‘Unbossed & Unbowed’ Brings Shirley Chisholm’s Legacy to Life at Hostos Center

By: Royal Mickens

New York City — A one-woman performance honoring the life and legacy of Shirley Chisholm drew audiences to the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture, where Shirley Chisholm: Unbossed & Unbowed offered more than a theatrical retelling of a political icon’s life and it delivered a reflection on how leadership is forged.

Portrayed by Ingrid Griffith, the production traced Chisholm’s journey from her early years in Brooklyn and Barbados to her groundbreaking rise in American politics, including her historic 1972 presidential campaign.

Born in Brooklyn in 1924, Chisholm spent part of her childhood in Barbados, where she lived with her grandmother while her parents worked in New York. The performance highlighted how that early environment of structure and discipline shaped her worldview before she returned to Brooklyn and confronted the harsher realities of racial prejudice and crowded urban life.

The production explored how those early experiences informed Chisholm’s political consciousness and sharpened her resolve to challenge exclusion and injustice.

That resolve would define her career.

The performance examined Chisholm’s early organizing work, including her involvement in the campaign to elect Lewis Flagg Jr., one of Brooklyn’s first Black judges, and her role in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League, where she worked on issues including civil rights, housing discrimination and economic opportunity.

It also emphasized a recurring theme in her life: refusing to wait for permission to lead.

That spirit became central to her political identity and later echoed in one of her most enduring messages, if there is no seat at the table, bring your own folding chair.

The production followed Chisholm’s rise from educator to legislator to trailblazing presidential candidate, while also acknowledging the personal pressures she faced, including strain in her marriage as she stepped onto the national stage.

Chisholm represented New York’s 12th Congressional District for seven terms, serving from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first Black candidate to seek a major-party nomination for president and the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination.

Though she did not win the nomination, the production made clear her impact extended far beyond electoral politics.

It was about expanding access, challenging institutions and redefining who could lead.

For audience members, the performance served as both a historical portrait and a timely reminder that transformative leadership is often shaped long before public office — through discipline, experience, adversity and conviction.

At a moment when questions of representation and political power remain central, Unbossed & Unbowed offered a vivid reminder of why Chisholm’s legacy continues to resonate.

Her message, decades later, remains unmistakable: Leadership does not wait to be invited. It creates its own space.