Stand Up for Alabama: Governor George C. Wallace (Modern South)

504 Pages·2007·1.76 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Frederick

Stand Up for Alabama
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
STAND UP FOR ALABAMA
Governor George Wallace
JEFF FREDERICK
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
Tuscaloosa
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
Copyright © 2007
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Typeface: Minion
∞
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences- Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Frederick, Jeff, 1963–
Stand up for Alabama : Governor George Wallace / Jeff Frederick.
p. cm. — (The modern South)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1574-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8173-1574-8
1. Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919–1998. 2. Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919–
1998—Political and social views. 3. Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919–1998—Infl uence.
4. Governors— Alabama— Biography. 5. Alabama— Politics and government—1951– 6. Political
culture— Alabama— History—20th century. I. Title.
F330.3.W3F74 2007
976.1′063092—dc22
[B]
2007008259
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Shadows and Light 1
2. Reconstruction Redux, 1963 26
3. Sins of Omission, Sins of Commission, 1964 64
4. Checks and Balances, 1965 101
5. Means to an End, 1966 140
6. One Governor, Two Governors, or No Governor? 1967–1968 180
7. Crossroads, 1968–1970 222
8. Turning Point, 1970–1972 268
9. A New Reality, 1972–1974 302
10. Stuck in Neutral, 1974–1978 338
11. The Last Campaign, 1982–1987 375
Appendix: People Interviewed 407
Notes 409
Index 475
Illustrations follow page 259
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
Preface
In many important ways, Alabama is one of the best places on earth to live.
Few states possess as much natural beauty. Its lakes and rivers teem with fi sh,
and its lush pine and hardwood forests are full of wildlife. Alabama is among
a rare fraternity of states that feature both beaches and mountains. You can
travel the world and not fi nd a sweeter group of people. People still pull over
out of respect for a funeral procession and if you have a fl at tire you may be
more likely to get help in Alabama than just about anywhere else I have ever
been. Fast food does not exist in the Heart of Dixie; people engage in conver-
sations and ask about your day and your kin even if it makes you wait a little
longer for a cheeseburger. No matter where you are, a church is nearby. And
the smell of fried chicken, as Johnny Cash sang about, is the smell of Sun-
day morning coming down. Dinner on the grounds is still a regular tradition
across the state, and if you like greens cooked with bacon fat, fresh corn and to-
matoes, homemade cornbread, sweet tea, and peach cobbler, the fare available
in Alabama is world class. They play a little college football in the state too.
The essential goodness of so many in the state, black and white, rich but
mostly poor, city and country, makes it diffi cult to reconcile the state’s long-
standing reputation. The education provided to the state’s citizens has his-
torically been far inferior to the education received anywhere else in America.
Prisons, mental health facilities, and other s tate-r un institutions have often
faced federal scrutiny for failing to meet minimum standards. Most people in
Alabama make less money than folks who live elsewhere in the country, and
as of 2006, nothing in the offi ng suggests that is about to change. And being
undereducated and poor in Alabama has usually been a life sentence. Over
time, the state’s politicians have done little to bring the state up to national av-
erages. The history of Alabamians, then, is a history written in poverty, hard
work, calloused hands, and weathered faces.
Tucked in the midst of this goodness and poverty is a legacy of racial dis-
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
viii / Preface
crimination. “I grew up in a house where the word nigger was as much a part
of the vocabulary as ‘hey’ or ‘pass the peas.’” author Rick Bragg writes in his
memoir All Over but the Shoutin’. “If I was rewriting my life, if I was using this
story as a way to make my life slickly perfect, this is the part I would change.
But it would be a lie. It is part of me, of who I was, and I guess who I am.” It
is also the world in which George Wallace, the most important Alabama poli-
tician in the twentieth century and the most infl uential southern governor in
the post–World War II era, grew up in. Wallace came to power at a time when
white Alabamians were being challenged by civil rights protestors and the fed-
eral government to change.1
Wallace told white Alabamians that they were right to cling to their tra-
ditions and resist integration of any kind. “As you know,” he wrote in 1966 a
couple of years after the most important civil rights legislation— the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—became law, “here in
the State of Alabama we have a law banning marriage between the races and
in my judgement this law is completely valid and should remain on the books.”
That same year he was still fuming about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “I think
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court held in
the 1880’s, but the socializing, integrating, carpetbagging Supreme Court Jus-
tices are not interested in private property rights.” First elected in 1962, Wallace
served four elected terms and even managed to help elect his fi rst wife, Lurleen,
when the state’s constitution prevented successive terms. Could race alone ex-
plain nearly twenty- fi ve years of Wallace rule in Alabama? Surely the story is
more complex.2
More than a few historians and authors have written about the life and
times of George Wallace. The traditional perspective on the Alabama governor
has focused on two issues: his civil rights intransigence and his forays into
presidential politics. Both are important themes. The civil rights movement is
a crystallizing event in southern history and, with the exception of the Civil
War, the most important era of social change in American history. A huge cor-
pus of monographs and biographies have documented the selfl ess sacrifi ce re-
quired to push the federal government to guarantee equality for all Americans.
Within these works, Wallace is usually reduced to a static villain with little or
no analysis of his broader impact on Alabama.3
Wallace’s role as a third party presidential candidate in 1968, his 1972 run
as a Democrat, and his overall impact on national politics have been the fo-
cus of the three previous biographies by Marshall Frady, Stephan Lesher, and
Dan Carter. Carter’s book, The Politics of Rage, is the most thoroughly re-
searched and places Wallace’s impact within the broader context of political
shifts across the region and country. Even so, entire years of governance in Ala-
bama are reduced to a single paragraph. None of the authors put much em-
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.
Preface / ix
phasis on state politics, administration policy, economic issues in Alabama, or
on the evolving connection between Wallace and ordinary Alabamians.4
This book takes a different approach and attempts to answer two funda-
mental questions: What was George Wallace’s impact on the state of Alabama?
Why did Alabamians continue to embrace him over a twenty- fi ve-year period?
To answer the fi rst question, I have used a variety of sources to document the
state’s performance in areas including mental health, education, conservation,
prisons, and industrial development. For context, I have frequently cited com-
parisons between Alabama and both peer states in the South and national av-
erages. Wallace’s policies improved the state, but only in relation to Alabama’s
past, not in relation to peer states in the region or national averages. As a result,
the state mostly treaded water, expending energy but making little progress.
To answer the second question, I have used the words of Alabamians them-
selves through oral history, correspondence, letters to the editor, and other
sources. Alabamians, white and eventually black, supported Wallace because
race was but one of his appeals. Wallace connected to Alabamians at a gut level,
reminding them of their history and memory, championing their causes on
the stump, and soothing their concerns about their place in the region and the
nation. He appealed to a white southern brand of morality that transcended
class barriers. Wallace evolved into a perpetual campaigner, a politician of
such rare skill that he won the votes of most segregationists in his fi rst term
and some former civil rights demonstrators in his last. This story, if I have told
it right, often focuses as much on r ank-a nd-fi le Alabamians as on Wallace. To
understand one, you must understand the other.
I devote little attention, despite the size of this work, to the more traditional
civil rights fl ashpoints— the stand at the schoolhouse door at the University
of Alabama, the many monumental events occurring in Birmingham in 1963,
and the Selma- to- Montgomery march— as I see these events as part of a gen-
eral pattern of Wallaceism. Race is a signifi cant component of this book, but
I attempt to look beyond infamous events and discover the broader themes
that dominated the daily governance by the administration. In the same vein,
the presidential campaigns are not a major topic of this work except to dis-
cuss their impact on the state and the governor. Because the Wallace campaign
briefl y thought he could win in 1976, I have documented the 1976 race more
than any of the others. This defeat, occurring at the same time as the disinte-
gration of his second marriage, the cold reality of paralysis, and shortly before
a four- year absence from the governor’s offi ce, left Wallace disconsolate.
As I have worked on this project over the past several years, numerous people
have asked me to compare Wallace to some other political fi gure. Some simi-
larities are evident. Wallace used race in similar ways to Mississippi governor
Ross Barnett and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus. Like Georgian Jimmy Car-
You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press.
Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and
injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press.