This year marks the 105th anniversary of George Wallace’s birth. The longtime Alabama governor, segregationist and presidential candidate is often remembered for one moment in American history.
On June 11, 1963, Wallace drew attention worldwide when he kept a campaign pledge to “stand in the schoolhouse door” to block integration of the state’s public schools. He stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to prevent the attempt of two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, to register.
President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and ordered its units to the campus. Wallace finally stepped aside and returned to Montgomery, allowing the students to enter.
Wallace knew that his grandstanding that day, with all his characteristic bluster, wouldn’t prevent Malone and Hood from eventually being admitted to the university. But he was demonstrating to his supporters and to other believers in racial segregation that he would remain true to that cause.
He was showing his commitment to the words from his 1963 inaugural address: “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
It was the kind of rallying cry voiced by generations of Mississippi politicians—most prominently Gov. and U.S. Sen. Theodore Bilbo, U.S. Sen. James Eastland, and Gov. Ross Barnett.
Former President Donald Trump, during his three campaigns for the presidency, has frequently delivered rhetoric that serves as a warmed-over version of Wallace’s politics of appealing to white grievance and white backlash. As with Wallace, Trump finds people and institutions to condemn and insult, knowing it’s the kind of message that will appeal to large segments of the American electorate.
He laid the foundation of his political career with an overtly racist campaign to persuade the public that former President Barack Obama wasn’t eligible to serve as president because one of his parents was African.
Trump kicked off his first presidential campaign by labeling Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and racists. Efforts to ban Muslim travelers from entering the U.S. were a central theme of his administration.
When Black professional athletes protested instances in which law-enforcement officers killed Black people, Trump recommended that any team owner should “get that son of a bitch off the field right now.”
‘The Same Old Show’
Like Wallace, Trump brands his political opponents as communists and brands journalists as dishonest and un-American. He directs a specific set of insults toward Black journalists who challenge him in their questions and commentary.
After having declined invitations extended over several years to speak at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump appeared at this year’s event in Chicago in July. Any faint hope that his interview with three Black female journalists would be in any way constructive or enlightening was dashed after his response to the first question, from ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott.
Scott started the interview with a reference to the pushback from NABJ members and many others to the organization’s decision to provide Trump with a platform. She cited his false claims, his hosting of white supremacists at his Mar-a-Lago home, and his use of slurs such as “animal” and “stupid” when speaking about Black journalists and public officials. She asked why he believed Black voters should trust him after he has spoken about Black people in such a manner.
Instead of answering the question, he took offense at being confronted with his own words. He shifted immediately into grievance mode, saying that Scott wasn’t respectful enough when she greeted him, and that ABC is a “fake news network.”
Trump’s performance demonstrated that he has neither the desire nor the ability to establish any kind of honest dialogue with the vast majority of Black voters. He used the NABJ appearance to impress his supporters who would see the interview on TV. The purpose was to throw his weight around when confronted by a Black woman, before a mostly Black audience.
He punctuated his remarks with a lie that Vice President Harris had somehow previously concealed her Black identity and presented herself solely as an East Indian woman. It was, as the vice president would say later, “the same old show.”
And that’s how the interview landed in the news cycle. Democrats and most in the media condemned the appearance. Other Republicans continued to publicly advise against this sort of personal attack. Only his most ardent defenders, such as Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, tried to offer any kind of public defense. Amid flat poll numbers, with Harris’s numbers continuing to rise, Trump’s toxic message doesn’t seem to resonate with his base the way it once did. The rally venues aren’t full.
With the nicknames and insults losing their impact, Trump’s frustration is showing. He’s even had to direct his complaints toward other Republicans, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.
He complains when Fox News gives any Democrat a little too much airtime for his taste. He has come to expect the network to always serve as his megaphone and to explain away every racist or sexist comment about the vice president or anyone else. His political successes never relied on winning policy debates. He has relied on his opponents, rather they be Jeb Bush or Joe Biden, appearing rattled by his lies and insults.
It isn’t working on Harris. So, what now? Who is he without personal grievance and resentment?
Wallace Sought Forgiveness
While Donald Trump’s rhetoric and bluster are reminiscent of George Wallace’s, it’s all fake.
Unlike Trump, George Wallace was entirely self-made, having come from a poor, rural background. While remembered as the voice and face of segregationist politics, his political career was marked by various transformations.
He began in Alabama politics as a relative moderate. He seized the segregationist mantle to become the most powerful politician in the state. Through much of Wallace’s time as governor, police and other authorities in the state carried out unprovoked acts of violence against Black citizens or failed to intercede when the Ku Klux Klan or others planned and carried out murders or other violent acts against Black citizens and those working to end segregation.
Wallace gained a national profile that positioned him to run for president as a Democrat and as an independent.
He ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972, railing against efforts to desegregate schools through busing and pushing the cause of what he said were forgotten white Americans. While campaigning at a shopping mall in Laurel, Md., he was shot and grievously wounded. He won the primary in that state and in Michigan while in his hospital bed.
He was also visited by another candidate for the nomination, Shirley Chisholm, the trailblazing Black congresswoman from New York. He reportedly wept after she shared her belief that no one would ever deserve what happened to him. Paralyzed from the waist down and suffering from chronic pain and complications from the shooting, he returned to Alabama politics after another unsuccessful presidential run in 1976.
He would spend the rest of his public life also seeking forgiveness for his segregationist stance and other actions that harmed the state’s Black citizens. Black voters would become part of his winning coalition against far-right Republicans.
In 1998, civil-rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis publicly forgave Wallace in a New York Times op-ed.
The latter part of Wallace’s career points to a clear difference between him and Trump. Trump doesn’t display any capacity to seek forgiveness or redemption for anything he’s ever done or said.
This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
