PALM COAST, Fla. (AP) – Former U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm made her mark by holding fast to her convictions and speaking out for women, minorities and the poor, said mourners attending a service Saturday for the first black woman elected to Congress.

“She exemplified what a politician should be – and that is to stand up for what you believe is right and fight until you have no fight left,” said Robert Gottlieb, who worked on Chisholm’s short-lived 1972 presidential campaign.

Chisholm, 80, died Jan. 1 near Daytona Beach and was to be buried in New York, where she was born. She had been in declining health since she suffered a series of small strokes last summer.

Among those attending the church service Saturday were more than a half dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which Chisholm helped establish.

“Perhaps if there was not a Shirley Chisholm, I would not be a member of the United States Congress,” said U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, D-Ind., a member of the black caucus. “She just did what she believed was right and that is rare among politicians.”

Chisholm, a former nursery school teacher, was first elected to represent her New York City district in Congress in 1968 and served seven terms. She won 152 delegates in the race for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination before dropping out.

A woman who took pride in her independence – the title of one of her books was “Unbought and Unbossed” – Chisholm also had a practical understanding of how to use power, said U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., another member of the black caucus.

“She would say, ‘Stay involved. Stay committed. But get the job done. Learn how to do the politics,”‘ Lee said.

Eleanor Holmes-Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting delegate, said Chisholm “broke open feminism for black people.”

“She stood up and was the very first to make people understand that we were both black and women and we should own up to being both,” Holmes-Norton said.