At a glance, Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign was the definition of fantasy. She was 47 years old. At the time, she had served only one term (starting in 1968) as the first black woman elected to Congress. (Her district was centered in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.) To say that Chisholm was not a seasoned player in Washington, D.C., would be putting it mildly, and she is seem The part from the outside. She wore bouffant wigs, school glasses and elegant printed dresses. There was a somewhat primitive stoicism about her, though it brightened when her smile flashed the gaping teeth on the right side. She looked like herself: a daycare supervisor from Bed-Stuy, and a devout Christian.
But her character did not end there. This churchwoman was a fighter, of Guyanese and Bajan descent, and spoke with a native grace that bore a hint of the island cadence she had heard in Sidney Poitier. She was right, all right, but it would be a mistake to read that as weird.
In Shirley, John Ridley’s sharp and vivid domestic political docudrama, Regina King plays Shirley Chisholm with a quiet intensity you can’t look away from. On stage, Shirley speaks with elegant poise, and a little less so in private; And in her polite way, she lets it rip. The film begins shortly after her election to Congress, and we see her approaching the Speaker of the House and asking him to assign a different committee—something the new representative simply wouldn’t do. But Chisholm does. King gives her unwavering eye contact and a knowing voice, along with an unyielding sense of purpose that is both courageous and stubborn.
Shirley then jumps four years to announce her presidential campaign. As the film reveals with evident enthusiasm, the campaign was not at all imaginative. Did Chisholm think she had a chance to win? She was too smart to know the odds. She came as if she really had a chance, and she never backed down from that, which was part of her grace as an American. She defied anyone to look at her and say, “Why not?” As a presidential candidate, the Shirley Chisholm we see in “Shirley” pledges to speak up for the oppressed, workers and citizens of color, but her real message, far ahead of her time, is that politics has been taken away from politics. the people. She wants him back. This mission begins with a speech of engaging candor that echoes the brutal slap of Malcolm X’s fiery courage.
Chisholm’s nomination was not just an act of faith; on Faith, an investment in the future of what those who felt isolated from the system, particularly black Americans, could achieve. She showed the way, and she was right. Late in the campaign, she was introduced at a luncheon for black delegates to the Democratic Convention as “the only black woman crazy enough to run for President of the United States.” Chisholm’s campaign was actually the essence of rationality, but Shirley shows you that she had to be a little “crazy” to do it. She’s level-headed, and has the courage to take a stand against the buses, but her determination drives herself up the wall. (She defeats her husband, played by Michael Cherry as a devoted husband who is always there to support her but ends up fading into the woodwork.) She rejects the role of fringe candidate. This is its message: that those who feel isolated from the system will fight their way back only when they stop thinking like outsiders.
Ridley, a veteran novelist, screenwriter and director, presents Shirley with the kind of entertainment and fast-paced talk one remembers from those powerful HBO political docudramas (“Recount,” “Game Change”). This is not HBO. It’s Netflix. But it fits comfortably on the small screen just the same. Ridley, who wrote and directed it, doesn’t get bogged down in tense existential media theatrics. He organizes back-room meetings with a declarative punch that represents just this theatrical aspect. The late Lance Reddick, in one of his last screen appearances, plays Wesley MacDonald “Mac” Holder, Chisholm’s chief advisor, and Reddick was great, whether pushing the campaign forward or trying to rein in Shirley. Terrence Howard clearly hovers as Arthur Hardwicke. The son, the CFO who is trying to steer the campaign with barely any financial resources. Christina Jackson, as student volunteer Barbara Lee (who went on to become a famous congresswoman, following the path Chisholm took), makes her presence felt, as does Lucas Hedges, as boyish law student Robert Gottlieb, who is suing the television networks demanding Chisholm’s right to appear in Democratic debates.
“Shirley” captures the moment that made Chisholm’s campaign possible. The counterculture was fading, but it had changed the world, which was deeply reflected in the 1972 presidential election. Chisholm was one of three black candidates running. George McGovern was, in essence, the Democratic Party’s first and last counterculture candidate.
The Democrats were running against Richard Nixon and All the President’s Men, but Chisholm, and the film, too, treat McGovern as just another part of the big white male establishment trying to undermine and overthrow her. Watching “Shirley,” you’d never know that Chisholm and McGovern represent a lot of the same things. The film, in a somewhat over-the-top scene, sympathizes more with George Wallace (W. Earl Brown), whom Chisholm goes to visit in the hospital after he is shot and paralyzed. That visit actually happened (the devout Chisholm believed in forgiveness…and repentance), but Ridley misstaged the encounter as if the two were old college friends. It works best in the scene where Shirley, at Diahann Carroll’s (Amira Van) house, asks Huey Newton (Brad James) about endorsing the Black Panthers.
During most campaign periods, Chisholm wins two or three percent of delegates. But as the convention approaches, with McGovern in the lead but not enough delegates to put him over the top, Chisholm tries to corral black delegates so as not to sell their votes; Many of its candidates pledged to release their black delegates. This was, at the time, a symbolic gesture, and one that the film adds a great deal of suspense to. When the delegates and their leaders, like Chisholm’s friend and fellow Rep. Ron Dellums (Dorian Crossmond Missick), turn around and head back to McGovern, Shirley treats it as a betrayal, even though she’s really betraying her naivete about how tough politics can be done. No, that’s not “just,” it’s not noble, and it’s not ideal. Shirley Chisholm’s campaign was composed of all three elements, and this, as Shirley conceived it, made it not just a campaign but a beacon.