--- title: "Shirley Chisholm’s ‘bring a folding chair’ line first reached print weeks after her death in 2005" url: https://badiyaa.com/shirley-chisholm-folding-chair-quote-origin/ published: 2026-11-07T14:40:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-07T14:40:00+00:00 section: History publisher: Badiyaa --- # Shirley Chisholm’s ‘bring a folding chair’ line first reached print weeks after her death in 2005 Donna Brazile recalled the advice in a January 2005 tribute, and the oldest wording says 'bring in a folding chair' before members of Congress trimmed it. The most quoted line Shirley Chisholm supposedly said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair,” has no known printed source from her own lifetime. The earliest version quotation researchers have found appeared in a magazine tribute dated January 17, 2005, sixteen days after she died at her home in Ormond Beach, Florida. It came secondhand. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, a longtime friend, recalled advice Chisholm had once given her, and the tribute printed it this way: “She said, ‘If you wait for a man to give you a seat, you’ll never have one! If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring in a folding chair.'” So the verdict is not “fake.” It is a remembered remark, credited by someone who knew her, then polished by two decades of repetition. Note the small word that has since gone missing: *in*. ## Who Chisholm was Born Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn on November 30, 1924, to parents from Guyana and Barbados, she spent part of her childhood on her grandmother’s farm in Barbados. In 1968 she became the first Black woman elected to the US Congress, representing a district centered on Bedford–Stuyvesant for seven terms. In 1972 she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s nod. Her own chosen slogan was “Unbought and Unbossed,” the title of her 1970 autobiography. The same three words are inscribed on her vault in Buffalo, New York. ## How the wording drifted Here is the paper trail we could confirm, in order: - **January 2005:** Brazile’s recollection, with “bring in a folding chair” and the extra line about waiting for a man. - **November 2015:** As Chisholm received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, California Representative Barbara Lee urged everyone to “heed her words of wisdom: ‘If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring in a folding chair.'” - **2016:** A profile of Chisholm opened with the shorter form, “bring a folding chair,” crediting it as advice to Brazile. - **August 2020:** Lee posted, “My mentor Shirley Chisholm always told me, ‘if they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.'” - **December 3, 2024:** The trimmed version entered the Congressional Record at least three times in a single evening. Our count of that pattern: the “waiting for a man” sentence vanished first, then “in” dropped out, leaving a 30-word original cut to a crisp 14 words. ## The night Congress quoted it on repeat The Congressional Black Caucus marked what would have been her 100th birthday with an hour of floor speeches. Representative McClellan of Virginia quoted the line, then added that the caucus would keep working “until we no longer have to bring a folding chair, but the table is big enough to include everyone touched by the policies we adopt in this body.” Representative Beatty of Ohio said Chisholm told those words to little girls. Representative Sewell of Alabama offered something closer to a firsthand account. As a Princeton senior writing a thesis, she interviewed Chisholm during a snowfall, and a planned 30-minute session ran four hours. Sewell’s paraphrase of the lesson: “if you are not given a seat at the decisionmaking table, then bring a folding chair.” That matters. Two women who knew Chisholm personally, Brazile and Lee, plus a third who sat with her for an afternoon, all tie the idea to her. None of them produced a speech, letter or tape. ## Verdict **Probably hers, in spirit and close to word for word, but oral.** The best evidence is Brazile’s 2005 memory, and the oldest wording says “bring in.” If you quote it, quoting it as advice Chisholm gave Brazile is the honest version. That same month, President Joe Biden signed the Shirley Chisholm Congressional Gold Medal Act. Closing her own tribute that night, Representative Kamlager-Dove of California spoke for the chair-carriers: “We got our chairs, and we are just getting started.” ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Shirley Chisholm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm) - [Congressional Record, December 3, 2024: Paying tribute to Shirley Chisholm](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2024-12-03/html/CREC-2024-12-03-pt1-PgH6283-4.htm) *Image: Roger Higgins, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*