The Impact Of Shirley Chisholm's Impact On Civil Rights

Shirley Chisholm career impacts on our understanding of civil rights by it is an ongoing battle that individuals have to fight for. Her childhood is one of the reasons that ultimately pushed her in the direction of politics and her influence in the civil rights movement. Chisolm parents were from the Caribbean island of Barbados and she was born in Brooklyn, she was sent back to live in Barbados because her parents were less fortunate with her sisters to live with her grandmother and aunt. Her grandmother and aunt instilled racial pride in Chisolm. While she was living in Barbados in a rural area she developed a sense of pride because she was exposed to other individuals of color that were in political power and were in administrative powers,
She earned her masters from Columbia University in elementary education and became an expert on early childhood education. She also did a number of volunteer work as well she volunteered with organizations such as Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League and the League of Women Voters, which eventually led to her political career. Moreover, Chisholm career began to take form the greatest obstacle she had to face was the “hostility she encountered because of her sex, the hostility she would face for the rest of her political life” (pg. 44). The hostility she faced ultimately shaped her role in the civil rights movement because she was motivated to prove that not only African Americans were capable of partaking in politics but women as
“Her first successful piece of legislature of which she was very proud, was a bill that set up New York State’s first unemployment insurance coverage for personal and domestic employees” (pg. 51) this is significant because gave individuals security. However, the SEEK program that Shirley help to create, individuals in the program did not know who she was. “It is clear that lives of working-class women of color are less valued than those of influential white men” (pg. Winslow 154). The book continued to state the fact black women works understated, an example that Rosa Parks as just a tired lady who wanted to sit, not an activist who was trying to awake a civil rights