Реферат: George Wallace Essay Research Paper Former Gov

The Birmingham demonstrations in 1963 led to the passage of the 1964 Civil

Rights Act. Two years later the Selma march led to the passage of the 1965

Voting Rights Act.

Despite these triumphs, it was a dangerous time for blacks and whites who

supported the civil rights movement. During the Wallace years, at least 10

people died in racially motivated killings in Alabama. Wallace and his

flamboyantly inept and drug-addled public safety director, Al Lingo,

responded mainly by disrupting the federal investigations into crimes like

the bombing that killed four little girls at the 16th Street Baptist

Church on Sept. 15, 1963.

Leaders of Alabama’s business and educational establishment, always

sensitive to the state’s image, came to regard Wallace as an

embarrassment. The governor himself was hurt and stunned when students at

his beloved alma mater greeted him with chants of “We’re No. 50,” a

reference to the cash-starved university’s academic standing.

But George Wallace was a creature of the storm who always had wind beneath

his wings, and that wind was the adoration of the white farmers and

factory workers and rural courthouse bosses who counted the votes and

doled out patronage.

They loved it when Wallace waved his cigar, flooded his food with ketchup

and said that the guy pumping gas at an Alabama crossroads knew more about

Communism than the State Department.

When a surprisingly strong anti-Wallace faction in the legislature refused

to alter the state Constitution to allow him a second term, Wallace put

his ailing wife Lurleen on the ballot in 1966. She won easily in a

heart-rending campaign that demonstrated the scope of his ambition. Only a

few weeks before her husband announced her candidacy, Mrs. Wallace had

surgery and radiation treatment for the aggressive intestinal cancer that

would kill her in 1968.