George Wallace Essay Example

successfully won the governorship on his second attempt and went on to serve an unprecedented four terms as governor, winning elections in 1962, 1970, 1974, and 1982. His final term ended in January 1987 and had a long-lasting impact on Alabama. In fact, Wallace's influence was so great that just two years after taking office, other candidates sought permission to use his slogan, "Stand Up for Alabama," on their billboards. Even influential senators John Sparkman and Lister Hill refrained from openly opposing Wallace when he declared his intention to lead Alabama in a fierce battle against the federal government regarding school integration, buses, restrooms, and public spaces.

Alabama's white voting majority backed a leader who pledged to uphold the long-standing suppression of black citizens. This resulted in Wallace becoming a prominent political figure in the Deep South, comparable only to Louisiana's Huey Long. One significant event was his inaugural speech on Jan. 14, 1963, which was authored by Asa Carter, a known Ku Klux Klan member.

Wallace vowed to protect the "Anglo-Saxon people" of the state from merging with black people in a communist manner. He famously proclaimed "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." One notable act by Wallace was his attempt to hinder the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, at the University of Alabama. It later emerged that Wallace had privately assured President John Kennedy that he would step aside if allowed to give a defiant speech. Despite facing criticism from within the state, Wallace remained resolute in using Alabama as a platform for his national political ambitions and his fervor for delivering anti-Big-government speeches.

Initially, Wallace showed interest in running for

president in 1964 as a neo-Dixiecrat candidate. However, his decision changed due to Senator Barry Goldwater's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which contradicted Wallace's belief that both major parties shared similar views on race. After the election, he realized his mistake of not pursuing his candidacy as he found Goldwater's campaign comically ineffective. In 1968, Wallace formed his own political party and chose eccentric retired Air Force general Curtis LeMay as his running mate. This strategic move enabled him to draw working-class voters away from Nixon.

According to one biographer, Marshall Frady, a key factor in Wallace's success was his energetic campaigning, which was likened to that of a squirrel. Additionally, his message resonated with discontented white individuals across the country, not just in the South. Wallace recognized that Rust Belt workers and urban white ethnic Americans from Boston to Baltimore were unhappy about black students in their local schools and black competition in the workforce. Although he modified his language, he still used a censored list of enemies - liberals, Communists, the Eastern press, federal judges, and "pointy-headed intellectuals" - to convey an updated version of his well-established rhetoric from the Heart of Dixie.

Combining race and anger resonated with enough voters to give him over 13 percent of the popular vote and win five states during the 1968 presidential election.

The Heart of Dixie

In the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, his support grew stronger, causing concern among party leaders. Surprisingly, he came in second place in Wisconsin and experienced a rapid rise in the polls. On May 16, he won the Maryland and Michigan primaries; however, his celebration was overshadowed as he recovered in a

hospital bed after being shot and paralyzed on the eve of the election.

Wallace claimed that the injury he received from Bremer's bullet caused him constant physical and mental pain. He thought that if he hadn't been shot, his popularity would have forced the Democratic Party to choose him as a candidate in 1972 to block Nixon's influence in the Sun Belt, Middle West, and Northeast working-class areas. In 1976, Wallace attempted another run for president but his aides noticed that applause dwindled when people saw him in his shiny wheelchair. Wallace himself acknowledged this phenomenon and privately disagreed with friends who mentioned Franklin Roosevelt's successful presidency despite using crutches and a wheelchair. To his confidant Oscar Adams, Wallace stated that while Roosevelt was elected, people didn't have to witness him being carried onto planes like he was near death every night on television. Just before the Illinois primary, Wallace abandoned his presidential ambitions and backed a more progressive Southern governor with no ties to segregation.

In a 1994 interview, Dan Carter, a professor of history at Emory University and author of "The Politics of Rage," expressed that George Wallace, the former Governor of Georgia, played a significant role in shaping American politics from the 1960s to the 1980s. According to Carter, it would be hard to envision American politics during that era without acknowledging Wallace's impact. He believes that Wallace tackled social issues that later became central themes for Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Carter further argues that Wallace's presidential campaigns foreshadowed numerous aspects of future politics but with a confrontational approach.

Wallace was the first prominent political figure in his generation to exploit the widespread aversion towards

Washington, which subsequently became a significant force in national politics. He was also undoubtedly the first to mobilize white, working-class voters who would later be known as Reagan Democrats. Furthermore, among politicians of his era, Wallace was the pioneer in vehemently emphasizing issues that continue to play a key role in contemporary politics, albeit with more refinement, such as race, crime, welfare, and other concerns.

Following his tenure as governor, Wallace utilized interviews to consistently assert that he was the true progenitor of Reaganism. From 1979 onwards, he also embarked on a campaign of remorse and reassessment aimed at eradicating the "racist" label from his legacy. He argued that his early support for segregation stemmed from his interpretation of the Constitution and the Bible - an erroneous perception that mistakenly portrayed it as an expression of racist animosity towards African Americans.

"During my final term as governor," he admitted, "I apologize for my mistake in not expressing my position clearly. I deeply regret that my words were misunderstood and did not intend to make derogatory remarks about black people."

Wallace's life narrative is reminiscent of a Faulknerian story, marked by twisted perversity and themes of guilt. His pursuit, flawed yet tenacious like Snopsian, was plagued by issues of race.

Born on August 25, 1919, in Clio, Alabama, George Corley Wallace Jr. grew up in Barbour County where mule-drawn wagons were as prevalent as cars on the unpaved main street.

His father, a wastrel son of a beloved local doctor, and his mother, Mozelle Smith Wallace, who had survived abandonment by her mother and a depressing girlhood in an Episcopal orphanage at Mobile, played a significant role in shaping George Jr.'s

upbringing. Like his father, he inherited the tendency to be quick with his fists and drawn to politics. In high school, he earned the moniker "Barbour Bantam" and achieved victory in two Golden Gloves titles.

At the Capitol in Montgomery, when he was 15 years old, he stood on the gold star that marked where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy. This spot, where Alabama governors have taken their oath of office ever since, held great significance for George Wallace. As governor, he wanted to protect it so much that he ordered state troopers to surround it when Attorney General Robert Kennedy visited, to prevent any Yankee from disrespecting it. In 1937, on the oak-shaded University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa, Wallace began shaping his political identity. He arrived wearing the same suit he wore as a page in Montgomery but found Tuscaloosa to be a welcoming place for ambitious boys from humble backgrounds. Traditionally, it served as a training ground for future governors and senators.

Young Wallace's triumph in the freshman class presidential election did not translate into success in other student offices. However, his aim to dismantle the fraternity machine by bringing together independent and out-of-state students heightened his enduring commitment to championing underdogs in politics. These persistent themes had a significant impact on his career in Alabama.

Cronyism and Betrayal

During this period, he assembled a team of followers who would later become his staff for future endeavors. Moreover, he forged an unexpected and ill-fated bond with Frank Johnson, an appealing law student hailing from Winston County. Situated in northern Alabama, this county served as a stronghold for Unionists who had seceded

from Alabama following the state's decision to withdraw from the Union.

Johnson, a Republican, and Wallace, an ardent New Deal Democrat, had different political affiliations. Johnson would jokingly talk about becoming a federal judge, while Wallace entertained the idea of being governor. However, the ambitious aspirations of Wallace were often regarded as comical by influential individuals on campus. Additionally, in those days, Wallace gained attention not for his natural charm, but for his boundless energy and relentless tenacity.

Frank Johnson's wife, Ruth, was concerned about Wallace's pursuit of young high school girls, but she believed his actions stemmed from a desire for admiration rather than sexual conquest. Despite working as a waiter, taxi driver, and studying law with borrowed books, Wallace married Lurleen Burns, a 16-year-old dime store clerk whom he had enchanted with his charm. This occurred in 1943 when Wallace was 23 years old during wartime.

Wallace and his baby daughter, Bobbi Joe, born in 1944, traveled together wherever Wallace's flight training in the Army Air Forces took him. In the spring of 1945, he was sent to the Mariana Islands as a flight engineer, where he was assigned to fly bombing missions over Japan. Biographer Dan Carter discovered that some of Wallace's fellow crew members remembered his barracks lectures in Barbour County, where he defended segregation. According to reports, Wallace stated, "I don't hate them. The colored are fine in their place."

But they're just like children, and it's not something that's going to change.

It's written in stone

"Wallace had completed nine combat missions during the war. He received a 10 percent disability rating for combat-induced "psychoneurosis" upon discharge. This diagnosis was made after he refused to

fly hazardous training missions when his unit returned to California following Japan's surrender. Many years later, Sen. Wayne Morse from Oregon revealed Wallace's psychiatric history during the war."

Wallace countered his liberal critic's claims by presenting evidence of being 90 percent mentally stable. Post-war, he rapidly progressed in politics through his influential network in Barbour County. In 1946, he was designated as an assistant to Alabama's attorney general and the subsequent year, he successfully obtained a seat in the Alabama legislature.

Aligning himself with Governor James Folsom, a racially moderate populist, Wallace convinced Folsom to appoint him as a trustee of the all-black Tuskegee Institute. In 1948, during the Democratic National Convention, he chose not to join the segregationist "Dixiecrats" walkout and firmly established himself in the progressive and racially moderate faction of the state Democratic Party. Despite this party still carrying the emblem of "White Supremacy" on its ballot, Wallace served as an elected district judge in his home county from 1953 to 1958 while also preparing for his run for governor in 1958. It was during this race and its aftermath that Wallace committed two betrayals - one personal and one political - which permanently stained his reputation but also ensured his dominance over Alabama politics for an entire generation.

In 1958, Wallace ran for candidacy but was unsuccessful. He followed the racially tolerant approach set by Folsom but lost to John Patterson, who supported resistance to integration and gained support from the Ku Klux Klan. Although Wallace later disputed it, he was quoted as saying that no one would outdo him in racial discrimination. This remark reflected the strategy Wallace would employ to attain power.

In

the following year, Wallace's law school friend Frank Johnson, who had become a federal judge known for his strong civil rights record, ordered Wallace's court to hand over voter-registration records to the United States Civil Rights Commission. Despite publicly denouncing Johnson as a federal dictator, Wallace secretly conspired to avoid federal contempt charges by having a local grand jury surrender the records on his behalf. Although Johnson acknowledged that Wallace had employed "devious means," he recognized that Wallace had ultimately complied with the federal court order. Unfazed by the facts, Wallace labeled Johnson a "carpet-bagging, scala wagging liar" who aimed to initiate "a second Sherman's March to the Sea." With the loss of a friend came the gain of a nickname for Wallace, known as "The Fighting Judge," which would later contribute to his successful gubernatorial campaign in 1962 with the support of the Ku Klux Klan as a staunch segregationist.

According to Johnson, Wallace created a strategic plan for his career that involved deceiving the people of Alabama. Meanwhile, Wallace viewed himself as dedicated to the economic growth of his state and promoting limited government and middle-class values nationally. However, the truth was more complex and unsightly. During his four terms as governor, Wallace presided over a period of extreme corruption, with his brother Gerald at the center of a crony system that lasted until his death in 1993.

With the governor's approval, Gerald Wallace and his close associate, Oscar Harper, went into business selling the state office supplies, printing, vending machines and building leases. Wallace and Harper established an asphalt company with $1,000 in capital. In a year and a half, the new company

earned over a million dollars in state contracts. These unabashed revelations come not from political adversaries, but from Harper's 1988 memoir, "Me 'n' George," seen as one of the most informative accounts of the behind-the-scenes dealings in Alabama's capital during the Wallace era. "Most people have misconceptions about how I gained wealth," Harper wrote. "They believe Gerald and I are corrupt." Then he added, "That is simply not true."

It's just that good deals kept popping up and I never was one to turn a good deal down. As this comment suggests, Wallace's first term was rowdy, even by the standards of a region that had produced Gov. Eugene Talmadge of Georgia, known as "The Wild Man from Sugar Creek." It is one of the paradoxes of Southern history that Alabama's "Fighting Judge," by trying to revive the antebellum doctrine of states' rights, instead enabled the civil rights movement to reach its high-water mark. The Birmingham demonstrations in 1963 led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Two years later the Selma march led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Despite these triumphs, it was a dangerous time for blacks and whites who supported the civil rights movement.

During the Wallace years, there were racially motivated killings in Alabama in which at least 10 people lost their lives. Wallace and his public safety director, Al Lingo, who was known for his incompetence and drug addiction, responded by obstructing the federal investigations into crimes such as the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963, which resulted in the deaths of four young girls. The leaders of Alabama's business and

educational community, always concerned about the state's reputation, began to view Wallace as an embarrassment. The governor himself was shocked and saddened when students at his alma mater welcomed him with chants of "We're No. 50," referring to the university's dismal academic ranking due to lack of funds.

George Wallace thrived on the support of white farmers, factory workers, and rural courthouse bosses. These individuals not only admired him but also played a pivotal role in counting the votes and distributing patronage. They were enamored by Wallace's gestures, such as waving his cigar and liberally using ketchup on his food. They found joy in his claim that a gas station attendant at an Alabama crossroads possessed more knowledge about Communism than the State Department. Despite facing resistance from an anti-Wallace faction in the legislature, who refused to amend the state Constitution for his re-election, Wallace resorted to a clever strategy. He nominated his sick wife Lurleen as a candidate in 1966, and she triumphed effortlessly in a touching campaign that showcased the extent of Wallace's ambitions. Tragically, Mrs. Wallace underwent surgery and received radiation treatment for an aggressive intestinal cancer just weeks before her husband announced her candidacy. She ultimately succumbed to the disease in 1968.

Political analysts speculated that the people of Alabama would condemn Wallace for cynically exploiting an ill woman. However, he merely changed his tactics. In 1970, he successfully regained the governorship by employing his most blatantly racist campaign to date. He cautioned voters that his progressive opponent, Albert Brewer, was leveraging the collective voting power of Black individuals to establish a system of oppressive federal control. With explicit approval from Wallace, the

Ku Klux Klan circulated untrue flyers accusing Brewer and his family of engaging in sexual deviance and interracial relationships. This election held significant historical significance for Alabama on multiple fronts.

1. In 1970, Alabama resisted the progressive wave that swept the region and saw the election of governing figures like Jimmy Carter in Georgia and Reubin Askew in Florida.
2. Furthermore, Wallace openly expressed his commitment to running for president. He believed that his appeal to blue-collar voters outside the South disrupted both major parties in 1968.

President Nixon was so concerned about Wallace's potential to disrupt the 1972 election that he provided $400,000 to Wallace's opponent in the 1970 governor campaign. However, Wallace won through his racist attacks and rallying Alabamians to "send them a message" by supporting him for the 1972 presidential race. For a brief period, Wallace gained immense popularity. He transformed his appearance with fashionable wide-lapel suits and learned to use a blow dryer, thanks to his stylish new wife Cornelia Ellis Snively, who is the niece of former Governor Folsom.

Wallace's discussion of race was limited due to his financial stability. Nevertheless, his stance against school busing reassured conservative white voters. As Wallace gained momentum in the Florida primary, Nixon delivered a speech against busing, which was considered a recognition of Wallace's rising popularity. Although Wallace finished second to George McGovern in the Wisconsin primary and to Hubert Humphrey in Indiana, he had already solidified his position within the Democratic Party and was leading the polls in Maryland and Michigan.

During an unnecessary campaign rally in Laurel, Md. on the

afternoon of May 15, George Wallace overruled the Secret Service and went into a crowd to shake hands. Arthur Bremer, who had been following Wallace for weeks after failing to kill Nixon, shouted to him and shot Wallace three times from a distance of three feet. The bullets severed Wallace's spine, leaving him paralyzed for life. Bremer is currently serving a 63-year sentence in a Maryland prison since June 1972. Despite the end of his presidential aspirations, Wallace managed to win two more terms as governor by appealing to white loyalty and catering to the new black voters he had previously opposed.

But Wallace now acted more like a retiree rather than a CEO. The constant pain from his injury labeled as "The Thorn in My Flesh" limited his focus and led to a reliance on methadone and other pain relievers. He developed an unhealthy envy towards his wife, Cornelia, who faced her own struggles with drug addiction following their messy divorce in 1978. Wallace's desire to establish a lasting legacy faltered when his son, George Jr., proved to be a difficult campaigner, unable to rise beyond lower-level government positions. Wallace later remarried an unsuccessful country singer named Lisa Taylor.

Despite generating controversy and negative attention, Wallace's second marriage ended in divorce in 1987. He leaves behind a son and three daughters from his first marriage: one son residing in Montgomery and the three daughters based in Birmingham and Montgomery. Additionally, he is survived by two brothers, Gerald from Montgomery and Jack from Eufaula, Alabama. Furthermore, Wallace is also survived by multiple grandchildren. Although his last term as governor concluded in 1982, his focus shifted towards

historical revision instead of governing the state during his final years. Beginning in 1977, he began conducting interviews where he emphasized that his political philosophy, rather than racism, was the driving force behind his career. A typical statement from one of these interviews includes his belief that segregation was not rooted in hatred as portrayed by influential newspapers such as the New York Times and other Eastern establishment media.

I held no animosity towards anyone, including the man who shot me. During my youth, I frequently interacted and enjoyed the company of African Americans while swimming and playing. It is worth noting that there is more hatred prevalent in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., compared to the entire Southern region combined."
In order to actively pursue my rehabilitation, I actively sought out meetings with prominent civil rights figures such as Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Representative.

John Lewis, who was beaten on "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, which inspired the voting-rights movement. Wallace gained attention when he visited King's former church in Montgomery. Occasionally, he expressed remorse saying "I'm sorry." After Wallace left office in 1987, Alabamians continued to support him in his symbolic position at Troy State University. Eventually, Republicans took over the governorship and Wallace's major achievement, a statewide network of vocational schools, community colleges, and small universities, was considered a wasteful and unnecessary burden on the financially struggling state. One of his final public appearances was featured in the Spike Lee documentary "Four Little Girls," which recounts the tragic events of the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church.

During his interview, Wallace claims that his closest friend was an African

American orderly, while the orderly appears visibly uneasy and repeatedly attempts to leave the frame but is pulled back by Wallace. This particular segment of the film often elicited laughter during public screenings. Thus, concluded the public career of Wallace, who went from being a highly feared politician in his time to a pitiful relic.

The career of George Wallace, at its peak, displayed a moral trajectory that appeared completely predictable and consistent with the idea of racism's eternal curse as portrayed by Faulkner. Despite the violent events that shook his state, Wallace refused to acknowledge any moral responsibility. Many people in his state, deeply influenced by religious beliefs, believed that a severe judgement had been served upon him. Brandt Ayers, a liberal editor for The Star newspaper in Anniston, described Wallace as follows: "The Governor we Alabamians knew was a man driven by raw emotions: a sincere advocate for the working class, manipulative in stoking their resentments, a magician who called forth our primitive instincts, a man with his own insecurities, moments of tenderness, and ultimately humility." He also mentioned, "When he visited my office in 1974 during his gubernatorial campaign, I confronted him: 'George, you always claimed to fight for the underprivileged, but everyone knows that the true underdog is the black man. We stood up for him.'"

"You didn't. Why?" He did not answer but silently stared at his legs for what felt like an extended period.