Shirley Chisholm lived and died as she campaigned during her historic 1972 run for the U.S. presidency: unbought and unbossed.

When Chisholm died this week at age 80, she remained of that rare political breed: principled and independent. The seven-term U.S. representative from New York was a trailblazer in the truest sense of the word. In 1968, she became the first African-American woman elected to Congress. With that win she simultaneously added diversity to the white-male dominated halls of Congress and the mostly male arena of black politics.

It is a sign of Chisholm's legacy that the Congress convening this week includes 79 women and 72 ethnic and racial minorities.

Chisholm ran for president under the slogan "Unbought and Unbossed," and garnered 151 delegates. She wasn't for sale, but she was pragmatic. Once she was offered a seat on the House Agriculture Committee, but Chisholm questioned the importance of agriculture to her urban constituents. She was given a seat on the more palatable Veteran Affairs Committee.

Another time, Chisholm supported a white colleague, Hale Boggs, over a black colleague, John Conyers Jr., for House majority leader. In return, she was given a coveted seat on the House Education and Labor Committee, where she pushed for more job training and employment programs, welfare reform and equal educational opportunity.

Chisholm's politics could not be predicted. She visited George Wallace, the former Alabama governor and reformed segregationist, in the hospital after an assassination attempt. She declined to back the presidential bid of fellow New York Democrat and staunch feminist Bella Abzug.

Chisholm hoped her presidential run would be more than historic; she wanted it to be inspirational.

"The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start," she said.

Presidential aspirants including Jesse Jackson and Joe Lieberman and would-be contenders such as Colin Powell and Hilary Rodham Clinton prove the prescience of Chisholm's words and the lasting legacy of her career.