Growing Tensions

Home , Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem

GROWTH AND TURMOIL, 1948-1977 Growing Tensions

Resource:

Shirley Chisholm Runs for President

Suggested Activities

• Invite students to complete a close analysis of the campaign poster. Ask them to identify each visual and textual element and discuss why it was included and what it tells the viewer about the candidate. • Shirley Chisholm was a dynamic speaker and personality. Parts of the documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed trace her campaign through incredible archival footage and interviews. Invite students to connect the flm to the artifacts above. • Take a closer look at the picture of Shirley Chisholm speaking to the Democratic women’s caucus. Connect this image to resources related to the other women pictured, including Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan. How do you think these women were able to work together? What diferent issues might they have cared about in 1972? • Shirley Chisholm was a vocal participant in the feminist movement. She met with and worked alongside many of the women featured in the third section of this unit, Feminism and its Backlash. Connect this resource to those items and think about how Shirley’s perspective might have fueled the feminist movement in unique and interesting ways. • Shirley was often advocating for two groups because she was both a woman and a Black American. Connect her life story to that of Pauli Murray, who coined the term Jane Crow and spent much of her life thinking about what would come to be known as “intersectionality” later in the 20th century.

Themes

AMERICAN IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP; POWER AND POLITICS; ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL CHANGE