Winner of the 2006 Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting, Chisholm ‘72 chronicles Shirley Chisholm’s run for president and the ripple effects her candidacy had on American culture. In those turbulent seven months on the campaign trail, beginning in Brooklyn and culminating with the Democratic National Convention, she brings together a motley crew of Americans from all walks of life, making education, unemployment, health care, poverty, and housing the core of her election platform. In the process, she weathers intense media scrutiny, political backstabbing, racism, and mockery at almost every turn. She also displays her own human frailty, by making mistakes and at times seeming overwhelmed by the task at hand. By July, the fire she lit in the hearts and souls of many Americans cools and for her detractors comes to an unceremonious and predictable end at the Democratic Convention. Shirley Chisholm does not win the nomination for President. But in seeking the highest office of the land, she demonstrates, in her own unorthodox way, that her fight is for inclusion and it encompasses all Americans “who agree that the institutions of this country belong to all of the people who inhabit it.” Join the Chisholm Trail.
