Shirley Chisholm at 100: An Interview with Zinga Fraser and Sarah Seidman
Interviewed By Dominique Jean-Louis
Today on the blog, Dr. Dominique Jean-Louis talks to Dr. Zinga Fraser and Dr. Sarah Seidman, co-curators of Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100, on view at the Museum of the City of New York through July 20, 2025. This exhibition, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Chisholm’s birth in 1924, examines her impact on national politics as well as the ways in which Brooklyn and New York City politics and the Caribbean community in New York shaped her life and work.
Can you start by describing the genesis of this exhibition? Where did the idea come from, and how did you decide to work together?
SS: As the curator for Activist New York, the ongoing exhibition on activism at the Museum of the City of New York, I had included the idea for a show on Chisholm for the centennial of her birth in a brainstorm about additional activist-related exhibitions. We had also borrowed objects relating to Chisholm from Brooklyn College for the 2017 exhibition Beyond Suffrage: A Century of New York Women in Politics, so I knew about the Shirley Chisholm Project and its archive from that earlier project, and approached Dr. Fraser to collaborate. I also asked her the question: were there enough historical materials to do the show? She said yes, so off we went.
Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100 will remain on view at The Museum of the City of New York through July 20, 2025.
ZF: The Shirley Chisholm Project began planning for Chisholm’s centennial three years prior, seeking to both educate and celebrate Chisholm’s legacy through our programming and archival work. After meeting and discussing ways to collaborate with MCNY we knew that an exhibition to commemorate her was feasible because it drew on our various expertise that we believed would be instructive and impactful. So we embarked on brainstorming how to not only bring Chisholm to life, but also highlight the places and people that influenced her as a Congresswoman, educator, feminist, and intellectual.
The subtitle for the exhibition is "Changing the Face of Democracy." Can you describe a little bit about how party politics worked in Brooklyn when Chisholm began her political career in the early 1960s? And then by the time she retires in the 1980s, how has electoral politics changed? Are there areas where we can specifically point to Chisholm in terms of how electoral campaigns are run or how representation works in Congress?
ZF: When I drafted the title, I thought intensely about how Chisholm’s political presence was transformative both locally and nationally. In particular, she emerges during a groundswell of African American activists and citizens who were both pragmatic and optimistic that the United States could live up to its ideals of being a representative democracy and therefore sought access through political office. Chisholm’s entrance into politics stems from the inequities caused by the machine politics of Brooklyn’s Kings County Democratic Party, which remained in power due to patronage and gerrymandering. Postwar Brooklyn had an all-white political machine that oversaw Bedford–Stuyvesant’s crumbling infrastructure and disinvestment within its marginalized sections. Chisholm’s involvement and participation in Brooklyn politics was out of necessity and her belief that Black political leadership was essential to improving the daily lives of Black and Brown people. In order for Chisholm to run in 1964 for the State Assembly there was a decade-long fight for political power in Brooklyn. Due to the success of multiple court cases, Black political leaders were able to create their own political clubs and run their own slates for office. For example the Unity Democratic Club would provide the support needed for Chisholm’s victory in the NY Senate and in Congress. By Chisholm’s exit in the 1980s, the power shift was enormous, especially as it pertains to Black political leadership, who held at least half of the political offices in Brooklyn including a large percentage of Black women in elected office and political leadership.
SS: I am going to defer to Zinga on the specifics of this one since this is really her area of expertise. But I will say that I fell into a rabbit hole of Brooklyn’s machine politics, from when it was known as “the ring” in the 19th century to coordinated grassroots efforts to elect Black Brooklynites to office in the early 1960s and the gerrymandering lawsuit that led to the new district that elected Chisholm. There are so many important stories on this topic!
One thing I really appreciated about this exhibition is instead of just putting Chisholm on a pedestal as a triumph of representation, you get into her actual policy positions, especially her support of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits, her support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and her advocacy for domestic workers. Can you point to any specifics of her life story that drive her towards the advocacy she takes on as a congresswoman?
SS: That was a major goal of the exhibition, to show what Chisholm worked on and stood for. Some of this work is really hard to see because she was working behind the scenes or didn’t get proper recognition. Her work in education before entering politics certainly shaped her leadership of the SEEK program to create more pathways to higher education at CUNY for marginalized students as a state legislator. Her tendency to join a picket line was influenced by her father’s allegiance to unions as a factory worker. And one of her proudest legislative achievements was a national increase of the minimum wage in 1974 and an expansion to include communities not previously covered such as domestic workers—which her mother had worked as briefly during Chisholm’s childhood.
ZF: Her political and legislative stances, whether it be support for domestic workers or opposition to police brutality, came from Chisholm’s lived experiences, especially those that are connected to her working class upbringing. As a child in Brooklyn, she encountered many Black women who worked as domestics in Brooklyn and Manhattan. She understood the plight of those women who struggled to receive a living wage while simultaneously trying to maintain and raise their own families. Chisholm would often recount the grueling hours of domestic workers who did not have the luxury of spending time with their own children. Her firsthand knowledge of the plight of Black women domestics and intersectional politics would serve both as an intellectual and political critique of white feminism that turned a blind eye to women of color’s lived experiences.
The West Indian Day Parade is one of the biggest days of the year in Brooklyn, and this exhibition really celebrates how Chisholm brought this celebration to Eastern Parkway. Do you see her as having a particular place with Caribbean New Yorkers in terms of her legacy?
ZF: Chisholm understood the politics of carnival and the importance of Afro-Caribbeans creating a space in Brooklyn both culturally and politically. She is celebrated for her Caribbean roots as well as her advocacy within New York City’s Caribbean community. Whether it was ensuring that the West Indian Day Parade could take place on Eastern Parkway or addressing discriminatory practices against Haitian refugees, Chisholm fought for their place in New York and in the nation.
Dr. Fraser, you edited a book of Chisholm's writing and speeches that just came out (congratulations!), entitled Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings, meaning you were really immersed in reading her words. This exhibition is much more visual, and highlights how Chisholm’s clothing, campaign materials, and likeness have played an enormous role in her legacy, not just the things she said and wrote. How are you thinking about Chisholm the symbol vs. Chisholm the thinker, having spent so much time considering both?
ZF: My book, Shirley Chisolm In her Own Words: Speeches and Writings, along with the exhibition, pushes against a singular narrative of viewing Chisholm as a mere symbolic figure. While I identify the importance and significance of Chisholm’s symbolism the exhibition provides a more nuanced exploration in that it highlights Chisholm’s iconography and its impact on how she influenced a generation of political activists. In terms of Chisholm’s intellectual contributions the book sought to place Chisholm beyond her activism as an intellectual of her time, who is both writing and in conversation with Black intellectuals, especially those within the Black Power movement. Like her engagement in a Black feminist politics, her intellectual contributions are part of a Black feminist intellectual tradition that is at the core of her work.
Dr. Seidman, your work as the Curator of Social Activism at the Museum of the City of New York has focused on the activism that's shaped this city, including trans liberation, the Movement for Black Lives, and labor rights for female garment workers. How do you think we should think about Chisholm in New York City's history of activism? Would you call her an activist? This exhibition also addresses criticism she receives from some liberal New Yorkers about her representing the party establishment instead of working-class Brooklynites. How does the history of activism in New York add context to this criticism?
SS: She is surely an advocate, a champion for the vulnerable and marginalized. If we apply the broad parameters of activism that we use in Activist New York, “mobilizing for what you believe in,” then she is absolutely an activist. And one thing that struck me, especially before she is elected, is that the issues she’s working on with the uplift group Key Women and then the political club she helped found, Unity Democratic Club, include school segregation, sanitation, non-discriminatory job access—the same issues that groups like Brooklyn CORE are working on at the time. But the tactics she used were less about protest and direct action and more about working through government and gathering coalitions. And I think that is also what garners her some criticism, unfairly or not.
Can we talk about fashion for a second? This exhibition depicts Chisholm as such a pillar of self-expression, especially when it comes to clothes and accessories—those iconic hats and glasses! I remember all the tumult a couple of years ago over the whole "Ask Her More" initiative, which aimed to encourage journalists to de-prioritize questions about appearance in favor of questions about professionalism for female celebrities. At the same time, it's clear that Chisholm did take quite an interest in her self-expression and appearance—I loved seeing her actual dresses on display! Was this a conversation during the curation process? How do you balance the substance of her career against the interest in her fashion?
ZF: My discussion of Chisholm’s style and fashion is aligned to a Black feminist historical tradition that also aligns fashion within a style of politics. Chisholm understood how her physical presence in Congress would be viewed under the gaze of respectability politics, white supremacy, and sexism. Aware of the contested terrain, Chisholm did not connect her style to a public image of what people believed a congressperson should look like. It was also important that we allowed her fashion to speak to her love of clothes and her choice of patterns and colors that embodied her independence and, dare I say, joy. Not looking at her fashion would be denying who Chisholm was. I want the audience to view her clothes in alignment with the times; she was a trendsetter who was bold in many aspects of her life and her fashion is one of those manifestations.
SS: I think we were always on the same page in believing that how she presented herself was undeniably important and how that was something Chisholm knew as well. A caveat though: we don’t have her actual clothes on display! We searched long and hard, but in the end we settled for the same style dress that she wore to an event, which fashion historian Kimberly Chrisman Campbell helped identify, and a reproduction of her iconic presidential campaign announcement outfit made for the film Shirley (which Zinga also worked on) worn by Regina King. I think it’s important to mention these curatorial challenges and how to navigate them!
Ok, let's say the quiet part out loud: there was a lot of interest in Chisholm's legacy as a presidential candidate in light of the major party nomination in 2024 of Kamala Harris, who is also the child of immigrants, and a Caribbean-American woman. How does understanding Chisholm's life and career shed light on our current political moment and electoral politics?
SS: We intentionally slated the exhibition for an election year along with Chisholm’s centennial, but it is hard to overstate the political twists and turns that have occurred during the show’s planning and time on view. After Harris’s nomination we added a QR code that led to a short piece connecting her with Chisholm through policy as well as identity. We were both in the gallery on Election Day with teachers. But since then, we have simply continued with what we are doing. Chisholm might still be ahead of her time, but we can also look to her and other people in her networks and know that there will always be voices advocating for change. Maybe the takeaway right now is just how powerful, and hence threatening, her being a “catalyst for change” remains.
ZF: Chisholm’s legacy is in part that she paves the way for former Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential nomination, a legacy Kamala Harris invoked several times during the 2024 campaign. I think what connects Chisholm to this political moment is how 1972 was also a time of political turmoil and conflict between a true representative democracy and political autocracy in the form of the Nixon administration. Today, Chisholm would be in the fight for our nation to not fall prey to political leadership that does not believe they are accountable to the Constitution or the American people.
Dr. Sarah Seidman is the Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism at the Museum of the City of New York, and co-curator of Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100.
Dr. Zinga Fraser is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, Director of the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women’s Activism, and co-curator of Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100. She is also the editor of Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings (University of California Press, 2024).
Dr. Dominique Jean-Louis is Chief Historian at the Center for Brooklyn History. Her latest exhibition, Traces: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn, is on display through August 2025.