Regina King to Star as First Black Congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm

Actress Regina King has been called on to play a heavy role, and if it’s anything like her last performance, we are sure she will not disappoint.

King, who won an Oscar for her role in “If Beale Street Could Talk,” will play the role of Shirley Chisholm in an upcoming project Netflix project, Shirley.

Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, representing New York’s 12th district from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she made history once again by being the first African American woman to run for the presidential nomination of a major political party, running on the Democratic ticket.

Netflix released a statement on the film, saying it chronicles Chisholm’s “audacious, boundary-breaking 1972 presidential campaign.”

King spent 15 years working with sister Reina King to develop the movie and learn her role.

“It was always a little disheartening for Reina and I to have so many people over the years of our lives not know who Shirley Chisholm was,” King said in a recent interview. “What she did was so pioneering. She was a true maverick and, you know, we use this term all the time, but she was a true first.”

Chisholm, the daughter of a Barbados-born maid and a Guyanese laborer, died at the age of 80 in 2005.

Shirley streams on Netflix on March 22.