Answer: She had already surprised everyone by becoming the first black woman in Congress after an upset victory in 1968. Then Shirley Chisholm signed up for work as a census taker in Brooklyn, where she represented a range of struggling neighborhoods.
It was a thankless task; many of the “enumerators” for the 1970 census quit because so many poor black and Hispanic residents refused to answer questions or even open the door.
Their distrust in government ran deep, The Times reported, with some fearing that giving up their personal information would lead to genocide.
Ms. Chisholm, a daughter of immigrants from Barbados who studied American history with the zeal of a woman determined to shape it, understood such sentiments. She also embodied what was needed to bring those New Yorkers into the fold. It wasn’t pontificating. It wasn’t condescending, or scolding; it required the same charm and resolve she showed first as an educator, then as a politician.
“I do not see myself as a lawmaker, an innovator in the field of legislation,” she wrote in her 1970 autobiography, “Unbought and Unbossed.” “America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take.”
