An Interview With Wallace (PJW)

"An Interview With Wallace" is an excerpt from The Broken Dream Volume 2: America in the '60s, published in 1988.

An Interview
In '58 I tried to keep the focus of the governorship election on local, important issues. Rebuilding our roads, improving our schools, keeping local business afloat, that sort of thing. But it turns out, nobody in Alabama cares about that sort of thing. The only thing they want to see is the negro put down and put down hard. They called me a liberal. A liberal of all things, just for saying that maybe the Klan lynching negros in town squares isn't exactly the way to go. But I'm the liberal, and Patterson wins the election. I vowed that in the next election, I would forget the infrastructure and school issues. I'll focus on the race issue, and win the votes.

So you know what I do in '62? I go around to town squares, preaching "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" and everyone just laps it up. My numbers are soaring, DeGraffenried is shaking in his boots...but then the Citizens' Party shows up. Bunch of no good rabble-rousers. Their candidate is Jim Clark, the Sheriff, more like butcher if you ask me.

So Clark marches around Alabama, carrying a cattle prod like its some sort of sword to shield Alabama, saying "this prod kept the negros at bay during the uprising in '61"...doesn't even dress like a politician, he's always in his sheriff's clothes to show that he's always ready to be hard on negros and communists, though in my opinion I think he's just trying to emulate Il Duce. But it works. I promise to keep segregation forever, but he's promising to ship the negros to Byrdtowns or even back to Africa...how can I compete with that? Alabama doesn't even have enough ships to send 'em back home, but Clark's supporters don't care. They're eating it up, and soon his numbers are past mine, and before you know the Sheriff is sitting in the Governor's Mansion.

At that point, I realized it ain't worth running. I can't compete with nuts like that. The country was riled up, and saner men like myself aren't gonna be the ones voted into office in times like these. That's when the extreme folks come out of the woodwork, and when men like George Wallace return to being a judge, waiting for a better time to run.

-George Wallace, Circuit Judge of the Alabama Third Judicial Court