Shirley Chisholm had close ties to Augusta

When former U.S. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm died at age 80 on Jan. 1, it brought back warm memories of her playing blues on an upright piano in my house and of her close ties to Augusta.

News accounts recalled her being the first black woman elected to Congress - representing the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, N.Y., 1969-1983 - and being the first black person to seek a major party's nomination for the U.S. presidency, in 1972.

They also mentioned her being an outspoken champion of women, minorities and gay rights, and being a staunch critic of the Vietnam War.

But I remember her as being this funny, bright, Christian lady who just exuded warmth, and had this unique talent for making almost everyone she met her new friend.

After all, this was the same person whom the Rev. Jesse Jackson called "a woman of great courage," and the same who visited her political rival Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace in a hospital after he had been shot in an assassination attempt.

When Gov. Wallace himself asked what her constituents might say about her visiting him, she replied, "I know what they're going to say. But I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone." And they then cried together.

FOUR YEARS after her failed presidential bid, I was working as the Saturday city editor on the old afternoon Augusta Herald when I got a call that Congresswoman Chisholm had just checked into what is now the Ramada Hotel in the 600 block of Broad Street. I was astounded, since there had been no media announcement about her coming to town.

I managed to reach her and asked if I could come over for a quick interview for the afternoon edition. She agreed, and within minutes I was meeting both her and native Augustan Arthur Hardwick Jr.

She and Mr. Hardwick - who owned a chain of liquor stores and a home-construction business in the Buffalo, N.Y., area - had met when they both were serving in the New York state legislature.

They were traveling somewhere together, and Mr. Hardwick decided he wanted to show her his native Augusta. We just bonded together immediately, and I asked if they had supper plans.

They didn't, so I asked if they would like to come over to my house in Belvedere, S.C., and they thought that would be great. I told them I'd pick them up at the hotel, and then called my wife at that time and literally said, "Guess who's coming to supper?"

We ended up having a great evening of great conversation. When it came time for dessert, Mrs. Chisholm declined. She had noticed, a short distance from our dining area, this upright piano that I had refinished. While we continued to talk with Mr. Hardwick, she wandered over to the piano.

SHE SAT DOWN and began playing blues songs, and amazed me with her talent. Years later, whenever I mentioned this to others who knew or admired her, they all claimed to not know of her piano playing.

I dropped them off at the hotel, and she insisted on buying us supper the next night, since they were staying over. We ended up that Sunday night at the Ming Wah Chinese restaurant on Walton Way, where our Chinese waitress immediately recognized her!

That Sunday morning, she and Mr. Hardwick had attended the service at Tabernacle Baptist Church, where they met some people who talked her into returning to Augusta to speak at Paine College at a fund-raiser sponsored by the Paine College Alumni Association.

She did so Friday, Dec. 10, 1976, addressing a packed audience of more than 1,000 in Gilbert-Lambuth Memorial Chapel. She told the audience she had great hopes for then President-elect Jimmy Carter, and noted it was another white Southern president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who greatly advanced the civil rights of blacks.

"We can no longer judge white Americans running nationally or locally on the basis of where they are from," she said.

She also expressed hope for the nation to become "one under God," at the close of 1976, as the country began its tricentennial period.

"This is a new era," she said, "but we won't have real communion with God until this nation heals itself of bitter racism."

She received standing ovations before and after her talk.

I LATER VISITED her in her congressional office in Washington, D.C., and she sent me a note, Christmas cards, autographed copies of her 1970 autobiography, Unbought and Unbossed, her 1973 book, The Good Fight, and a campaign button from her 1972 presidential bid.

In 1977, the year after her first Augusta visit, she and Mr. Hardwick married, and they would remain married until his death in 1986.

She came back to the Augusta area Feb. 18, 1992, speaking at Midland Valley High School in Langley, S.C., for a Black History Month observance.

"Whether white or black, we're all American," she said then. "The quality of life for all of us is in deep trouble now. Maybe that might bring us together."

She noted of the occasion itself, "I hope the day will come in the United States of America when we have no special month set aside for any particular segment of society."

She also noted a prediction that people of color will make up 52 percent of the population of America in the year 2006.

"If our country continues to be No. 1," she said, "we must recognize that all of these people have skills. We must stop thinking about each other in a stereotypical fashion. Our country needs the collected attributes, the collected talents, of all the people of America."

When Shirley Chisholm Hardwick died the first day of this new year, the U.S. lost a dynamic political leader, but many Augustan-area citizens who came to know her lost a good friend.

(Editor's note: The writer is publications editor of Morris Communications Co., and writer of the weekly Ramblin' Rhodes music column.)