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Her dramatic breakthrough in politics
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Before running for the New York State Assembly (the lower house of the New York State Legislature) in 1964, Chisholm was a member of the League of Women Voters and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League. She won and became a member of the Assembly, making her the second African-American woman to serve on the state legislature.
She played instrumental roles in extending unemployment benefits to domestic workers and expanding state funding for remedial education while serving as a Democratic member from 1965 to 1968. In 1968, after a court order resulted in a re-drawing of districts that enfranchised more African American voters, Chisholm turned her attention to Congress, contested and won the seat in New York’s 12th Congressional district. Her victory made her the first African-American woman elected to Congress, running under the slogan “Unbought and Unbossed,” (a term that would be the name of one of the books she penned).
