Los Angeles ? After months of boisterous campaigning, Shirley Chisholm sits quietly in a Miami hotel room watching Walter Cronkite report from the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

Presidential hopefuls Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey have dropped out, throwing their support behind front-runner George McGovern, and Chisholm is left with little hope of gaining enough delegates to support her nomination.

“They just lowered the boom,” an exhausted, frustrated Chisholm says to supporters.

Later that night, Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, withdrew her bid for the White House.

Yet, she secured her place in history as the first black woman to seek a major party nomination for president of the United States. Even more, she had become an enduring symbol of possibilities, a legacy clearly established in the documentary “Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed,” airing at 9 p.m. Monday as part of PBS’ “P.O.V.” series.

Chisholm, who died Jan. 1 at 80, “had always been interested in being a catalyst for change,” says the documentary’s maker, Shola Lynch.

“Mrs. C. knew that if she went to the convention with delegates, her delegate votes might make the difference between being the nominee or not,” said Lynch, 35, in a telephone interview from her home in New York. “It meant she would have political currency. She would have leverage to deal with issues. It’s not exactly how it turned out, but it’s what she was trying to do.”

At a time when America was divided by race, gender, generations and Vietnam, Chisholm saw the presidential race as an opportunity to bring the nation together despite the visceral opposition and blatant disregard for her candidacy.

A feminist agenda

As pointed out in the film, Chisholm was not really respected by the political establishment or the media — not so much for her blackness than for her feminism, which ostracized the fiery New York educator when she moved into the boys club that was Capitol Hill in 1969.

Never one to hold her tongue, Chisholm said she was unhappy during her early years in Congress and was further alienated when she made her run for the presidency. “They treated me like I was from the moon.”

Women’s groups also distanced themselves from her, siding with McGovern, who they believed was a more realistic candidate. Blacks didn’t care about her feminist agenda, and she never secured backing of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“It was a hell of a position to be in really,” Chisholm says in the film. “I wonder how I got as far as I did during the presidential campaign.”

Chisholm’s poised determination began in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood when the then 3-year-old’s financially strapped parents sent her and her two sisters to live with their maternal grandparents in Barbados. There she was educated in strict, British-style schools.

“She was just an ordinary child with all kinds of potential,” Lynch says. “She wasn’t a little black girl. She wasn’t put in a category in a way that is part of American life.”

Voicing her views

Nearly half a century later, she still refused to be put in her place. During the campaign, Chisholm petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to break the lock on televised debates by major candidates, winning the chance to appear before a national TV audience.

She struck a chord with many progressive American voters and managed to make strong showings in some state primaries. She carried 150-plus delegates at the convention, allowing her the right to speak from the main podium.

Reporter Susan Brownmiller, who covered the Chisholm campaign, says it was “unrealistic” to expect Chisholm to win. “But it was symbolic. If you’re not a majority party candidate you don’t stand much of a chance. You can’t beat the machine,” she said in an interview.

Lynch was able to screen the film for Chisholm last spring.

“She was a little bit nervous seeing the movie. I think she was nervous about being taken back,” Lynch says. “But her reaction was priceless. She was talking to her younger self. She had forgotten what she was like 30 years ago, and she had never been able to be the third person looking from the outside. She was always doing it.”

Chisholm never made a second bid for the White House. She had clearly become fatigued by the political game.

“The term democracy … sounds wonderful, sounds beautiful,” Chisholm tells Lynch, “but it’s not carried out in the real sense of the word when you realize what goes on behind the scenes. When you realize how people bargain for votes, how people deal to get three more delegates to a convention. That’s not democracy,” she sighs. “What a cost.”