With the motto “unbought and unbossed,” Chisholm ran for president four years after Mitchell. presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm, c. Charlene MitchellĪ political poster for U.S. These are the Black women who have made a bid for the highest office in the country. “Oftentimes, you'll read in history about women or men or women of color who ran for office, and their candidacy may not have been viable, but they create a coalition of leaders, particularly women.” “Black women are coalition builders,” says Glynda Carr, president and CEO of Higher Heights for America, a Black women’s political advocacy group. Her achievement follows in the footsteps of Black women who ran for president long before she did. Harris’s swearing-in ceremony as vice president on January 20, 2021, positioned her just a heartbeat away from the nation’s highest office. “As a woman of color, you cannot let the outside world define who you are because if you do, you won't do or be anything,” says Shola Lynch, director of the 2004 documentary, “ CHISHOLM ’72: Unbought & Unbossed,” and curator of the Schomburg Center’s film and recording archive.

Although neither Chisholm nor Harris won the presidency, they are among the many women presidential candidates who “helped to put 18 million cracks” in “that highest, hardest glass ceiling,” as Hillary Clinton put it after losing the 2016 election.Īs African Americans, Chisholm and Harris belong to a select group of Black women who’ve run for president, bucking society's often narrow expectations for women of their race. presidential race, she chose campaign materials with a sleek typeface and red-and-yellow color scheme that mirrored those of the late politician Shirley Chisholm, who made history in 1972 after becoming the first Black woman to compete for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

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