Unbought and Unbossed

Shirley Chisholm ran as the first black female presidential candidate in the U.S. in 1972.

By: Anthony Stoeckert

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Shirley Chisholm, a New York City teacher, served as the nation’s first female African-American member of Congress from 1968 to 1983.


   Watch Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed and you can’t help but wonder if Shola Lynch, the film’s director, knew something we didn’t. Did she make the 2004 movie about Shirley Chisholm, an African-American woman who ran for president in 1972, because she knew a woman and a black man would be serious contenders for the presidency a few years later?
   "How I would love to say yes, but no, I can’t," Ms. Lynch says with a laugh.
   Rather, it was Ms. Lynch’s frustration with the 2000 election and the current political climate that led to her documentary on Ms. Chisholm, a New York City teacher who served as the nation’s first female African-American member of Congress from 1968 to 1983, and who died in 2005. In 1972 she became the first black presidential candidate and the first "serious" (her word) female candidate. The movie will be screened in Trenton, Newark and Asbury Park as part of the Newark Black Film Festival this month.
   After hearing an NPR report on Ms. Chisholm, Ms. Lynch, who studied history and entered documentary filmmaking by working for Ken Burns, decided to direct her first movie.
   "When I re-discovered (the story of the campaign), I thought, Why can’t we have a different vision of presidential politics?" Ms. Lynch says. "So I wanted to talk to her about why she ran."
   Getting Ms. Chisholm to agree to an interview wasn’t easy. In fact, it may have taken some divine interaction. Ms. Lynch contacted various political offices, the U.S. Congress and the Library of Congress and couldn’t get so much as a phone number for the former congresswoman. Then fate took over.
   "I was out one night and met this guy at a bar and he was talking about his mom and sister’s political involvement," she says. It turns out that his family had hosted a political rally for Ms. Chisholm, and he was able to provide her contact information.
   "I’m a believer that you create your own luck," Ms. Lynch says. "If I hadn’t done all that work trying to find her, I don’t think the universe would have been so kind."
   Address and phone number in hand, the director then had to convince her reluctant subject to actually sit down for an interview.
   "I sent her a letter… I called her and she was always busy," Ms. Lynch says. "Finally, I was able to get a phone appointment with her and I had to filibuster her, to let her know why I was able to make this film. And she finally said yes."
   In the film, Ms. Chisholm, who was a schoolteacher before entering politics, is portrayed as confident, authoritative and, above all, determined. She had no chance of winning and she knew it, but she ran, according to the campaign staffers interviewed in the movie, to prove that she could. And she wasn’t going to ask for anyone’s permission.
   "One of the great mysteries is where does that come from in somebody," Ms. Lynch says. "She was coming up in a time where she had to have that because most people were going to deny her access just based on her race and gender."
   Getting support from either women’s or African-American groups wasn’t easy.
   "It was very hard to be both black and a woman because the agendas were not always the same and people wanted you to choose," Ms. Lynch says. "But the thing is, How do you choose? You’re truly both. You’re not a little less of one because you’re the other. And I felt it was very important to address both parts of that for her."
   Differences between Ms. Chisholm’s campaign and those of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are clear. While it will certainly be big news if a woman or a black man wins the White House, race and gender are not mentioned in every story on today’s candidates. Ms. Chisholm was portrayed as The Black Woman Candidate and was rarely asked about her views on issues. Her opposition to the war in Vietnam, though, was a driving force behind her campaign.
   "She never got a chance to go through the mainstream media to express her political views," Ms. Lynch says. "She was really clipped in that way."
   Other parallels to modern politics aside from the ones to Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama are evident in the movie. The image of Edmund Muskie getting emotional over things that were written about his wife in a New Hampshire newspaper, and the likely result that had on his candidacy, reminds today’s viewer of Howard Dean’s infamous scream. It’s all fitting for the student of history who places great importance on understanding the past.
   "It’s very tricky, though, because it’s easy to be didactic in a historical documentary," she says. "But what I wanted is the feelings to come alive and for people to watch it… and make those comparisons. We can’t help but be connected to our past, politically and in every way. Whether we’re aware of it or not."
Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed will be screened at the Newark Museum, Newark, July 11, 7 p.m., the New Jersey State Museum Auditorium, Trenton, July 12, 6 p.m. and at The Baronet Theatre, Asbury Park, July 13. The Newark screening will feature a talk by Shola Lynch. The Trenton screening will be hosted by Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells and feature a talk by Wilson Brown, vice provost for student and community affairs, Rutgers University-Newark. Mr. Brown, Jules Ramsey, founding and past president of the Greater Freehold NAACP and historian Rainette Holomon will speak at the Asbury Park screening. Admission is free (seating on a first-come, first-serve basis); (609) 292-6464.