Ms. A Got Schooled…

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By Bethany “BST2” Armstrong

I work as a middle school special education teacher in an impoverished urban district. I want to brag about my students’ response to our school’s door decorating contest in celebration of black history. The directions were simple; choose one person who impacted the Civil Rights Movement and decorate the classroom door with pictures and facts about that person.

My students immediately informed me that we weren’t doing Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks because everybody always thinks of them when talking about civil rights.

Instead they wanted to do Shirley Chisholm. I had no idea who they were talking about. Forty-two years on this planet, dozens of history classes, and tons of teacher research on Black History and I still had no idea who they were talking about. Whelp, Ms. A got schooled today on the baddassery of Shirley Chisholm.

Shirley was an activist, a politician, an educator, and an author. She was the first black female elected to Congress where she represented New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms. She championed racial and gender equality, raised consciousness about poverty, and introduced more than 50 pieces of legislature while in office.

In the 1972 Presidential Election, she was the first African-American candidate for a major party’s nomination and the first woman to run for the Democratic Parties presidential nomination. She ran under the platform “Unbossed and Unbought”. Between death threats, being underfunded, and being excluded from televised primary debates Shirley still managed to wrangle 152 delegates’ votes. Badass.

My students had trouble finding the best quotes from Shirley; she had a lot of epic lines. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” “Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.” “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”

I learn from my students every single day. Today I learned that I have a lot more to learn about Black History, our shared history. Today I got to see the teacher inside my students.

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