was sent to Barbados to live with her maternal grandmother, Emaline Seale, in Christ Church; where she attended the Vauxhall Primary School. She did not return until roughly seven years later when she arrived in New York City on May 19, 1934.  In her 1970 autobiography Unbought and Unbossed, she wrote: "Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason."