(Note: these learning modules encompass the actual class lectures, and are designed for those students who have to miss class through no fault of their own, and also as a refresher for all students. Bold print in the notes are what the professor writes on the board.)

LEARNING MODULE: WEEK 7, Alabama- George Wallace Legacy

Alabama is a Deep South state historically marked by the vicious Old South racist segregationist George Wallace, but Alabama also illustrates how some of these white segregationists changed on the race issues after African Americans got the right to vote protected with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It is also fascinating that the “changed” Wallace was able to assemble an ideologically diverse bi-racial coalition so that Democrats dominated state politics, but as soon as he left the political scene Republicans made gains and have become the dominant party in today’s Alabama. As such, we focus heavily on George Wallace when talking about Alabama, and it is likely that his life will make a great test question. One can divide his career into three parts: support for economic liberalism similar to FDR; his racist support for segregation; his construction of a biracial coalition focused around progressive economic issues and racial moderation.

Wallace was able to appeal to the common man since that was his own background. He was born in 1919 in a shotgun house with a leaky roof, no electricity or running water, and an outhouse (no indoor toilet). He arrived at the University of Alabama carrying a cardboard suitcase with only two shirts and some underwear, and worked part-time jobs and waited tables at his boarding house. Wallace’s future wife Lurleen was a dime-store (convenience store today) clerk. He twice won the state’s bantamweight boxing championship, and served in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific theater during World War 2.

Wallace was elected to the state legislature in 1946 by a real people-oriented direct campaign, as he hitched rides or walked miles between small towns and stopped at farmhouses and fields to talk to every voter. Campaigning at churches and school plays, he would talk about his desire to help the farmers, the elderly, and the schools. Wallace would greet workers at cotton mill factory gates and show interest in the working man. An ally of populist and racial liberal Governor Folsom, as a state legislator Wallace helped to create new trade schools, provide free tuition to the widows and children of World War 2 veterans, and even served on the board of all-black Tuskegee University.

Wallace’s focus on the common people was also reflected years later in 1966 when he campaigned for his wife as governor, as he mocked New York reporters for their elitism and disdain for a lady who had been a dime-store clerk and whose father had been a shipyard worker. Even during his first two terms as governor after running racist campaigns, Wallace successfully backed such progressive programs as increasing the number of junior colleges and trade schools, increased funding for highways, and improved workmen compensation and unemployment benefits.

As the civil rights movement began to heat up, Wallace changed into the blatant racist segregationist that he is most known for today. Elected a circuit judge in 1952, Wallace was known as the Fighting Little Judge for his feisty rhetoric and folksiness in opposing any federal efforts to eliminate racial segregation. He lost the 1958 gubernatorial race to an even more vicious segregationist (the attorney general who had shut down the state’s NAACP chapter), so he pledged that he would never be out-segged again (some say he used the N word).

Wallace was elected governor in 1962 as the most segregationist of the candidates, as he blasted “race-mixing” federal judges, and promised to “stand in the schoolhouse door” to oppose federal desegregation court orders (Lesher book, 1994, George Wallace: American Populist, pp. 155, 156, 160). In his inauguration address, he promised to fight “federal tyranny” and proudly proclaimed, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In his first term as governor, he did indeed stand in the University of Alabama schoolhouse door, forcing President Kennedy to send the National Guard to integrate the university. Wallace also closed a high school that had been ordered to desegregate, supported the creation of private schools to avoid integration, and even withdrew state government funds from a bank run by a racial liberal. During his first term there was considerable white violence directed against civil rights workers, including the Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls (including one of Secretary of State Condi Rice’s childhood friends), the beating of civil rights marchers in Selma, and the police use of fire hoses and attack dogs in Birmingham, where Martin Luther King was jailed. Ironically, national revulsion against seeing these scenes on television further motivated President Kennedy and the Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Limited to one term at the time, Wallace got his wife elected governor in 1966, but she died of cancer after only two years.

Wallace returned to the governorship in 1970, as he beat the racially moderate lieutenant governor-turned-governor. Wallace played the race card to win the Democratic primary, as he campaigned against the “Bloc Vote (Negroes and Their White Friends)” and the “Spotted Alliance” (Bass and DeVries, 1977, The Transformation of Southern Politics, 1977, p. 65).

Wallace began to change on the race issue in 1971, as he began as governor to greet integrated school groups and sign photographs for them. His inaugural address stressed a more unifying economic message, as he pledged governmental action to help the poor, the weak, and the humble, and asserted that Alabama belonged to everyone regardless of race, age, and economic status. In his 1972 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, he had been shot, nearly died, and seemed to be humbled when he learned that black ministers were praying for him. Now confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, in 1973 he crowned the first African American homecoming queen at the University of Alabama, and attended a conference of black mayors and proclaimed that all races were God’s children, and therefore everyone was equal. In 1974 Wallace visit Martin Luther King’s church in Montgomery and pleaded that he had been misunderstood and had opposed federal desegregation for states’ rights reasons rather than due to racism. Wallace won over 25% of the African American vote in the 1974 Democratic primary, won the state’s AFL-CIO endorsement, and crushed his Republican challenger to win a third term as governor.

In the late 1970s Wallace became a born again Christian and admitted that he was wrong to support racial segregation. Wallace won a final, fourth term as governor in 1982 by stressing economic issues in this recession year. He expressed concern for the unemployed and hungry, and pledged to protect the working class. He blasted the special interests, opposed tax loopholes for the rich, and mocked Republicans who only had to worry about who would mow their beachfront lawns (Alexander Lamis book, 1990, The Two-Party South, expanded edition, p. 90). As Republicans were becoming more of a threat in state elections, winning 40% of the vote in the general election, the biracial governing Democratic coalition was quite strong. Even though Wallace had won only one-third of the black vote in the Democratic primary, he earned 90% of African American votes when facing a conservative Republican in the general election. In his fourth term, Wallace finally appointed African Americans to many state governmental positions.

Despite Wallace’s “change” on the race issue, it is hard to undo what he did and the harm that he caused many Americans. It seems like poetic justice that after leaving office he would often be found alone in a Capital restaurant, being in constant pain from respiratory problems; he died in 1998.

With Wallace’s departure from the scene, Alabama Democrats still held both of the state’s U.S. senate seats with moderate conservatives Howell Heflin and Richard Shelby. They lost the governorship in 1986 for the first time since Reconstruction to businessman and preacher Guy Hunt, after the state Democratic executive committee unseated their popular vote primary victor in favor of a more liberal candidate, charging that the conservative had violated party rules by urging Republican first primary voters to cross-over and vote in the Democratic runoff. Republican Hunt won reelection, but resigned before his term was up after being convicted for misusing his inauguration funds for personal expenses. National Democrats made their own unforced error by their intolerance towards two-term Senator Shelby’s opposition to the Clinton economic program, prompting him to switch to the Republican Party in 1994 and blast the party as no longer having any room for a conservative Southern Democrat such as himself. Shelby went on to win re-election as a Republican four times, with state Democrats resigned to running such weak candidates as one who only raised $5,000 and a retiree who had to mortgage his pickup truck just to pay the modest qualifying fee. Democrats also lost Heflin’s seat when he retired and was replaced by Republican state attorney general Jeff Sessions, who favored welfare reform, school prayer, and a smaller government, and who blasted his Democratic opponent as a liberal allied with Bill Clinton and (liberal Massachusetts Senator) Ted Kennedy and beholden to trial lawyers. Sessions resigned for a stormy term as Trump’s Attorney General, and the Republican governor appointed the GOP attorney general as Interim Senator. That interim senator was knocked off in a special primary election by controversial conservative state supreme court judge Roy Moore, whose claim to fame was having been twice removed from the court for violating federal court orders prohibiting his 10 commandments monument in his courtroom and his refusal to permit same sex marriages. In the December 2017 special general election, Moore faced Democrat former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, a liberal pro-choice candidate famous for successfully prosecuting two Klansmen responsible for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four kids. Suddenly, numerous stories circulated about Moore’s behavior when he was in his 20’s, regarding him hitting on teenagers at the mall, pinching one’s behind, and appearing in his underwear before two teens. After Republican Senator Shelby announced that he had voted for a different Republican as a write-in, and after the First Daughter Ivanka said that there was a special place in hell for guys like Moore, Democrat Jones won narrowly. So, it’s nice to know that the Democratic chances in today’s Alabama are not totally hopeless, as long as the other party nominates an alleged child molester (or attempted molester)! Unfortunately for Jones, he compiled a pretty liberal voting record which includes voting to remove Trump from office (Trump got 64% of the vote in Alabama). Republicans had a heated primary battle between Jeff Sessions who wanted his old seat back (but poor guy, Trump kept dumping on him) and Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville (who won this 2020 race). Poor Jones was quickly passed over by the national Democratic Party for campaign finance support, and even though Republican Tuberville couldn't name the three branches of governor (Uh, President, House, Senate...), he won in a landslide as Republican voters outnumbered Democrats 2-1. Republicans also retained the state's other Senate seat in 2022 after Shelby's retirement, as Shelby's Chief of Staff, Katie Britt, touted the inclusive message of the GOP being the party of "young conservatives... young women... and working Americans" (Gillespie and Morris 2022, Fox News website article, June 22).

Republicans have consistently held the governorship for the last 22 years with three two-term governors, all of whom stressed their successes in economic development and bringing more jobs to Alabama. The first, Bob Riley, was also interesting as he used Christian reasoning to cut taxes for lower income people, winning prestigious Governing magazine’s Profile in Courage award (which our Haley Barbour had also won for his leadership after Katrina) and condemnation from the conservative Cato Institute. Riley breezed to re-election based on the 100,000 new jobs he created, and his endorsement by all 18 of the state’s daily newspapers. His successor Robert Bentley also played the economic development card, winning re-election by touting 60,000 new jobs and a new Airbus assembly plant in Mobile. He also fulfilled the unique pledge of not accepting a paycheck until the state reached full employment (Trump also refused any pay as President.). Bentley resigned in 2017 after accepting a plea bargain regarding a sex and campaign scandal. Two term Republican lieutenant governor, Kay Ivey (great resume, previously she had been a two-term state treasurer), became only the second woman governor of Alabama. She won re-election in her own right (Lurleen Wallace had been a spouse of a governor) in 2018, with voters liking her folksy drawl and no-nonsense demeanor (plus her stress on jobs). Ivey won reelection in 2022 with 70% of the vote, as her website touted Alabama's successful economic development, new capital investment, and good-paying jobs.