At a glance, Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 campaign for president was the definition of quixotic. She was 47 years old; at the time, she had served only one term (starting in 1968) as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress. (Her district centered on the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.) To say that Chisholm wasn’t a seasoned Washington, D.C., player would be putting it mildly. And she looked like an outsider. She wore puffy wigs, schoolmarm glasses, and tasteful print dresses. There was a slightly prim stoicism about her, though she lit up whenever she flashed her smile with the gap tooth on the right side. She looked like
→ Continue reading at Variety
