University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

George C. Wallace, Governor of Alabama from 1962 to 1966, has gained enduring fame as one of the south's most articulate and uncompromising spokesmen for segregation of the races. One possible reason for his devotion to the cause is suggested by a remark attributed to Wallace following his early defeat for the governorship in 1958, to the effect that his rival had "out-segged" him but that it would never happen again. Thereafter his campaign platform became "Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever!"

During the 1962 campaign, Wallace said concerning the expected government action to enforce desegregation of the schools: "I shall refuse to abide by any illegal Federal court order, even to the point of standing in the schoolhouse door." Less than a year later, he was handed an opportunity to make good his boast — which he promptly did by standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the path of two Negro students seeking to register. With State Troopers and Highway Patrolmen at his back, Wallace barred the entry into the registration building of James A. Hood and Vivian J. Malone, along with accompanying officials of the Federal government. In a dramatic face-to-face encounter on the steps with Deputy United States Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, the Alabama governor responded to demands that he obey a Federal court order by reading a proclamation declaring that his aim in barring the door was not "for defiance's sake, but for the purpose of raising basic and fundamental constitutional questions." Some four hours later, following an executive order from President John F. Kennedy federalizing the Alabama National Guard and ordering units of the 31st Division to the campus, Governor Wallace lifted his personal blockade and stood aside as the two Negro students registered peacefully at the University.

That was not the end of Governor Wallace's defiance of the Executive and Judicial arms of the Federal government. In September, 1963, he dispatched National Guardsmen and State Troopers (under the notorious Colonel Al Lingo) to various city schools after Federal court orders had been received calling for an end to segregation in the classrooms. In one city, Tuskegee, the Governor closed down a public school even though the local School Board had already agreed to the integration order. Once again President Kennedy had to intervene by nationalizing the Guard in order to pull the troops away from the beleaguered schools.

Early in 1964, in protest against the civil rights bill before Congress, Wallace announced his intention to run for the presidency on

a nonparty basis — and revealed the continuing vitality of the politics of prejudice by his strong showing in out-of-state Democratic primaries. (As the present speech proudly points out, he polled 34 percent of the Democratic vote in Wisconsin, 30 percent in Indiana, and 43 percent in Maryland.) Typical of his fiery speeches on the race issue was the Fourth of July address reprinted here, delivered at the Southeastern Fairgrounds in Atlanta, Georgia. Later on Wallace withdrew his candidacy, evidently satisfied that he had made his point and could serve the cause best be leaving his supporters free to vote for the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, who also opposed the civil rights bill. (As it happened, most of the South held firm for the Democratic ticket, and Lyndon Johnson won the national election in a landslide.)

In his Independence Day attack upon the Civil Rights program as "a fraud, a sham, and a hoax," Governor Wallace focused upon three sources of evil assertedly linked to the legislation: an expanding Federal government, the Supreme Court, and the Communists. He reserved his most extravagant dispraise for the Court: "there is only one word to describe the Federal Judiciary today. That word is 'lousy.' They assert more power than claimed by King George III, more power than Hitler, Mussolini, or Khrushchev ever had. . . . They have become arrogant, contemptuous, highhanded, and literal despots." given this kind of record on the part of the Court, it was only natural to draw the obvious parallel with the machinations of the Communists. "I do not call the members of the United States Supreme Court Communists," said Wallace. But he did say: "the record reveals for the past number of years that the chief, if not the only, beneficiaries of the present Court's rulings have been duly and lawfully convicted criminals, Communists, atheists and clients of vociferous left-wing minority groups. You can't convict a Communist in our Federal Court System."

The connection of all this with Civil Rights was easy to see. It was the Court, Wallace showed, that had set in motion the Civil Rights movement which now was pressing for equality of treatment and of access in the public accommodations of the deep south — its schools, buses, lunch counters, playgrounds, swimming pools — thereby threatening to upset a revered and peculiar institution which for many had become a way of life beyond censure or challenge. The Supreme Court, then, was bad enough; but behind the Court lay a deeper and more insidious threat: "a left-wing power monster has risen up in

this nation," said Wallace. "It has invaded the Government. It has invaded the news media. It has invaded the leadership of many of our churches. . . . It consists of many and various and powerful interests, but it has combined into one massive drive and is held together by the cohesive power of the emotions, setting forth civil rights as supreme to all."

Nearly two centuries before, in an appeal to the Whigs of his own day, the great British orator and statesman Edmund Burke has observed that "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Governor Wallace, repeating those ringing phrases almost verbatim (but without credit), went on to declare his own candidacy and to predict that the numbers supporting his views across the country were enough to constitute a "balance of power" and to "control the election of the President." That prediction turned out to be less than accurate; and with the victory of Lyndon Johnson the movement for Civil Rights and social integration — for equality of the races before the law and in the streets — gained still greater strength and confidence of ultimate success.
GEORGE C. WALLACE