At Siena, Sister recalls caring for victims in Selma

By KATHLEEN LAMANNA- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

In 1965, Sister Barbara Lum, SSJ, was a 29-year-old nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, Alabama. One of her patients was Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist whose 1965 shooting inspired the historic protest march from Selma to Montgomery.

"Each day, I would stop in and see how he was doing when I did my rounds," Sister Barbara recalled. "He would take my hand and say, 'Sister, don't you think this is a hard price to pay for freedom?'"

A Rochester native, the Sister of St. Joseph spoke March 21 at Siena College in Loudonville about having witnessed firsthand the hostile situation regarding voting rights and race relations in the South during the height of the American civil rights movement.

She was joined for the talk by Siena sociology professor Dr. Paul Murray; Sister Anne Urquart, SSJ, who worked in Selma in the 1980s; and Susan Butler, who went to Selma to march in the days following "Bloody Sunday," as the attack on the Selma marchers by Alabama law enforcement and others came to be known.

In the talk to Siena students, Sister Barbara, Sister Anne and Ms. Butler spoke about the struggle for African-American voting rights in the South. Sister Barbara recalled that, before Bloody Sunday, she and the other women religious who worked at the hospital were able to see the historic Tabernacle Baptist Church by standing on the radiator in the window of Sister Barbara's room. The Sisters took turns doing so, watching and listening to the mass meetings on voting rights taking place there.

When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived to speak at the church, Sister Barbara said, the meeting was short, but people who were in attendance said it was the most powerful speech they had ever heard.

When violence broke out on the morning of Bloody Sunday, Sister Barbara remembered Good Samaritan Hospital's night staff coming into work to help with the influx of patients. The hospital treated nearly 100 people.

"One of our sisters started triaging people in the dining room," Sister Barbara said. "I felt in my heart we needed to be in that hospital."

The sister considered speaking to the Siena students a privilege.

"I believe that it is so pertinent today, the need for equal treatment of people," she told The Evangelist, noting that the events that unfolded in Selma "shaped the rest of my life."

Since her time in Alabama, Sister Barbara has been dedicated to helping the marginalized, noting that the events on Bloody Sunday changed her life forever.

She went back to Selma last year for the 50th anniversary of the march. The event, she told The Evangelist, was peaceful and happy, showing the progress that has been made. Although there has been some backpedaling on race relations in recent years, she said, "we're more aware of the racial inequality" that exists in America.[[In-content Ad]]