B80-JS5
Weeping for Wallace: George Wallace, school-yard bullies, and how we're all
living with the politics of the new south
Copyright © by Jason Sanford, 11/29/02
Minnesota is
Alabama--which explains why shortly after George Wallace dies I'm climbing a
tree outside the Twin Cities.
Or maybe that
doesn't explain anything. Perhaps I should say I'd originally driven up to the
Minneapolis suburb of Fridley for a job interview--which is a big deal for a
transplanted southern boy who never leaves the Twin Cities. In fact, my
knowledge of outstate Minnesota is so weak that only after an hour of rush-hour
traffic do I realize Fridley isn't that close to Minneapolis. Still, the money
is good and if people from the suburbs can commute an hour to downtown, I can do
the reverse. All I want is for the interview to go well.
It doesn't.
Upon hearing my accent, the jerk of a HR manager asks where I'm from.
Alabama.
He sniffs up
and down, then mimics in a poor southern drawl, "Waaal, ah hear ol' Wallace
passed away."
"Yeah,"
I mutter. "I heard." I suck up my anger for the rest up the interview
as the manager keeps saying "ya'll" whenever he refers to me. Finally,
irritated, angry, tired of being so damn southern polite, I point out that ya'll
is plural, not singular. "Didn't they teach you grammar up here?" I
ask, then thank him for wasting my time and walk out.
Which is how
I wind up climbing an oak tree at the Springbrook Nature Center. I saw the signs
for the nature preserve while driving in and decide I might as well get
something out of this trip to the suburbs.
George
Wallace had his cheap Hav-a-Tampa cigars to relieve stress. I seek out urban
forests and climb trees.
Both these
habits mark you as suspect in truly discriminating, high-class societies.
* * *
We are all
living in the new south. To know the new south, you need to understand the old
south and how George Wallace was the transition between the two. You also must
know that I met Wallace in 1981, when, semi-retired and in a wheelchair, he
visited my fourth grade class.
I'd only been
going to Montgomery School for a month. Wanna learn real-life politics? Be a
eleven-year old in glasses on that first day at a new school. There's something
about shy unknowns with thick glasses--especially among kids who've known each
other since kindergarten--that slots one as suspect. Without even knowing what
I'd done, I'd become the outsider. The other.
On the second
day of school, I walked into the bathroom to find Frank Segrest and his friends
waiting for me.
Frank was a
big-gutted bully--one of those kids who found fat years before the rest of us.
Frank didn't care much for school; years later he would drop out and disappear
from my knowing. It was rumored in school that one of his relatives had shot and
killed Sammy Younge in Tuskegee back in the '60s. I didn't know who Sammy Younge
was, but I understood the word 'killed.'
I forget what
Frank said to insult me in that bathroom, but I slugged him hard in the stomach.
I instinctively knew the first rule of politics: Fight or be killed. That day I
learned another political rule: it is worthless to slug a fat bully in the gut.
The belly just bean-bags; wastes the effort of any punch.
Frank beat
the shit out of me while his friends held me down.
Over the next
several weeks I fought with Frank and his friends every day. I didn't win the
fights--one against three or four doesn't work--but instead of giving in I
simply kept fighting. And losing. This set a pattern for my school years
(although I would get better at the fighting).
One day our
teacher, Mrs. McVay, noticed that I was having trouble fitting in, so she began
giving me little suggestions every morning: "Why don't you play with so and
so today?" or "People like a kid who smiles." Her worst attempt
came when she asked Frank Segrest to be my partner during art. Frank and I were
polite but he gripped those paints way too hard; kept smashing the bristles
against paper in red and blue explosions. "The pink's for you," he
whispered, spilling the little pink vial so it flooded across my lead pencil
hills and valleys.
It was in
fourth grade that I fell in love with climbing trees. I'd get home from school,
grab my rifle, climb a tree, and pretend that passing deer were Frank Segrest.
* * *
As I sit ten
feet up an oak tree on this Minnesota nature preserve, I realize that forests up
here lack the deep vegetation decay of woods down south. Still, its not bad. The
preserve consists of a hundred acres of young scrub trees--a new-growth forest
hemmed in by highways, train tracks, and suburban chemical-treatment lawns. The
tree and leaf smells blow with the wind, and I relax as the sun settles down.
That's when
my neck begins to itch. At first I ignore the itch--it's a mind trick, forget
the sensation--but I finally reach back and pull a tick from under my collar.
Little legs moving like rowboat oars. Body so thin it barely pops as I squish it
between finger and thumb.
That's when I
see two ticks on my shirt sleeve. Several more on my kaki pants. I'm covered in
ticks, crawling in ticks--ticks seeking bare skin past my clothes, shoes and
socks. I jump and swear, one hand gripping a small branch as the other one swats
away.
If I'd been
thinking, I would have calmly climbed down from that tree before stripping off
my clothes and searching for ticks. But who truly thinks when they're in a tick
nest?
So it is that
my pants are down to my ankles when I notice a man and woman power walking up
the asphalt path behind me.
Three things
happen, real quick like:
1) My free hand grabs my pants to pull them back up.
2) My tree-branch-grabbing hand pushes its branch a little too hard.
3) The branch cracks like thunder.
I spiral down
the tree trunk, my tree-grabbing-arm grabbing as if we're in some Olympic
gymnastic routine. I take out three minor branches, one medium branch, and two
vines on the way to the ground, where I lay back down in the dirt, legs
straddling that tree like I'm looking for love in all the wrong places.
The
power-walking couple eye me with terror as they quickly trot on by.
* * *
A few months
into fourth grade Mrs. McVay announced that governor George C. Wallace would be
visiting our class. Like all politicians, Mrs. McVay must have known someone who
knew someone who knew the governor. And in one of her special attempts to help
me fit in, she asked if I'd draw the state seal to decorate our classroom wall
for the governor's visit.
"You
have talent as an artist," she said, handing me her copy of the History of
Alabama with its giant state seal on the back cover.
I came home
that afternoon with a piece of posterboard and a copy of the seal. I told my mom
that the governor was coming to visit our class and I had to draw the state
seal.
"Which
governor?" she asked. Wary for the answer.
I hadn't
known there was more than one. "THE governor," I insisted. "The
one in the wheelchair."
My mom
explained that George Wallace was just a former governor, but I sensed that she
wasn't thrilled with him. I didn't understand why my parents couldn't share in
my excitement. Still, my mom helped me draw a giant state seal. When my giant
circles didn't quite circle, she showed me how to trace around one of her big
cake pans. I then drew the state and wiggled the curves and bends of the
principal rivers--the Alabama, Tallapoosa, and Coosa--along with others rivers I
didn't know.
Mrs. McVay
hung my seal on the wall and said it was perfect. None of the other kids
noticed--except for Frank, who said it looked like shit.
* * *
As I said,
the power-walking man and woman walked right on by me, a look in their eyes like
I've been caught raping that oak tree.
Funny things
jump to mind when you're hurt. Despite the scraps and blood, the shirt ripped to
hell and my pants half off my body, I'm amazed at how color-coordinated the man
and woman are. In addition, they line up. He's a foot taller than her, but the
red and black waves of his spandex align perfectly with the waves of her
spandex. I can't imagine how they keep that alignment going--especially since
they're almost running now to get away from me and my tree.
When I can't
see them anymore, I slowly stand up.
Nothing feels
broken. My right leg and side are bleeding but not badly. I shake the remaining
ticks from my clothes and redress. My pants are also ripped and half the buttons
of my shirt are gone. I look around for the tie I wore to the interview and
finally see it up on the tree branch I fell from. I leave it for the birds.
After
dressing, I walk a straight line limp to my car. That's when I discover that the
asphalt path curves around, because after a few hundred feet here come Mr. and
Mrs. Power Walk. Their faces scrunch into masks of forced ignoring. The woman
has her hand in her little hip pouch. I imagine she preparing to pepper spray
all my little orifices.
As they pass,
I smile, nod, go all comforting on my body language. "How ya'll
doing?" I ask.
If I'd had on
a big old cowboy hat and a hayseed in my mouth, I doubt I could have seemed like
any more of a redneck to them.
* * *
I didn't know
George Wallace on a personal level. My Aunt Katie, she knew him. Knew him in his
prime--the short, political firebrand with that oily pompadour which was never
in style and a curling lip for words that'd jump crowd to screams into all hours
of the night.
Katie Mae
Crow was an amazing woman. Born in 1914, she was a dwarf at a time in the south
when children with disabilities were assumed to be that way because of some sin
of the parents. Katie stood four feet three. No one knows why she came out that
way, but her mom had a case of German Measles when she was three months pregnant
with Katie. Our family always figured that's what caused it--and other people
could take their ideas on sin and shove it up their preacher's rear end.
After
graduating high school Katie saved some money and built a Texaco gas station a
hundred yards in front of her parent's house on the old Troy highway. Back then
that was outside Montgomery, and before the interstate system everyone driving
south had to pass her station. She had a big barrel of oil in a shed out front
of the store; if any car needed oil, she'd go pump her copper oil can full and
then pore it into the engine. She did it all; even cleaned windshields with the
help of a wooden step she kept by the pumps. When a car pulled up, she'd grab
that step, climb on up, and go to work.
Katie ran her
store for 40 years. When my mom was young, she and her cousin would sneak up to
the store whenever their grandma relieved Aunt Katie for lunch. See, Katie
wouldn't give them anything to eat or drink unless the girls worked for
it--earned their own way--but soon as Katie went home for dinner Grandmama would
give the girls all the candy and cokes they could want.
My mom
assumes Aunt Katie knew this but simply looked the other way.
The road by
Katie's store was popular. A whole lineup of now-classic country singers stopped
at her store on the way to and from the radio station nearby--WBAM--which
broadcast all over southeast. The Big BAM show brought in legends like Hank
Williams, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn. Since Katie knew the owners of WBAM, she
got backstage passes and met all the stars. They'd even stop in her store, get
some cold coca-colas against the summer heat.
But no matter
how much Katie liked those music stars, the minute they stepped in her store
they did things her way. And if anyone challenged her, she simply say, "You
can kiss my Aunt Tilley."
According to
my mom, George Wallace stopped by her store one hot, humid day to get a coke.
This was before he became governor and it must have been really hot, because he
came into Katie's store with his shirt unbuttoned. Respectable men did not leave
their shirt unbuttoned, so Katie grabbed her broom and chased him out.
Kiss her Aunt
Tilley indeed.
Katie so
impressed Wallace that from then on he stopped at Katie's store anytime he drove
the Troy Highway. Katie didn't give a rip who he was--even after he became
governor--and Wallace loved that. He'd buy a coke, some gas, give her a hard
time by trying to help her out in her store. Katie didn't let anyone help her
and she would grab her broom and shake it at him like she was about to get
popped.
Wallace loved
that, too.
* * *
Two days
after I drew the state seal for my classroom, George Wallace wheeled by to speak
to us. When the Mrs. McVay introduced him as the governor, he corrected her by
saying he wasn't the governor anymore. "But we might do something about
that," he said, laughing.
I don't
remember much else about Wallace's visit to my classroom--not sure what he
talked about, not sure what he else he did. I'm sure all the other kids were the
same way. This was the first time we'd seen a man who traveled with a group of
people in tow--hell, we didn't even know the word for entourage. So Wallace
talked and we listened politely and we stared at his wheelchair and then he was
done speaking.
Mrs. McVay
asked if we had any questions. One of the smart girls popped off with some
insightful question that no one cared about and Wallace answered her by saying
how intelligent she was to ask such a question. Then I raised my hand.
"Yes,
young man?" Wallace asked.
"My mom
says you know my aunt," I said. Behind me, Frank Segrest snorted.
"Who is
your aunt, young man?"
"Aunt
Katie . . . Crow. She owned a gas station on the Troy Highway."
Ever the
politician, George Wallace's eye flickered to the side as if reading an old list
of names. "Yes," he said, smiling. "Katie Crow is an amazing
woman."
He said to
say hi to her. After answering a few more questions, he left.
My connection
with Wallace didn't impress Frank and his friends. In fact, I distinctly
remember getting beat up--yet again--at recess that very day.
Fourth
graders get so excited about meeting someone whom others consider important. It
is only later that we understand the whys.
Today I can't
remember Wallace's face--from his visit, I mean. I remember his wheelchair. I
remember his attendants. But my images of his face are from the history
newsreels. I see his defiant look as he stood in the schoolhouse door, and my
mind pastes this face over his wheelchaired body in my classroom.
As I grew up,
I learned why my parents were not fans of George Wallace. My mom often said that
Wallace lacked a moral compass, that even his famous repentance for all his past
racial sins was merely a calculated political move. I suspect this may be true,
even through the Shakespearean image of Wallace seeing his fatal flaw is hard to
let go of.
In his
younger years, Wallace was a relatively progressive politician. In fact, when he
served as a circuit judge he was such a racial moderate that a young black
lawyer named Fred Gray (who later became well-known for defending Rosa Parks)
said that he had practiced in many courts but had never been treated more fairly
by a judge.1
Of course,
Gray would have many years to change that view of Wallace. While Wallace truly
cared for the "little man," he cared even more for power. And when he
found out that racially moderate views couldn't get him elected governor of
Alabama, he embraced the worst of humanity.
Wallace's
life is often called a Greek tragedy: Little man longs for power. Little man
begins to get power with progressive views. Little man loses a race for governor
because white voters feel he won't maintain segregation, so little man swears to
never be "out niggered again" and proceeds to win power and national
attention. Big man is then punished for his sins and spends the rest of his life
seeking repentence.
In Spike
Lee's documentary Four Little Girls, there is a poignant scene where Lee
interviews Wallace a few years before his death. He is so enfeebled by age and
frailty, from the bullets he took, that Lee has to provide subtitles for his
slurred speech.
The most
embarrassing scene in the documentary happens when Wallace swears that in his
heart that he never hated anyone because of their race. To prove this, Wallace
describes his black personal assistant, Eddie Holcey, as his best friend.
"I couldn't live without him," Wallace says, forcing Holcey to stand
before the camera.
Whether
Wallace was ignorant, insensitive, or just a son-of-a-bitch toward Holcey's
feelings about being put on display, I can't say. But I can read Holcey's face.
In the film he is embarrassed, trying to remain stoic in a difficult situation.
It's the
exact same look those power-walking people gave me when I fell from that tree.
* * *
I'm just
getting into my car to leave the nature preserve when a police cruiser pulls
into the parking lot. I guess the power walkers had a cell phone and called the
police.
Luckily, all
he can see of me through the car window is my upper torso and head. He nods at
me, then gets out of his squad car and goes looking for the people who called
911.
I don't wait
around.
On the drive
back to Minneapolis, my right leg is so stiff that I have to ease my other leg
onto the gas pedal.
Maybe I'm
naive, but if I saw someone fall from a tree the least I would do is ask if they
were okay. If they were up to no good, then I'd call the police. But I'd at
least ask if they were okay.
* * *
The old south
passed away not long after I started fourth grade. Perhaps the change came when
George Wallace told a group of black leaders in 1982, "We thought
[segregation] was in the best interests of all concerned. We were mistaken. The
Old South is gone." 2
That was the
same year Wallace was reelected governor for a fourth and final time. He won the
election with a coalition represented by blacks, organized labor and people
wanting to fix public education.
Now his south
is totally gone.
You often
hear the term 'new south' bandied around whenever Washington and New York
pundits grouse about the latest progressive politician to get elected in what
they see as the land of Bubba. To them, the term means a southern politician who
isn't wrapped in the robes of demagoguery, a politician who doesn't bait the
races or thump his little bible in red-faced indignation. A new south politician
is Bill Clinton crying over the past sins of the country or Jimmy Carter
building a habitat for humanity.
The irony is
that everywhere you look in today's America, politicians sprout the policies of
George Wallace. As Stephen Lester proves so eloquently in George Wallace,
American Populist, even while America said it detested Wallace's ways, the
country ended up embracing his message. Following the assassination attempt that
left Wallace in a wheelchair for life, the Republican party developed its
southern strategy which propelled everyone from Reagan to the two Bushs into the
presidency. The strategy they stole from Wallace, and which the Democrats under
Clinton then stole from them, is rather simple:
1) Play on people's hate and their
fear of social change;
2) Play different groups of people off of each other (Pro-choice versus anti-abortion groups, or the old standby of white versus black);
3) Blame all of the society's ills on a big government or liberals or anyone that interferes in other people's lives.
According to
Cynthia Tucker, the opinions editor of the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to
keep their support, "the Republicans have believed it necessary to play the
race card, whipping up fears of black crime (Willie Horton), portraying the
welfare system as overwhelmingly benefiting blacks (the majority of recipients
are actually white), rejecting affirmative action, downplaying the need for
diversity and generally ignoring the aspirations of African-Americans. They call
that the 'Southern strategy.'" 3
Wallace also
pioneered the practice of political doublespeak on sensitive social matters in
this country. Wallace didn't say he wanted segregation to keep black people
down; he simply said he didn't want the federal government interfering in
Alabama's affairs. When white people in Selma didn't want blacks registering to
vote or eating in their restaurants, Wallace said he was simply allowing people
to make their own choices about who they associated with.
As Joe Azbell,
Wallace's chief speech writer on his national campaigns, said, "(Wallace)
knew where to find the itch, and he scratched it." 4 Do you
think it is a coincidence that every president since Wallace got shot has either
been a southerner (Clinton and Carter), pretended to be a southerner (both
Bushes), or adopted the folksy ways of southerners (Reagan).
What none of
them took--with the possible exception of Clinton--was the true caring that
Wallace had for people. Yes, Wallace manipulated them. Yes he used them. Yes he
lied and race-baited and did harm to people both black and white. But he did
care about the little man in a way that politicians today forget to do. This is
because Wallace grew up poor in a poor state. He hated people with money and
good-old-boy connections. He wanted power but, unlike Dubya, didn't get it
handed to him.
Say what you
will about Wallace, but he remembered my Aunt Katie. And as he sat in his
wheelchair, I wonder if he ever thought about that midget woman who ran that
filling station and how she never took nothing from no one. And don't let the
words disguise the truth there--'midget woman' is probably exactly how Wallace
would have described my aunt. But I still think he did right by her.
He just
didn't do right by Alabama.
* * *
Frank Segrest
taught me early on about school-yard politics. Frank didn't beat me up because
he hated me; Frank didn't taunt and scream names at me because I was a threat to
everything he stood for a person.
Frank beat me
up because I was available to be beat up.
The American
political system has long used different groups and issues to divide people into
an 'us' and a 'them.' The reason America remains, and has always been, a
two-political-party country is that we prefer our beliefs as simple
duality--black white, good bad, us them. On every issue from slavery to
communism to abortion, Americans have preferred to fight rather than to
compromise. Sometimes, as with slavery, this is the correct choice. Sometimes,
as with Dubya and his "you're either with us or against us" war on
Iraq, the American political path makes it too easy to fall face first into
shit.
The truth
about Wallace using race as a dividing tool is that he was simply being true to
the nature of the American political system.
Being on the
receiving end of school-yard politics is shit. I, along with every other
recipient of a bully's pain, take a certain joy when the bully finally gets
theirs. I heard a friend talking about Frank the other day--Frank is now even
fatter, divorced, and stuck in a dead-end job. I won't lie and say I didn't
smile at that.
When Wallace
was shot, how many people saw that as just payment for his many sins? If Bush's
upcoming war on Iraq goes badly and his popularity drops, how many people will
say the president had it coming all along?
But there is
also something sad about Wallace. The other virulent race-baiters from those
days, like Sen. Strom Thurmond, have been rehabilitated and accepted. Not George
Wallace. In the two decades leading up to his death, he spoke at black churches
and NAACP meetings, seeking to bury his past with Christian atonement. He said
he didn't want to meet his maker with his sins unforgiven.
As I drive
back to Minneapolis--an Alabama boy with skinned legs and a bruised body--I
realize that there is no forgiveness in American politics. You either win or
lose. Nothing more. Ever the political man, Wallace understood this--and in the
end that makes his attempts at atonement so much sadder. He knew he had lost,
and he knew there could be no forgiveness in losing.
After all,
Americans never forgive a loser--even one who deserved to lose.
* * *
Citations:
1. Stephen Lesher, George Wallace (New York, Addison Wesley, 1993), pp. 92-93.
2. Richard Pearson, "Former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace Dies," Washington Post, September 14, 1998; Page A1.
3. Cynthia Tucker, "GOP to Blame for Blacks' Fear of the 'R' Word," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 9, 2002, op-ed section.
4. Stephen Lesher, George Wallace, pp. 500.
***originally published in storySouth http://www.storysouth.com
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