Barbados School That Shirley Chisholm Attended Renamed In Her Honor

Vauxhall Primary School located in Barbados, was renamed Shirley Chisholm Primary School on Tuesday, April 4, 2023.

Vauxhall Primary School in Barbados was renamed in April 2023 after Shirley Chisholm. Chisholm became the first Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress in 1968 and again in 1972.

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley and other distinguished guests witnessed the school’s renaming on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, Barbados Today reported. According to the news outlet, the educational institution, which opened on July 8, 1976, took on the new name Shirley Chisholm Primary School.

In an address at the renaming, Mottley said, “When the Congressional Black Caucus was here last year, we indicated that we wanted to celebrate the life of Shirley Chisholm in an appropriate way,” the outlet reported. “It is not an accident, I believe, that our Independence Day, our Republic Day, is the birthday of Shirley Chisholm. It’s an amazing coincidence.”

Simone Walker, the chief executive officer of The Shirley Chisholm Education Foundation, said, “In fact, we are here today, renaming this school because this school is the place where Shirley first pulled up her chair.”

“She took that chair from Vauxhall and unfolded it in the most powerful rooms in the world where she fought for women’s rights, civil rights, and expanded access to food, education, and healthcare,” Walker added.

Among the guests in attendance were Kay McConney, Barbados’ Minister of Education, and Linda Taglialatela, the United States Ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

Chisholm, who passed away in 2005 at 81, received her primary education at the Christ Church school when she was a child, Essence reported. The woman who was the first Black woman of a major party to run for president first attended school at the age of three after being sent to the Caribbean island to live on a farm with her grandmother.

The politician and teacher has ties to the island country in the south-eastern Caribbean Sea on her mother’s side. Chisholm’s mother was from Barbados, and her father was from Guyana.