Understanding Wallaceism: Neither Gone nor Forgotten

If he had attended the 2018 southern historical association Meeting in Birmingham, where scholars considered his impact in state and nation, ninety-nine-year-old George Wallace might have coursed up and down the hallways and recognized someone he met decades earlier. If so, he would have rolled up to them, extended his right hand, and called the person by name. If the governor was in the moment, as he often was from the late 1940s up to the May 15, 1972, assassination attempt in Laurel, Maryland, he would not only have remembered the name of the person whose hand he had just shaken, but also that person's hometown and maybe even something about his people or her line of work. Odds are, that person whose hand he shook would not have been any of the academics, as the governor would have had little political interest in working a room full of historians and "pointy-headed" professors whose bike parking ability he consistently and openly questioned. The assembled historians, understandably and justifiably, would have expressed a healthy dose of contempt for many of Wallace's actions, attitudes, and intransigence over his quarter-century or so of direct political, social, and cultural impact. Wallace, for his part, would have bypassed most of the registered attendees of the Southern Historical Association, and looked instead for the general manager of the Sheraton for a quick conversation. Then, he would have spent most of his time chatting up the busboys, bell men, kitchen staff, maintenance workers, and attendants—prospective voters one and all, at least in 2018.

The atmosphere where Wallace first made his mark has changed and then changed again. He cut his political teeth in an era where, like Willie Morris's description of Mississippi, "political rallies (were held) in some vast and dusty clearing in the middle of the woods. The barbeque and sweet potatoes and corn on the cob and biscuits were stacked on long tables and served up by country people." By his end of days, what with all the public apologies and other moments of seeking absolution, the earnest grace of many African Americans who felt the worst of Wallaceism had been taxed beyond measure. "I grew up here," Rita Kendrick, a middle-aged black woman, told journalist Rick Bragg shortly after the governor passed, "when you couldn't sit here and you couldn't eat there and you had to sit in the last row. He tried to keep it that way. You have to have a big heart to forgive him. I can, but it's hard." In between, George C. Wallace won four gubernatorial elections—five if you include Lurleen's—sometimes by standing on the back of a flatbed truck and letting loose with a raft of Alabama colloquialism. He also campaigned for president four times, used targeted direct mail appeals, appeared on national television, changed his wardrobe at the behest of Cornelia, his second wife, and occasionally stalked a stage in sold-out auditoriums located in the North. He adapted.¹

Not unlike Wayne Flynt's description of his curiosity about Alabama—"Why does a state with so much human and natural potential settle so often for mediocrity? Why are Alabamians' expectations so low when excellence is so often within their grasp?"—I was drawn to studying George Wallace by the adaptations, the ironies, the inconsistencies, the tragedies, the unrecognized potential, the occasional forays into helping folk, the successful campaigns, the suffering he caused and the suffering he faced, the deep and enduring connection he had to so many Alabamians, and the shattering missteps; what I refer to at times as sins of omission and sins of commission. Whereas Dan T. Carter's seminal work focused on the governor's influence on national politics, my writing was concerned with Wallace's impact on Alabama. And so it has been with others from within and outside of the academy who have attempted to explain the meaning and legacy of this man and his politics. The three historians and panelists who contributed to this article and to the...