Earlier this month, when the Democratic Presidential hopefuls were asked about “racial blind spots,” my thoughts went to an event that occurred thirty-five years ago today.
I was working in the Washington news bureau of a major network that afternoon, editing tape of a news conference featuring Marvin Meek of the American Agricultural Movement, who vowed to bring protesters to DC to highlight the plight of family farmers.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Shots had been fired in the direction of the President over at the Hilton. People had been wounded. The Secret Service hustled the President into his limousine to return to the White House. Then we learned they had gone to GW Hospital.
“Get over to GW Hospital,” my boss told me.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, seeking specific orders.
“You’ll know what to do when you get there,” he said.
I grabbed some gear and ran. It was maybe a ten minute jog from the bureau to GW Hospital, and it was during that time that I learned - by walkie-talkie - that President Reagan had, indeed, been wounded.
Reporters, cameramen, and producers stood outside the hospital in the overcast, and it quickly became apparent there would have to be a press briefing area set up. I asked some GWU students if they knew of any auditoriums or lecture halls in the immediate vicinity of the hospital. A couple of pre-med students mentioned one large facility on the ground floor of Robb Hall, next to the hospital. They showed the lecture hall to me, and I went exploring behind the stage. There was a room back there with a freezer in it (body parts, I was told), a table, and numerous electrical outlets. Word reached us while we were back there that Robb Hall would be the press center. We commandeered the room, and set up a remote unit on the table. Soon our reporter and anchor were broadcasting from that room backstage.
There were mobile units all over the place by now, and the eyes of the world were on George Washington University Hospital and Robb Hall. We held our breath with everyone else as the President went through surgery. We broadcast the briefing where the doctors assured us that the President had survived and was on the mend. We stayed on the scene through the evening news and into the darkness. Only when the White House Press Office and GW officials declared a full lid for the night - that there would be no further briefings - did we begin to break down our equipment and head home.
We had all worked straight through the afternoon and early evening. I’m not sure even we anything to eat, because, on a day like that, you keep going on adrenaline. And, by the time our work was over, we were still flying high on adrenaline and endorphins. The President had been shot. He survived. And we had been on the scene and told the world the news that the doctors had saved his life and he was on the road to recovery.
In three decades in the news business, I’m not sure I ever felt a high like I felt that evening. In no mood to hurry home, I lingered outside Robb Hall and Washington Circle, chatting with colleagues and friends.
I spoke briefly with Lem Tucker, a reporter for CBS, who had covered the President’s speech at the Hilton, witnessed the shooting and then rushed to the hospital and continued his coverage from there. Lem was one of the first African-Americans to work as a network news reporter. His career spanned all three major networks, and this day may well have been the single day for which he is best remembered.
Lem and I both lived within easy walking distance of GW Hospital, just a couple of blocks apart, but he went home a few minutes after I left.
I walked home, wearing my lanyard and network ID proudly outside my trench coat. It was a ten minute walk, at most. The world was at my feet, and all was right with the world. Several people nodded and smiled.
Lem lived only three blocks from the hospital, but in that three blocks, a white man saw him coming and walked across New Hampshire Avenue, so as to avoid him.
“One moment, millions of people are watching me on television, hanging on my words to tell them the condition of the President of the United States,” Lem later said. “And a couple hours later, I’m just another threatening black man on a dark street.”
I had walked those same three blocks that Lem had walked, and yet, for me, it was a satisfying walk home after a job well done. For Lem, the message was entirely different. Never, in a million years, would i have imagined that something like that would occur on a day such as this.
His words had imparted an existential truth to me. I can never hope to completely understand how race impacts on the lives of others. I have my own racial blind spots, and, because they are blind spots, I can’t be sure where or what they are.
There is an old expression that you can’t really understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. But for me, thirty-five years ago today, it didn’t take me a mile to learn that’s not always possible. In the three blocks from GW Hospital to the corner of New Hampshire and L Streets NW, I learned that I will always have racial blind spots and - try as I might - I can never truly walk that mile in the shoes of others.