Infamous Segregationist Wrote The Playbook For Modern Right-Wingers

Professor of history at Vanderbilt University and author of Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, Jefferson Cowie, joins the program to discuss his the legacy of the infamous segregationist governor of Alabama George Wallace.Show more

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Essentially the rise of George Wallace and I. I'm jumping ahead a little bit but this quote of his from 1964 which I'm going to paraphrase as being a Southerner is not Geographic. It's philosophy, it's a philosophy and an attitude. Right I mean that is I you know that sums it up I mean he got it right and that was 60 years ago. And I don't mean the durability of that quote is nuts. Yeah, George Wallace is a little bit of a political genius really. I mean you know it that's not to say I have any respect for his positions right but the guy knew how to build political power. My favorite quote about Wallace was somebody said he could have parachuted into the Albanian Countryside in the middle of the Cold War and he would have been running the common turn in three seasons. He just knew how to make things happen politically. and that Vision that Wallace's country was the entire nation he laid out in its 1963 inaugural address when he gave his very famous address because he said segregation now segregation tomorrow segregation forever. And this is the rallying cry for segregationists throughout the South to fight back against Federal intervention and civil rights. But if you look at that speech more closely he only uses segregation one at a time for a total of four invocations of segregation. He mentions Freedom or Liberty two dozen times. It's saturated with the idea of freedom that you know tyranny is clanking upon the South and the chains are rattling and we need to fight. and the federal bayonets are on the horizon. And so he knows that screaming about race is only going to get him so far. That's going to get him a lot of traction with the real racists but screaming about the federal government is going to bring in the racists and it's going to bring in the tax cut types, the deregulation types, the anti-status types for whatever reason. Because now he's got a coalition. Who doesn't hate the federal government? Everybody's got a beef against the federal government. and that really provides him traction and that's how he really came to win the governor's office as the fight and judge of Barber County because he fought the federal government after the 1958 civil rights act when they wanted the voting roles for Barber County he said he would give them to them. And so that's actually how he came to power fighting the federal government.