Before there was Hillary Clinton, before even Geraldine Ferraro, there was Shirley Chisholm. She was the first woman to run, in 1972, for the Democratic Presidential nomination (Margaret Chase Smith had run for the Republican nomination in 1964) as well as the first black candidate of either sex to seek a major-party nomination, and she managed to come in fourth (out of 15) in terms of delegates, despite a total campaign budget of $300,000. She did, however, become the second black person elected to the New York State Legislature and, in 1968, the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm...