So she announced in 1968 that she was running for Congress. There were howls of laughter, though not from the church ladies, who saw themselves in the reflection of her beatnik eyeglasses.
In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress. She grinned and gave the peace sign. It wasn't black power. It was Shirley power. She wound up serving seven terms.
She pushed for antipoverty legislation and became a star. Ebony magazine wanted her, and so did Ms. magazine. She appeared with Reps. Barbara Jordan and Bella Abzug. She was known as honest and honorable. "Chisholm would not set up any kind of a side deal for her mother, brother, or cousin," says William Howard, who served as her financial adviser.
When Chisholm announced a run for the presidency in 1972, it seemed a little strange. She was the first black to conduct a large-scale presidential campaign within one of the major parties. The Congressional Black Caucus hardly had the numbers then that it has now, but she rolled her eyes when its members asked why she hadn't discussed her presidential plans with them. "Shirley had a lot of self-confidence," says Rangel.
"I Am Woman" by Helen Reddy was humming on the jukebox that year.
"Black people needed somebody," says Sutton. "We had lost Martin and Malcolm." He raised the first $25,000 for her presidential campaign.
At the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, she was smiling from the podium -- those glasses, that hair, the dark skin. Simply getting there was a huge victory.
"The next time a woman runs," she wrote in her 1973 autobiography, "The Good Fight," "or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe he or she will be taken seriously from the start. The door is not open yet, but it is ajar."
And, in time, they came: Geraldine Ferraro, Jesse Jackson, Joseph Lieberman.
The last time William Howard saw Chisholm was a year and a half ago in Manhattan. She had wanted to go dancing. She was peering at him, through those beatnik glasses, out on the dance floor, imploring him to tell the band to play something jazzy.
