One Act Of Compassion

Today, my History website mentioned that on June 8, 1972, Senator Shirley Chisholm visited Governor George Wallace after he’d been shot five times.  Yes, I remember the incident.  I was still living in Baltimore with my parents and brother.  Governor Wallace was running for President again.  He ran in 1968 and won six southern states.

He sure did.  From everything I’d heard and seen about him, he was a detestable racist, a white supremacist.  In 1968, the year RFK was assassinated, Wallace was running on an anti-segregation platform, promising to reverse all the recent desegregation.  I clearly remembered the images of him standing in the doorway to the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering.  I found him to be ugly in appearance and sick in his soul, thoroughly disgusted.

He came to Laurel, Maryland to campaign.  Laurel was a good 30 miles or so from Baltimore.  He was in the Laurel Plaza shopping center greeting people and shaking hands.  There was a bunch of people there.  I don’t know if they were all supporters or not.  A man named Arthur Bremer shot him 5 times, paralyzing him for the rest of his life.  His campaign for the presidency ended, and Richard Nixon ended up winning the 1972 election.

Shirley Chisholm was totally different than George Wallace.  I knew that she was the first black woman to be elected to Congress.  In 1972, I knew she was a liberal while Wallace was a segregationist populist.  She represented a district in New York and then became the first woman to run for President in 1972.  She was an early childhood educator and while she served in Congress, much of her focus was on getting food and nutrition assistance for the poor.

In spite of their political and personal views, Shirley Chisholm visited George Wallace while he was recuperating in Holy Cross Hospital.  It threw me.  Why would she visit him when he believed that people of color were inferior?  It’s because she had compassion and human decency.  What happened to Wallace was horrible and she wouldn’t want something like that happen to anyone.

Wallace cried.  After he recovered, he announced he’d become born again and scaled back on his racist views.  He even supported Chisolm’s bill to give domestic workers the minimum wage.  With his support, enough of the southern legislators in Congress helped get the bill passed.

One unexpected act of compassion means so much.