MOTHER’S DAY SHOW – Shirley Chisholm: Unbossed & Unbowed

MOTHER’S DAY SHOW – Shirley Chisholm: Unbossed & Unbowed

About the Show

Shirley Chisholm: Unbossed & Unbowed is an immersive and interactive solo show, written and performed by Ingrid Griffith, about the first African-American woman to run for the Presidency of the U.S. In the 1960s and ?70s, this Brooklyn-born daughter of Caribbean parents was on a mission. They called her the Black Joan of Arc. She called herself Fighting Shirley as she faced off against the political machine in the name of justice.

Many know her as a heroine of African-American history, but may not know that she was also Caribbean-American.

?Unbossed and Unbowed? journeys back to Chisholm?s childhood to show how race and gender determined how far she would go in life, why she chose to fight for the disenfranchised and what it took for her to rise. Her parents arrived in the U.S. in the early 1920s. By the end of the decade came the Great Depression, and in order to make ends meet, they sent 3-year-old Shirley and her younger siblings to live with their maternal grandmother in Barbados. Chisholm?s years in Barbados reinforced her Caribbean heritage, which manifested itself in her bearing and speech patterns. Vauxhall Primary School, which Chisholm attended on the island, was named in her honor on April 4, 2023.

Chisholm?s father hailed from Guyana, the birthplace of playwright and performer Ingrid Griffith.