Abstract
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm is an American hero, one whose legacy and likeness have achieved iconic status within popular political culture, particularly as women have increasingly sought elected office. In 2019 in her home state of New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo created a state park in her honor. Several months earlier, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration had announced the creation of a monument in Chisholm’s honor in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Both sites incorporate and rely on both the visual depictions of Chisholm that have become political iconography—the Congresswoman’s dark brown face and glasses centered by a big black halo of hair that belied her slight frame—and her legacy as a “trailblazer.” These sites were constructed in her honor as gestures of commitment to progressive values. The park monument was in response to national dialogue concerning who is honored and memorialized, who is not, and why. ...
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2023
ISBN
9781496847515
Recommended Citation
Marissa Jackson Sow, More Than an Icon: Taking Shirley Chisholm at Her Word, in A Seat at the Table: Black Women Public Intellectuals in US History and Culture (Hettie V. Williams & Melissa Ziobro eds., 2023).
Included in
Black History Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Law and Race Commons, Political History Commons
