President Donald Trump’s rise
was fueled by voters fed up with the status quo.
When Mexico sends its people,
they’re not sending their best.
They’re not sending you.
It’s us and them, and he tapped into it.
We can’t continue to allow
China to rape our country.
He knows what needs to be done.
Make America great again.
And his rhetoric continues to polarize the country.
President Trump using an ugly, vulgar expression that is racist.
So, I don’t understand what the sin is.
What’s good for us? Are we allowed to ask that question or is that racist?
Build the wall, build the wall!
But the politics of division aren’t new.
Five decades ago
populist appeals fueled the rise of another controversial politician,
George Wallace, whose story ended in a way no one expected.
Well, Wallace was a good politician.
He knew how to play the game
and, maybe, more to the point,
he would use anything to play that game.
I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.
B. Drummond Ayres covered Wallace for The New York Times 50 years ago.
Race was everything with Wallace.
Whatever he did had a racial element to it.
But Ayres says Wallace didn’t start out that way when he first ran for governor in 1958.
He started out traditionally.
Roads, schools and so forth.
One of his opponents started talking about race itself, blacks and whites.
And he beat Wallace
and that’s when he changed
and said he’d never be beaten again.
In 1963, as governor of Alabama, he rose to prominence by defying President John F. Kennedy.
The governor is adamant.
He made a campaign promise to stand in the doorway himself
to prevent the integration of the last all-white state university.
The race element was the biggest thing in the South
and segregation was the biggest element in the racial factor.
Wallace just played it,
he rode it.
It was about the only thing he did because he wasn’t particularly interested in issues.
The best thing I know to do is to let
Dixie introduce George Wallace.
When Wallace ran for president, he carried that issue to the national stage.
Don’t worry about what the newspapers say about us.
They call us extremists
and want to say we are fascist.
Well, I want to tell these newspapers something,
these large newspapers who think they know more than the average citizen on the street in New York,
you haven’t always been right.
Afterward many left humming Dixie and shouting white power.
Wallace made opposing federal mandates to integrate schools and neighborhoods
a centerpiece of his presidential campaigns.
Why are more and more millions of Americans turning to Governor Wallace?
Follow as your children are bussed across town.
Chaos exists in this country and in the public school system because of bussing.
Everybody knows that, so I’m not bringing on any chaos. Bussing is bringing on chaos.
“Them” is the word.
We don’t want “them” in our schools. We don’t want to be on
the bus with “them.” We don’t want “them” living next to us.
And he lit a spark under a swath of American voters who felt ignored.
[Singing] He’s our kinda man, our kinda man. George Wallace is our kinda man.
As he always puts it he speaks for the truck driver, the beautician, the policeman and other members of the so-called working class.
[Singing] He’s for Alabam’, for Alabam’.
I like that man, he tells you what,
you know, he tells you the truth. That’s what it is.
And it is true
that the liberal, educated, academic, journalistic, professional, intellectual circles
seem not much interested in the white working class.
He is not a racist. That’s definite.
I’m going to vote for George Wallace because he says what I like to hear.
Wallace understood that there were people who were hurting, struggling, losing jobs.
He tapped into that and appealed to that because
folks that are struggling often feel put upon. Wallace played that to the hilt.
I did represent more of the average citizen of this country than did any other candidate
based on the fact that the man who works each day for a living and pays his taxes and holds the country together has been ignored except on Election Day.
The next president of the United States: the honorable George C. Wallace!
[Gunshots]
We won’t ever know how far he might have gone had he not been shot.
But, after he got shot,
over a few years, all of a sudden, he had an epiphany — it seems.
Times were changing and Wallace
— who at that point had been Alabama governor for much of the past decade —
understood he had to change with them.
The turning point when everybody realized that he was turning
was the crowning of the homecoming queen.
Congratulations, here. You’re a mighty pretty queen, here.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
She bends down and he puts a crown
on her and holds both of her hands like that.
It made the evening news.
And very shortly after that, if not the same weekend,
Wallace met with the Southern black leaders in Alabama,
wbecause he was in another campaign at that point. And he needed their votes.
Some blacks are willing to talk now about supporting a Wallace candidacy.
I think that what men do in the future as far as improving the quality of life for all citizens, be they black or white,
is really what’s going to determine whether or not that was a great man or an effective man, not so much what he did in the past.
He made apologies, asked for forgiveness and in fact, Martin Luther King’s father came in and actually prayed with him.
And he went to the grave still apologizing, still saying he was wrong,
still saying he was trying to do something for black folks. And in fact, he was at that point.
He would do things as a governor that would help blacks because the worm had turned on this issue.
It would take him 20 years to abandon the politics of race.
But in 1982 when he came out to run for governor once again,
he won with crucial black support.
Blacks had acquired political power. Now he needed them.
If you want to be cynical — and I can be cynical about George Wallace —
what it says about him is that he would play anything with the race angle to get votes.
I made a mistake and that’s all, in the past and I’m,
I’m sorry that I did that because it gave the wrong opinion of the kind of man that I was.
Only the good Lord knows whether or not he was sincere.