The first Black woman to serve in Congress is being honored after Brooklyn officials have approved to have a monument built in her honor.
Shirley Chisholm was born and raised in Brooklyn and is the firstborn of immigrants from Barbados and Guyana. She would steadily rise the ranks to become break new ground for women of color seeking a career in politics.
Nearly 100 years after her birth, the monument will be the first permanent public artwork to honor a woman.
Talks of the monument began in 2018 after officials announced that Chisholm would be honored as part of the She Built NYC program, an initiative designed to honor women of New York City. Several artists were considered to build the monument, and acclaimed artists Amanda Williams and Olalekan B. Jeyifous were eventually tapped to create the design.
“Our project celebrates Shirley Chisholm’s legacy as a civil servant who ‘left the door open’ to make room for others to follow in her path toward equity and a place in our country’s political landscape,” the artists said in a 2019 statement. “We have designed a monument in which her iconic visage can be immediately recognizable while also equally portraying the power, beauty and dimensionality of her contributions to our democracy.”
The monument was supposed to be completed in 2020, but due to the pandemic, the completion was stalled. Originally set to stand at 32 feet tall, the sculpture was reduced to eight feet to meet building codes and regulations.
A rendering of the original design showcases Chisholm rising from the concrete wearing green and stenciled metal and outlined in gold. A golden image of the Capitol building intersects her silhouette, signifying “how she disrupted the perception of who has the right to occupy such institutions,” the artists described.
Chisholm graduated from Brooklyn College in 1946 before she was awarded a master’s from Columbia University five years later. She would go on to join several advocacy groups and in 1964, she became the second Black member of the New York State Assembly. Since then, she ran for Congress – and won, then announced she was running for president in 1972.
“She was unafraid of anybody.” her former intern Robert Gottlieb told Smithsonian magazine in 2016.
