Former Nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma Talks about the Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson

From the West Alabama Newsroom–

The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson — inspired the historic Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965.

Jackson was shot during a voting rights protest in Marion — and died eight days later at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma.

Eighty-five year old Vera Jenkins Booker worked at Good Sam — during the Voting Rights Movement.

“I was the 11 to 7 supervisor for seven and a half years at the Good Samaritan Hospital. And I was there in 1965,” she said.

Booker says Jimmie Lee Jackson was only patient that came to the hospital on the night he was shot.

“I saw the blood. And I pulled up his shirt and there was a hole on the left side of his abdomen where the intestine had come out, about the size of a medium grapefruit.”

She says Jackson had surgery that night — and seemed well for a time. Then suddenly took a turn for the worse — and died after a second surgery.

Booker says she helped take care of Jackson — and talked with him regularly during his time in hospital.

“He told me all about being in the service. How he had worked. But he was working in Marion. Doing all he could to get all the blacks, everybody he could to vote.”

Jackson’s death sparked the idea for the Selma to Montgomery march.

State troopers attacked marchers during one of the march attempts. A day now known in American history as “Bloody Sunday.”

Booker says she was called in to work that day — to help with the turmoil.

“You talking about chaos, chaos, chaos it was,” she said.

Booker says Jimmie Lee has always been in her thoughts — during monumental voting rights moments like the signing of the Voting Rights Act — and the election of former President Barack Obama.

“I feel like, his death was not in vain.”