On Thursday, Dr. Zinga A. Fraser and Dr. Sarah Seidman appeared on NY1’s Inside City Hall to discuss the MCNY exhibition they co-curated, “Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100.” During Thursday’s Inside City Hall segment, host Errol Louis described the Congresswoman’s continuing presence in Brooklyn.
“We claim her in Brooklyn as a leader who technically is not here, but in spirit is almost everywhere. Her name gets mentioned in nearly every political gathering you can go to in Brooklyn.”
“Now—but she wasn’t for a long time,” Dr. Fraser pointed out, describing the long road to generating the public interest and recognition that Shirley Chisholm currently enjoys:
When I worked in Congress for Congressman Owens who took her seat, there was no mention of Shirley Chisholm fifteen years ago. There weren’t any monuments. There weren’t any streets named after Chisholm, or post offices, or the state park we have now. And so, a part of the work of the Shirley Chisholm Project, for over fifteen years now, has been to memorialize Shirley Chisholm, to insert her into the political discussion and narrative … Shirley Chisholm not only represented Brooklyn, but was also a national figure.
Dr. Seidman explained why it was important to commemorate Chisholm’s legacy through this first-of-its-kind installation. “By visualizing the past, we can connect the past and present in a different way,” she observed. Describing Chisholm as a “larger than life” figure in American politics, Seidman argued that a museum installation was necessary to capture Chisholm’s iconography, policy impact, and lived experience in visual form.
You can watch the full interview here.
“Changing the Face of Democracy” will be available for viewing at the Museum of the City of New York through July 20th, 2025. The multimedia exhibition follows the origins, life, political rise, and ongoing legacy through pictures, campaign paraphernalia, artwork, and selected videos from the SCP’s Oral History collection. The exhibition is one of the many efforts by the SCP to commemorate the centennial of the Congresswoman’s birth.
In addition Dr. Fraser’s new book Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings will be released by the University of California Press in October. The edited volume marks the first collection that showcases and contextualizes the words of Shirley Chisholm. In November, the SCP will hold its customary Shirley Chisholm Day with an expanded program to celebrate the centennial.