The coming out of two films on overlooked African-American political luminaries is telling, considering Netflix’s decision to release both “Rustin” and now “Shirley,” starring Regina King, in the lead-up to the 2024 race for the White House.
Both biopics — one on the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin and the other on the first Black woman to get elected to Congress and run for president, Shirley Chisholm — are cut from the same cloth. They are earnest, sincere portrayals of what it means to claim space when you’re given none.
Though biopics tend to embellish facts for dramatic flair, Regina King revealed that they researched the film extensively, getting their hands on anything and everything they could find on Chisholm — documentaries, news footage, articles — but the most important source materials were Chisholm’s memoirs “Unbought and Unbossed” and “The Good Fight.”
Is “Shirley” an accurate depiction of what really transpired during Chisholm’s presidential run? Let’s separate fact from fiction and determine the film’s historical accuracy.
Getting taunted for being paid the same as her white male colleagues
Early in the film, one of her colleagues — a white congressman — tries to belittle Chisholm by repeatedly expressing his incredulity at the fact that she, a Black woman, earned as much as him. Daily, he would harass Chisholm for earning the same $42,500 salary that he does (approximately $263,507 today).
“First of all, since you can’t stand the idea of me making 42.5 like you, when you see me coming into this chamber each day, vanish,” Chisholm told him. “Vanish until I take my seat so that you won’t have to confront me with this 42.5. Secondly, you must remember I’m paving the way for a lot of other people looking like me to make 42.5.”
In reality, this actually happened. However, there wasn’t just one but many white male colleagues who were baffled by a Black woman wielding as much power as them, as confirmed by professor Glenn L. Starks, Ph.D., who co-wrote the book “A Seat at the Table: The Life and Times of Shirley Chisholm.” Though the character in the “Shirley” film may have been a composite of several people constantly antagonizing Chisholm over her pay, Chisholm is noted as using the specific quote in the 2016 “Unbought & Unbossed” documentary.
Rejecting working for the House Agriculture Committee
The film also shows an unhappy Chisholm asking the Speaker of the House, John McCormack (Ken Strunk), that her portfolio be shifted from the House Agriculture Committee that she was first assigned, as it didn’t align with the needs of the constituents she served in Black and Puerto Rican district in Brooklyn. Demanding to be reassigned was an unusual thing to do for a newly-elected congress member.
Contrary to what the “Shirley” film will have you believe, according to a New York Times article dated May 10, 1975, “Mrs. Chisholm, who wanted Education and Labor, resisted her assignment to Agriculture not because she objected to the committee itself but because she was assigned to its subcommittee on Forestry and Rural Villages.”
Though it was not explicitly shown in the film, Chisholm did serve on the agriculture committee for a short while. She worked on the food stamp program and helped implement the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) before she was eventually moved to the Veterans Affairs Department, which she felt was more suited to the Bedford-Stuyvesant that she represented. “There are a lot more veterans in my district than trees,” she’s quoted as saying.
Her thorny relationship with her sister
“Shirley” highlights the strained relationship between Chisholm and her sister, Murial (played by Regina’s real sister, Reina King, who is also a co-producer on the film). In the film, Murial reveals to her sister that the rift between them largely stems from Chisholm being their father’s obvious favorite.
In reality, Chisholm was the eldest of four girls. She did not have a close relationship with any of them. It is true that Chisholm had a close-knit relationship with her father, Charles St. Hill. Growing up, he would tutor her in the teachings of Marcus Garvey, and upon his passing, he only left her with a small inheritance. Chisholm used this money to help her fund her first New York State Assembly campaign.
The inheritance forged a wedge between Chisholm, her sisters, and her mother, from which the family never recovered. When Chisholm passed away in 2005, Muriel attended her funeral. Her other living sister did not.
Marital discord
“Shirley” taps into the growing marital tension between her and her then-husband Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican-born private investigator who put his career on hold to quietly work in the shadows of his wife so she could bask in the limelight.
The film also explores Shirley’s early friendship with Arthur Hardwick Jr., who was tasked with managing the finances of her barebones campaign. The two would get married in 1977.
This actually happened. Shirley and Conrad were married in 1949. Their divorce was finalized in 1977. “He was so stable, a really genial, caretaking, he’s a good cook. Just a really solid person,” said Anastasia Curwood, author of “Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics.”
Curwood continues, “Her second husband was someone she actually met very early in her political career in the State House in the New York State Assembly. She met him. She said she immediately thought he was handsome. They bantered, but they were both married, and in later on, so 10 years, 12 years later, his wife passed away, and he was suddenly single. At that point, as I said, she was well-established, she had a career, she’s not trying to run for president anymore. I think she was able and willing to take that risk, and become a divorcee and marry the person, I think, really was the love of her life. She really did seem to fall for her second husband.”
Mentoring Barbara Lee
As shown in the film, Chisholm first met Barbara Lee in the thick of her 1972 campaign for president. Though Chisholm was a huge influence on Lee who went on to become a firebrand congresswoman herself, she wasn’t as clueless as the Netflix film makes her to be initially.
A single mother and a college student (which “Shirley” gets right), Lee — who played a key role in bolstering Chisholm’s run — had already begun her political journey before she met Chisholm.
Suing the television networks
Along with the help of her national student coordinator Robert Gottlieb (Lucas Hedges) who was also a student lawyer, Chisholm sued television networks for denying her the right to appear in the Democratic debates alongside the other two 1972 Democratic presidential candidates, Hubert H. Humphrey and George McGovern.
“Shirley” gets this incident right — Chisholm’s team sued, and they won, making it impossible for the media giants to ignore her anymore.
Visiting George Wallace after assassination attempt
As shown in the film, Chisholm did meet her adversary segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, in the hospital after he was near-fatally shot and paralyzed during a political rally in May 1972. Her visit to Wallace, who was himself running for president that year, was highly controversial and against the will of her allies. But a devout Christian, Chisholm believed in forgiveness.
However, the depiction of this incident in the film is a little too dramatic and will make you think maybe the two of them ended up being close friends, which isn’t true.
Seeking the endorsement of Black Panthers
In the film, Lee arranges for Chisholm to meet the Black Panther Party’s minister of defense, Huey P. Newton (Brad James), at the L.A. home of actress Diahann Carroll (Amirah Vann), hoping to score their endorsement. Such a meeting did happen, and although Newton was skeptical about Chisholm’s straight politics, her stance on Black Panthers, and her visiting Wallace at the hospital, she manages to convince him of all the good they could do together for the community and gets Black Panthers to endorse her campaign.
Getting backstabbed by crucial allies
“Shirley” shows that two of Chisholm’s key allies, Ron Dellums (Dorian Missick) and Walter Fauntroy (André Holland), on both of whom she was banking heavily, switched sides at the last minute, giving all their delegates to McGovern instead. It is true. It was because of their betrayal that Chisholm had to withdraw her candidature and opt out of the race. Though it shook her faith, she and Dellums continued working closely for years later, as the film’s post-credits mention.
