When Segregationist Gov. George Wallace of Alabama Was Shot by a Would-Be Assassin in 1972, Who Did He Get a Visit in the Hospital From?

Democratic Representative Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to the United States Congress.

She was criticized by many of her most ardent followers.

“He said, ‘What are your people going to say?’ I said: ‘I know what they’re going to say. But I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.’ He cried and cried,” Chisholm recalled.

Two years later, when Chisholm was trying to get support a second time for legislation that would extend the minimum wage for domestic workers, it was Wallace who helped lobby for votes from Southern members of Congress to help the bill pass. President Nixon signed the legislation into law in April 1974.