Today and through the month of April, Shirley Chisholm and nineteen other remarkable African American women are being honored at the Freedom’s Sisters exhibition at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.

In the 1960′s Shirley Chisholm found the Nation of Islam and its leading spokesperson Malcolm X intellectually and politically exciting. She engaged in lengthy discussions with her father, Charles St. Hill, about the ideas expounded by the Black Muslims. Malcolm X reminded St. Hill of Marcus Garvey, especially with his emphasis on achieving black pride and dignity without any help from whites. No doubt St. Hill reveled in Malcolm’s fearlessness and bravery in standing up to the white establishment.

Her admiration for Malcolm X’s emphasis on black empowerment notwithstanding, Chisholm strongly opposed his early ideas of black separatism, his disparagement of the March on Washington and no doubt would have disagreed with the restrictive and subordinate roles allotted to women in the Nation of Islam.