I discovered this magnificent biography of George Wallace by accident at a local bookstore and what a great reading experience it was! No one who grew up in Alabama the 50's, 60's, & 70's can fail to come to terms with George C. Wallace. Like him or hate him, and I am in the latter category, you have to deal with this man.
I can still remember Wallace speaking in Winfield during his first run for Governor in 1958. Wallace would lose that race to John Patterson, but he would never lose a race for Governor again.
Wallace would go on to serve as our state's Governor for 16 years and his first wife Lurleen served 2 years before dying in office of cancer in 1968. So Wallace controlled this state for 18 years.
He was the precursor of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the politics of the white backlash to the modern civil rights movement. These people, mainly Wallace, always tried to insist that their politics was about states rights and getting the federal government out of our lives, but it was always about race, and everybody knew it.
Wallace's politics was blatantly racist; that of Nixon and Reagan had to be muted and coded, but it was there nonetheless. Wallace was the first and the greatest of the modern day racist demogogues.
1 comment:
I read this book too. I was enthralled with its depiction of Wallace. Like you, I think Wallace was a political thug.
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