One of my very favorite photographs of Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the United States Congress, captures her mid-stride as she makes her way to the front entrance of a Brooklyn home. Undaunted by what looks like recent rainfall, Chisholm’s face, framed by her distinctive cat-eye glasses, is focused. The New York City native is smartly dressed, to be sure, but perhaps her most striking accessories are the identification badge on her lapel and the slim bag slung over her left shoulder emblazoned with the words “U.S. CENSUS” and “1970” on the side. Chisholm, as it turns out, was not door-knocking solely in her capacity as a member of the United States House of Representatives, but also in her capacity as a census-taker.
This fact was not lost on Chisholm, who understood the stakes of not being counted. In a statement made to the subcommittee on Census and Statistics, she noted that “the census-taking mistakes are not uniform” and that “those most likely to be and unfortunately [are] undercounted are the racial and ethnic minorities in slum areas.” Indeed, the subcommittee noted that undercounting was common in “inner city areas,” places with higher proportions of low-income, non-white residents, a number of whom were non-native English speakers. Not only was the census schedule oftentimes illegible within these communities, but so, too, were these communities illegible to at-best oblivious census-takers. The “inadequately trained and thoughtlessly selected enumerators” were often perceived by “a people living in the ghettos of the American dream” as “symbols of a discriminating society which distorts their basic rhythm of life.” It is no wonder, then, that census-takers were met with “general skepticism” and “individual hostility.” The result for the residents of the country’s “inner cities”? “They are not counted, they are not considered,” summarized Chisholm, evoking her perfect understanding of the dual meaning of counting.
And it is precisely this understanding that drove Chisholm, the daughter of Afro Guyanese and Afro Barbadian immigrants to New York City, into the rain-streaked streets of her community in 1970. “The political representatives of the ghetto dweller, an undercounted mass, are deprived of the value of their votes,” she maintained, “votes which can be the keys of a new tomorrow.” Chisholm noted that because the appropriation of funds necessary to support public assistance programs was tied to the census results, accuracy mattered. Concluding her statement addressed to the subcommittee, the congresswoman-cum-enumerator argued that “now is the time to make the census a functional and meaningful tool, for tomorrow is too late.”