REGINA'S Resolve

REGINA KING on LEARNING to LIVE with LOSS, the LEGACY of SHIRLEY CHISHOLM, and finding a WAY FORWARD

- SALAMISHAH TILLET

There is a mesmerizing scene in the new movie Shirley that only Regina King could pull off. The film, directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley, tells the story of Shirley Chisholm, who, in 1968, became the first Black woman elected to Congress and four years later, launched a historic bid for the Democratic Party nomination for president.

Chisholm's run for that nomination, which made her both the first Black candidate and the first woman to do so, occupies an important, if prescient, place in the history of American politics, coming four decades before Barack Obama would be elected the nation's first Black president and five decades before Hillary Clinton's nomination. Chisholm has been canonized as an unrelenting champion of the people - one who galvanized women, communities of color, and younger voters against a predominantly white, male political establishment that had too often and for too long ignored them. But she was also a shrewd strategist who embodied her campaign slogan, "Unbought and Unbossed" (which was also the title of her 1970 memoir). During her time in Congress, she drafted dozens of pieces of legislation to end the war in Vietnam and help achieve racial, gender, and economic equality.

In addition to the racism and misogyny Chisholm experienced on the campaign trail, she also faced multiple threats to her safety, including an incident where a man with a 10-inch knife tried to stab her in the back. Chisholm was always reluctant to speak publicly about the attack, but Shirley imagines her in its immediate aftermath.