The Chisholm Project:
Professor Barbara Winslow Preserves the Chisholm Legacy

The Shirley Chisholm Project of Brooklyn Women's Activism-1945 to Present continues to expand.  And Barbara Winslow, the director of the project, couldn't be more pleased about the new directions it has taken. An associate professor in the School of Education and the Women's Studies Program, Winslow focuses her research on the intersection of class, race, and gender issues in social protest movements.  Winslow conceived the Chisholm Project during her 2006-07 sabbatical.     
    Housed in the Shirley Chisholm Center for Research on Women, the project is also creating an instructional webpage to provide materials to educators interested in developing curricula about Chisholm and other Brooklyn activists.
    As Winslow was hatching the project, a crucial fact came to light: When Chisholm was elected to Congress, her district was 70 percent women.  This meant that Chisholm was the product of a very particular environment and that there were other women activists like her. 
    While trying to get funding for the project, the Ford Foundation suggested that she establish partnerships with organizations in Chisholm's district, especially Medgar Evers College, where Winslow has also taught.  Medgar Evers President Edison O. Jackson promptly convened a meeting with the college's Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and gave Professor Maria De Longoria reassigned time to work with Winslow.
    Late last fall, Winslow secured a $200,000 grant from the Westchester Jewish Women's Fund to start the Chisholm Archive, to help collect printed material and artifacts about Chisholm's life and interview people who knew her.
   
   

An educator who develops social studies curricula for elementary and secondary classes, Winslow plans to use multimedia technology to introduce the story of Chisholm's role and of women's political activism in the history of Brooklyn and the nation. 
    The project has developed collaborations with the Weeksville Heritage Center, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Rutgers University Library, which houses an archive of Shirley Chisholm's papers.  “Our hope is that by March 2009 we will have one of the most thorough Chisholm archives, live or online,” Winslow says. 
    It's an ambitious project, and Winslow believes the late Brooklyn Congresswoman wouldn't have had it any other way.  "The project is more than teaching about Chisholm's life and legacy," Winslow notes.  “It's to inspire school kids and give them a sense of the importance of political activism and of being engaged in your community.”