After a series of firsts -- first Black congresswoman, first Black woman candidate for president -- Shirley Chisholm, who was born in 1926, said of her legacy, "I want to be remembered as a woman . . . who dared to be a catalyst of change."
Ingrid Griffith, who shares a Guyanese heritage with the Black and feminist icon, was inspired to write a play about her, not to treat her as a rarefied saint in an ivory tower, but as an approachable Everywoman who can still inspire the ordinary to greatness. "Unbossed and Unbowed," the result of this treatment, will be onstage at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Sunday afternoon after some performances for school groups.
As a Guyanese immigrant, Ms. Griffith had not heard of Chisholm, who died in 2005, until she enrolled in college. "She looked familiar. I knew she ran for Congress, but that's as much as I knew. I was very curious to know more." The more she learned, the more she became "in awe of all the things she accomplished and what she dedicated her life to fighting for -- equality and women's rights and the disenfranchised."
Ms. Griffith has designed the play as a solo show, harnessing humor and history to craft the story, which is also intended to inspire audience members to activism.
She said by phone last week that she wants more people to know and remember Chisholm, especially younger audiences who may know nothing about her but are the key to maintaining the struggle for dignity, equality, and a position in society that can only be improved by continued struggle.
When Ms. Griffith was a teen, she said, "I had no clue and I didn't want to. I didn't know what I didn't know." She said it wasn't until later that it dawned on her that equality wasn't a passive thing, and that those in power today have Chisholm and those who came before to thank for it. "Because just as she stood on the shoulders of women from the 1920s, like Ida B. Wells, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P. . . . the continued community continuity is important."
Through the show she hopes to get across "the passion and courage it took and that we have to find that courage today to make change happen or it will be reverted. Even as we are speaking, things are being reverted."
Just as we must sacrifice for change, the play shows what Chisholm "gave up for the bigger good. And that's important because we have to make certain decisions, and that's the only way things get done."
She hopes the play will help viewers understand what the tradeoff is. "How passionate are you and how important is this cause: our equality and our dignity, fairness and leadership, and getting the opportunities to attain the American Dream." She said it's possible that the dream and democracy are myths, but if they aren't "and if we really want to make change, then we are the ones to do it from here on."
While the idea of "wokeness" is being assaulted in some quarters, Ms. Griffith said it is essential to stay "woke" as efforts are underway to make teaching Black history an uncomfortable and even illegal act. "We know that Black history is important," she said, but why are people like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida saying it's not? "That's what we have to figure out. That's what we have to understand."
This is essential to the fight "because the less we know, the more we feel we're supposed to be in this place" where women are still not occupying leadership positions, white supremacists have new agency, and the patriarchal system remains in charge. "And there we go. We're reverting all the way back. So these things are important."
The play begins at 2 p.m. Tickets, which start at $35, are available through the box office or the theater's website.
