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Let's take a listen. In January 1963, Wallace earned national infamy for an inaugural speech in which he declared segregation now segregation tomorrow and segregation forever. Six months later, the governor captured headlines by standing in a university doorway to stop integration at the University of Alabama. These acts transformed an otherwise obscure southern politician to a household name.
This was exactly his hope. Catapulted to fame, he ran for the presidency in 1964 and in 1968. By 1972, he was a front runner for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Opposing him in the Democratic primaries was Shirley Chisholm, an African American congresswoman from Brooklyn. Chisholm was Wallace's political opposite. Chisholm's Brooklyn congressional district was comprised largely of working-class and poor African Americans. Elected in 1968, she became the nation's first ever black female congresswoman. In 1972, she broke yet another barrier as the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination for president. Backed by the Black Panthers and leading feminists, Shirley Chisholm was everything George Wallace was not. In 1972, Chisholm and Wallace found their political face intertwined by an assassin's bullet.
Fresh from victory in the Florida primary, the governor led all Democrats in several polls. An assassin shot the governor in the abdomen and chest. One bullet lodged in Wallace's spinal column.
This wound paralyzed the governor for life and ended his national political aspirations. In hopes of wooing his supporters, a series of Democratic front runners visited Wallace in the hospital. Among these visitors was none other than Shirley Chisholm.
Unlike her Democratic rivals, Chisholm had nothing to gain from this bedside vigil. She not only had zero chance of attracting Wallace supporters, she also risked antagonizing her own. In 1972, Wallace was the most reviled political figure in black America. Martin Luther King had once called him the most dangerous racist in America.
He said this because Wallace was no garden variety segregationist. As governor, he allowed white supremacists to run roughshod over civil rights activists, which culminated in church bombings, dogs being unleashed on child protesters, and Bloody Sunday. In March 1965, Governor Wallace unleashed state troopers on a column of non-violent protesters at Selma, Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge. Armed with teargrass and mallets, state troopers and horseback beat and whipped protesters.
Captured on tape by national reporters, Bloody Sunday shocked a nation. Such was George Wallace's Alabama. Due to Wallace's actions, one could well understand the depth of African-American antipathy. When Chisholm told staff of her plan to visit Wallace, she was met with cries of, what?
No way. One staffer explained, quote, I just could not believe it. How in the world could this woman, a black woman, go visit this horrible individual?
But the Congresswoman was unmoved. Her entire life had been defined by cutting against the grain. Born to working class parents in Brooklyn, she's been her formative years in Barbados, living with a grandmother who ran, in her words, a strongly disciplined family unit.
Headstrong as a kid, Chisholm regularly ordered older playmates around. A prize-winning debater in college, she earned a master's degree from Columbia University. But Chisholm was never one to follow the crowd. A rugged individualist, she ran for Congress by bucking the system. Calling herself unbought and embossed, she reveled in the fact that, quote, the party leaders do not like me. In 1969, she became the first ever African-American woman to serve in Congress.
But she was hardly met with open arms. Relegated to the Agriculture Committee, the Brooklynite turned insult into opportunity. Combining her zeal to help the impoverished with her Agriculture Committee post, she held meetings with farm state legislators.
Those talks helped lead to the expansion of the food stamp program to every national jurisdiction. In Congress, she remained a fearless truth teller. Anyone who knew anything about Chisholm realized criticism would not deter her. Chisholm always kept her eyes on the prize. In regard to her meeting with Wallace, she told an aide, quote, I may be able to teach him something to help him regain his humanity.
You have to rise to the occasion if you're a leader and enlighten people who may hate you. No one was more surprised by Chisholm's outreach than Wallace himself. When she came to the hospital, he asked, what are your people going to say about your coming here? Chisholm replied that she was not sure, but, quote, I would not want what happened to you to happen to anyone. As she said this, the Congresswoman took the segregationist's hand and prayed with him.
The governor, according to his daughter, wept uncontrollably. In the weeks and months after this meeting, Chisholm faced a firestorm, but time and persistence tamped down the controversy. Chisholm failed to win any primaries in 1972, but she did earn 152 first ballot votes for the presidential nomination. A trailblazing effort, Chisholm returned to Congress with a national profile. Wallace, meanwhile, struggled. Afflicted with constant pain from gun wounds, he battled a painkiller addiction and endured a very ugly and public divorce. But Wallace also embarked upon a transformation. According to his daughter, Chisholm's visit, along with his paralysis, forced him to sit still and reflect. As a result, she claimed, he had a real awakening, a change of heart.
Like most real life transformations, it was slow and halting. In 1974, Chisholm, to the surprise of most everyone, called Wallace and asked for help to extend federal minimum wage laws to domestic servants. Aimed primarily at African American women working in white Southern households, the bill had been bitterly opposed by Southern Democrats. One Chisholm phone call to Wallace, however, pushed the governor to act. He worked the phones, minds were changed, the bill passed.
Five years later in 1979, Wallace did the unthinkable. He attended a service at Martin Luther King's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. On that Sunday, he wheeled himself to the front of the black congregation and confessed his racist sins. Wallace's conversion was far from perfect. In interviews, he sometimes downplayed his past racism. But in a series of other high-profile public and private events, Wallace admitted his past and told out black Alabamans, I'm sorry.
To skeptics, Wallace's conversion was convenient. In Alabama's Democratic politics, the black vote, now that they could vote, was decisive. By the 1980s, Wallace was colorblind when it came to winning an election.
None of us can divine a person's heart. Black political power surely motivated Wallace's change. But change he did. As governor in the 1980s, he appointed scores of African Americans to high-level posts. He signed legislation to help the poor and dispossessed. In an irony of all ironies, George Corley Wallace probably did more for black Alabamans than any other governor in the history of the state. In 1998, George Wallace met with the civil rights icon, John Lewis, to offer an apology. It was Lewis who nearly died at the hands of Wallace state troopers in 1965 Selma.
In this meeting, Lewis forgave his former tormentor. In a New York Times column, the congressman wrote, I can never forget what George Wallace said and did as governor, but our ability to forgive gives serves a higher moral purpose in our society. George Wallace deserves to be remembered for his effort to redeem his soul and in so doing, to mend the fabric of American society. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Jeff Bloodworth, who is a professor of American history at Cannon University. He's also a Jack Miller Center fellow. And the Jack Miller Center is a nationwide network of scholars and teachers dedicated to educating the next generation about America's founding principles and history.
To learn more, visit JackMillerCenter.org. And what a story to teach young people. That scene of her holding his hand and praying with him. And who's crying? Well, of course, it's Governor Wallace crying. The story of racism in America and redemption and the story of a unique relationship.
That of Governor George Wallace and the late great Shirley Chisholm. Their story here on Our American Stories. Behind every successful business is a vision. Bringing it to life takes more than effort. It takes the right financial foundation and support. That's where Chase for Business comes in.
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