As the Toast Burns.
GW:
Liberals have their words. Southerners never did. They frequently stepped out of line.
Watching someone scream, “I hate them niggers” is good TV. Even if the media was not biased, it would still show these people.
Less offensive things by leaders were also bad. Instead of arguing “Segregation now, Segregation forever”, would it not have been better to present it as freedom (to choose your child’s school) and democracy (majority opinion rules)?
instead of putting the focus on 10-year-old black girls and their rights, it would shift the focus on 10-year-old white girls.
This was used with some success to stop school busing.
(The overly legalistic arguments about States’ Rights were not good. Nobody will come out against a child and for some legal concept they don’t quite understand.)
The big difference between integrationists and segregationists was the leaders commitment level.
I’ve written before about Gov. Wallace being a fake who was endorsed by the NAACP, lost and decided he “won’t be outniggered again” in a future election.
I’ve read this sort of bigmouth rhetoric before re Wallace and his “impurities,” and, like GW, it always comes from the cloak of people who hide behind screen names, blog names and general anonymity. (Yeah, I know, pot kettle black. I’ll eat some humble pie a little later on today.)
The problem is, neither GW, nor any of the aforementioned anonymous founts of courage, nor I, were seeking or held serious political power in Alabama between 1958 and 1987. What is it the Indians say? Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins. None of us were walking those miles in George Wallace’s shoes, but George Wallace WAS. Therefore, just based on that alone, I’ll give Wallace the benefit of the doubt. Hell, I wasn’t even living during the peak of Wallace’s credibility/power/vitality, so everything I know about him comes from either books, TV or conversations with those on the scene. So just beyond the moccasins and the miles, from what I have come to understand about all the parties involved, in the time, place, manner and circumstance they were involved, I think George Corley Wallace did the best job he could have possibly done both as Governor and as a thrice Presidential Candidate. Let’s face it, there hasn’t been a perfect person to walk this Earth for over 2,000 years, and Wallace fits into the subset of humanity called “not perfect.” If he didn’t accomplish everything he wanted, it was because of some external factor he couldn’t control, such as Strom Thurmond’s perfidy, Richard Nixon’s perfidy, the out and outright force of Yankee guns, several bullets from Arthur Bremer (et al., IMHO). If he didn’t accomplish everything some of us die-hards thinks he should have, then maybe it was because he wasn’t as radical as the rest of us, and perhaps he had a good reason for not being that radical. (Maybe we don’t have any good reason to be as radical as we are, if you want to look at the half-empty glass of water another way.) Don’t forget, his formative years were during the Great Depression, in a county that was about half white half black. While he was a seg pretty much his whole life, he was always a moderate seg. Today’s racial liberals might react “to-may-to, to-mah-to,” when reading that, but in 1950s Alabama, it was a big difference and a big distinction. Politically, he was most influenced by Alabama’s Post-WWII Governor, James “Big Jim” Folsom, who was Governor when Wallace won his first political races. While Folsom was a moderate seggy, he was also populist, and an enthusiastic supporter of social welfare and transfer payments, even to blacks, who would far more receive instead of pay, though the beaux ideal of a Folsom/Wallace welfare state would seem paltry compared to today’s liberal Democrats. Folsom and Wallace were not loath to loosening up on segregation, but later events would complicate matters.
That leads me to Guy White’s inconsistency here, both in what I blockquoted, and in his treatment of the same subject matter last week. He can’t have it both ways — On the one hand, he says that civil rights era white Southern conservatives were too extremist and careless in their rhetoric, and too much given to using racial slurs and pejoratives. On the other hand, he faults George Wallace for being too moderate in his 1958 run for Governor, to the point where the NAACP endorsed him, NOT because they liked him, but because his main opponent, a man named Patterson who won the Democrat Primary then Governor in 1958, knowingly and happily cavorted with the KKK. It’s just that the NAACP in Alabama figured in 1958 that either Wallace or Patterson would win, but Wallace was far less “repugnant” (to the NAACP) than Patterson, so they took their chances with Wallace. Was there anything close to a white liberal or black that could have won, the NAACP would have endorsed him or her. But their choice of Wallace was pure pragmatism. (While we’re on that subject, I get the sense that the only reason Patterson won was because the Yankees and libs were starting to push integration in an arrogant way, and without the participation, countenance or care of the existing politicians of the states that would have been most affected. If there were no outside external factors, I get a feeling that Wallace would have beat Patterson in ’58, because Folsom proved that a “progressive,” at least for time and place, could win.) Even after Wallace’s first term as Gov. between ’62 and ’66, which of course was far less to the NAACP’s liking than the ’58 version of Wallace, there was a significant percentage of blacks who voted for Lurleen Wallace for Governor in 1966, mainly because her husband wasn’t a raging lunatic bigot, and his administration did accrue to the benefit of blacks somewhat. (Governors in AL couldn’t serve consecutive terms until 1970, so Lurleen Wallace ran as her husband’s placeholder). During Wallace’s first term as Gov, the Federal Voting Rights Act was passed, so far many more blacks were able to vote in the 1966 Gov. election in Alabama compared to 1962. Still, this didn’t preclude Lurleen Wallace from winning in ’66 and from George Wallace from winning three more terms as Governor, in 1970, 1974 and in a comeback role in 1982.
What Guy White is trying to say that Wallace et al. were too radical and they weren’t radical enough at the same time. Politics isn’t quantum mechanics, so FAIL.
UPDATE 2/16: A historian of Alabama politics e-mailed me to remind me that part of the reason a good percentage of black voters picked Lurleen Wallace in 1966 was because her main opposition was John Patterson, the very same John Patterson who beat George Wallace in 1958, the very same John Patterson who cavorted with the Klan. (Ironically, I am told, Patterson, who is still living, endorsed Obama for President.) So, just as it was eight years earlier, blacks picked the lesser of two “evils.” One more thing I should add is that all these contested elections I write about here were all within the Democrat Primary. Republicans were a non-factor, and it wasn’t until after Wallace left office that a Republican could win Governor, that being Guy Hunt in 1986. Fob James, who was Gov. within a Wallace interregnum period, and again after the fall of Guy Hunt, was an elected Democrat in his 1979-83 term and a Republican in his 1995-99 term. Acutally, the whole recent history of Alabama Gubernatorial politics is nothing more than a horse race among people named Wallace, James, Hunt and Folsom.
