quakers rock

GEORGE (GEORGE WALLACE JR.)

PEGGY (PEGGY WALLACE KENNEDY)

JOHN (JOHN LEWIS)

ACT ONE: Introductions

PEGGY (Comes forward, speaks to audience): My name is Peggy Wallace Kennedy. I want to tell you about a time in the sixties. The late sixties were a time of great division. The Civil Rights Movement had been strong, and people were threatened by it. The Vietnam War was raging, and there was a lot of division around that too. It was in this environment that my father, George Wallace, appeared on the scene. People wanted order, especially in the South. This is a story about my father, George Wallace Junior, and a very unusual person, Shirley Chisholm.

JOHN: My name is John Lewis. As a black man from Alabama, I became involved in the Civil Rights movement. I marched on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma. This was back in the sixties, of course. George Wallace was our enemy. He stood in front of the University of Alabama, blocking it, so Black people couldn’t enter.  Back in 1963, George Wallace said he stood for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In 1965, when we were walking across the Selma Bridge, it was Wallace’s state troopers who fractured my skull and almost killed me. He sent his lawmen out to break up our demonstration. And one of them cracked my skull. So yes, I had a problem with him. This was before I became a Congressman, before any black man could dream of becoming one.

ACT TWO:
Democratic Headquarters, 1972

BARBARA: (to audience) My name is Barbara Lee. In 1972 I was working for Shirley Chisholm, a congresswoman from Brooklyn. She was running for President in a Democratic primary. Some of her opponents included George McGovern, who eventually won, and Hubert Humphrey, but also George Wallace, Governor of Alabama.  Wallace was a segregationalist, a racist, and a mean-spirited man. I hated him. He inflamed people’s passions. He encouraged police to beat demonstrators.  He was doing quite well in the primaries; he had won Florida. But now he was speaking in Maryland.

(SHIRLEY enters from right)

SHIRLEY: Barbara, I need help planning this campaign swing through Michigan. I need you to make sure we have hotel reservations. Can you help with arranging hotels and travel?

BARBARA: Yes, Miss Shirley, I’ll get on it.

SHIRLEY: Running for President sure is different from running for Congress.

BARBARA: You can say that again, Miss Shirley.

SHIRLEY: Are you ok, Barbara?

BARBARA: Just a little depressed is all, Miss Shirley.

SHIRLEY: Why is that?

BARBARA: Well, ever since Wallace won Florida.

SHIRLEY: Yes?

BARBARA: (loudly) How could anyone vote for that man?

SHIRLEY: Something’s cracking on the radio, though, I’ll go listen.

(SHIRLEY EXITS)

BARBARA: (to audience) I will tell you something about Shirley. She was born in Brooklyn; her father was from Guyana, and her mother from Barbados, they are both in the Caribbean. Her mom was a Quaker Brethren. They would sit in silence for their service, like Quakers. They demanded of each other a strict love and regard for others, which applied to everyone. And, she would not give up on a person. She was a passionate activist who called herself a revolutionary. But she also knew how to compromise. In that sense I thought she was the best of all politicians. She was America’s first black congresswoman. She was also the first Black woman to run for President.

(SHIRLEY enters again from right)

SHIRLEY: You will not believe this.

BARBARA: What? What happened?

SHIRLEY: George Wallace has been shot.

BARBARA: Shot? Are you kidding?

SHIRLEY: No, I am not kidding. Some guy shot him at a campaign appearance in Maryland. He is in a hospital.

BARBARA: Wow.

SHIRLEY: I want you to cancel that trip to Michigan.

BARBARA: Cancel it? Why?

SHIRLEY: I’m going to that hospital.

BARBARA: Going? Why? I hate that man!

SHIRLEY: I believe there is good in everybody; maybe that’s a weakness I have.

BARBARA: But visit him? How could you do that?

SHIRLEY: We’re all human beings. You always have to be optimistic that people can change, and that you can change, and that one act of kindness may make all the difference in the world.

(SHIRLEY exits to right)

BARBARA: (to audience) What she said stuck with me; I never forgot it. She did it; she went to visit him. The campaign went on, and I canceled the trip. For Wallace, the campaign was over. For us, it was a long primary campaign; the nomination was eventually won by George McGovern. Shirley stayed in it until the end; she was determined.

ACT THREE: (in a hospital. GEORGE is in bed. His daughter PEGGY is by his side. GEORGE is asleep. PEGGY comes forward to talk to audience.

PEGGY: George Wallace was my father. In 1972 he was shot at a campaign stop by a man named Arthur Bremer. This shooting left him paralyzed below the waist for the rest of his life. Much to our surprise, while we were in the hospital, we were visited by Shirley Chisholm. He was aware that his supporters would not like this. But he let her in.

(sound of door knocking)(PEGGY hears the door knock, and goes to answer it, and returns)

PEGGY: Daddy, there’s someone here to see you.

GEORGE: Who?
PEGGY: Shirley Chisholm.

GEORGE: Are you serious?
PEGGY: Yes, Daddy. She’s in the hallway. Shall we let her in?
GEORGE: Why yes, Peggy, let her in.

(PEGGY exits right; SHIRLEY enters from right)

GEORGE: Shirley Chisholm! What are you doing here?

SHIRLEY: I came to see you, George. Are you going to be ok?

GEORGE: Four bullets to the abdomen. I’ll never walk again.

SHIRLEY: Oh, I’m so sorry, George.

GEORGE: But we are, you know, rivals, we’re on different sides.
SHIRLEY: I don’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.

GEORGE: Well, that’s nice of you, to say that. I sure appreciate your stopping by.

SHIRLEY: Who did it? Did he have a reason?

GEORGE: Just some guy. No reason. All he wanted was a little bit of fame.

SHIRLEY: Don’t we all?

GEORGE: I have to say, I’m in a lot of pain. It’s not pleasant, I can assure you.

(short awkward silence)

SHIRLEY: I was hoping you would let me pray with you.

GEORGE: Why yes, I would appreciate that.

(SHIRLEY and GEORGE each put their hands together so that the audience can see them praying. However, the audience cannot hear them, because PEGGY enters and speaks, in front of them, to the audience.

PEGGY: This visit altered my father’s life. Of course, being shot and paralyzed had altered his life as well. But I think that what happened in this room made a change come over him. Shirley Chisholm had the courage to believe that even George Wallace could change. Chisholm planted a seed of new beginnings in my father’s heart. (THEY exit).

(BARBARA comes forward)

I was mad at Shirley Chisholm for going to visit George Wallace, but we went on with the campaign, and she stuck with it until the end. A black woman, running for President in 1972? She didn’t have a chance. But everyone respected her. At the end, when the other candidates were feuding, or they dropped out, they would give their delegates to Miss Shirley, rather than each other, and she ended up with a respectable showing. And, I will say this: after Shirley visited George Wallace, George Wallace changed. Shirley was right. Her arrival in his life had made a change in him.

(BARBARA exits, PEGGY enters, comes forward)

PEGGY: My father converted, at some point, and became born again. This is something people don’t know about him. He actually changed his mind about segregation, and he admitted it.

(PEGGY exits, (JOHN enters, comes forward)

As I was telling you, I had a lifelong dislike of George Wallace. Martin Luther King, Junior once called him “the most dangerous racist in America today,” and he was right. It was his troopers that fractured my skull – do you think I could forget that? But I was at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1979, when George Wallace arrived in his wheelchair.

(sign appears that says 1979)

(GEORGE enters from right, in a wheelchair)

JOHN: George Wallace, what are you doing here?

GEORGE: I have come to confess to the harm and misery that I have caused. I would like to speak to the congregation.

JOHN: I believe that would be possible, and I will make sure it’s possible. But why?

GEORGE: My own pain has caused me to understand the suffering. I have come to beg your forgiveness.

JOHN: You’re serious, aren’t you?

GEORGE: Yes sir, I am.

JOHN: Come with me. I will make sure you can speak.

(THEY exit offstage, but JOHN returns, comes to front)

JOHN: (to audience) I could tell that he was a changed man. He acknowledged his bigotry and assumed responsibility for the harm he had caused. He wanted to be forgiven. This is what I concluded and what I wrote: Mr. Wallace deserves recognition for seeking redemption for his mistakes, for his willingness to change and to set things right with those he harmed and with his God.

(JOHN exits, BARBARA enters, speaks to audience)

BARBARA: John Lewis forgave him. The people at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church stood and sang Amazing Grace. Of course, some people thought that he was just trying to advance his political career. I will admit that the thought crossed my mind as well. But when he ran for Governor again in 1982, black voters voted for him overwhelmingly. As for Shirley, she became a lecturer, but carried a lifelong passion for tolerance and traveled the country lecturing. “If you don’t accept others who are different, it means nothing that you’ve learned calculus,” she once said.

(BARBARA exits, JOHN enters)

JOHN: By the time I got to Congress in 1987, Shirley had retired. I just want to say a word or two about her career. She was the first, she was the trailblazer. And she was determined to run for President, as a Black woman, no matter what the price, and that’s what she did. She was scorned and ridiculed, and they called her names. But she never lost her temper, and she never lost that basic human respect for people.

(JOHN exits, PEGGY enters)

PEGGY: My father suffered 20 years of pain from that shooting, and the guy who did it just wanted a little fame; he didn’t really do it for political reasons. My father became a born-again Christian, and was a different man than he was before he was shot. He renounced his earlier views on race and segregation. He could never get back his reputation, though. He once said that other people could be rehabilitated, but he would never be; he would always be known as a racist. But you know what? That’s ok. After all he’d done, he’d made his mark, and he’d had his time.

CURTAIN CALL

Barbara Lee became a congresswoman from California.

Shirley Chisholm died in 2005

George Wallace died in 1998

John Lewis, though born in Alabama, was a famous Civil Rights marcher, and  lifelong Congressman from Georgia; he died in July, 2020

Peggy Wallace Kennedy lives in Alabama

Kamala Harris paid tribute to Shirley Chisholm, among others, saying “We’re often not taught their stories. But as Americans, we stand on their shoulders.”

Sources:

Somers, Christina Hoff. (2020, Dec. 14). Lessons of a Black Pioneer. Persuasion. Online: https://www.persuasion.community/p/lessons-of-a-black-pioneer?fbclid=IwAR02elBi0lBXrfVwhZ7YOwkhdH0_125hJJQWuDs0wEvpwUVw9WoyilyFqIM

Schram, Martin. (2020, July 30). This may be John Lewis’ greatest gift to us all. Tribune News Service. Online: https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/martin-schram-john-lewis-death-civil-rights-george-wallace-forgiveness-segregation-1.47524528