University of Virginia Library

Signs Of The Times

By Robert Rosen

I can remember as a young boy
raveling into Upcountry North
Carolina from Low country South
Carolina. The terrain changes from
Spanish moss, wet marshland,
rivers, and a sense of the mythical
wonderland grandeur of the Old
South to flat, dusty, tobacco
country, riddled with scrubby little
bushes and trees, dry fields,
oppressive sun. One passes, too,
into a kind of state-wide
message-via-signs-on-trees.

It is fundamentalist country. It
is a countryside filled with "Get
Right With God" on aluminum
crosses, or "Jesus Is Coming" in red
and yellow in the middle of a big
painted clock, or "Welcome to Klan
Country" on a large plywood board
— complete with horseman and
burning cross.

I can remember North Carolina
always being this way, yet I learned
there were two North Carolinas:
the first of the fundamentalists and
the second of the New South Terry
Sanfords, of Chapel Hill, of
progressivism. There is the Carolina
of drives through its highways; and
there is the Carolina of the national
press.

Today in North Carolina there is
no Terry Sanford. But there are
fewer fundamentalist signs on the
highways, If one drives from
Charlottesville to Chapel Hill on
Route 29 one will be reminded less
today than ever before of one's
damnation by God. Instead, one is
reminded of one's damnation by
one's fellow man. If there are less
"Get Right With God" signs, it is
only because Jesus has been given a
military crew cut and now says
Stand Up For America. If the signs
still say You will Burn In the Fire
to Come, they are referring today
to "the riots in our cities." In short,
the Messiah has come for the
sign-painters of North Carolina. He
is George C. Wallace.

It is, of course, no great
revelation to anyone that two out
of every one Southern
fundamentalist is for Wallace. But it
may surprise many who have not as
yet realized the intensity of the
Wallace movement. The Carolina
countryside is sprinkled with as
many home-made Wallace for
President signs as it once was with
Jesus Is the King signs. And these
are not just fiery, old backwoods
farmers who know nothing about
what is really going on. Their signs
say, reassuringly, "Wallace Can
Win!" thereby answering such
liberals and quislings as Senator
Strom Thurmond, philosopher
extraordinaire of the Republican
Party and a man who apparently
would rather switch than fight.

People believe in Wallace. He is
the collective consciousness of the
third grade mentality of the nation.
Yet he is more. Press his own
followers hard enough and many
will admit to you that Wallace is
not fit to be President. One hears
words such as "low class," "slick,"
"unfit for the office." Yet they
revel in him, for he is telling off the
smart folks.

Wallace is a kind of modernized,
national Bilbo. The son of the man
Bilbo defeated in Mississippi
describes Bilbo and the description
seems to fit:

The people loved him. They
loved him not because they
were deceived in him, but
because they understood him
thoroughly; they said of him
proudly: "He's a slick little
bastard." He was one of them
and he had risen from obscurity
to the fame of glittering
infamy...

The Wallace movement
represents the frustrations of
probably many more people than
did Senator McCarthy's crusade.
Historians to come will have a hard
time understanding it, given our
preconceived notions of it in the
face of its amazing intensity and
vitality. There is more here than we
are willing to admit.