CAN A RACIAL SEGREGATIONIST EVER REALLY CHANGE?

This was the original march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, that eventually became “Bloody Sunday”

 

 

In 1963, The Governor of Alabama had declared, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.”

 

 

I have always wondered if my own relatives, still living in our Southern states that still believe deeply in racial segregation, could they ever really change their views? 

 

Well, after reading about one of the most well-known segregationists of my times, I have to admit there may be hope for some of my Southern relatives.

 

The well-known person I am referring to was first introduced to me via the old black & white news reels while I was in high school back in 1963.

 

That was when the then newly elected Alabama Governor, George Wallace, in his inauguration speech famously declared, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.”

 

If you also go back to 1956, in the pulpit of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, it was at the time, the pulpit of the infamous Rev. Martin Luther King Jr..  The same reverend who had been the driver of the then Montgomery City Bus Boycott by the local Blacks, for having to only sit at the back of the bus.  This was the beginning of George Wallace’s drive that made him the arch-segregationist for strongly enforced racial segregation.  It was also approved by the local whites and they eventually voted for him as the state’s governor.

 

George Wallace then went on to gain national notoriety when he personally confronted President Kennedy’s administration officials as they tried desperately to desegregate the all-white University of Alabama. 

But the most notorious period of all, was when Wallace deployed his state troopers who brutally beat the non-violent freedom marchers in Selma, Alabama.  This became the famous “Bloody Sunday” march on March 7, 1965.  Today’s, US Democratic Representative of Georgia, John Lewis, he had been beaten unconscious on that same “Bloody Sunday”.

 

But seven years later, while running for US President with the same demagogic and segregationist message, Wallace fell victim to the turbulent racial times in America that he had helped stir up. At that time, a would-be assassin shot Wallace during a rally in Maryland, and Wallace became permanently paralyzed from the waist down.  Wallace was then condemned to constant and incessant physical pain.

 

So, now we come back to the original question that I posed at the beginning of this story.  Can someone with such strong views toward racial segregation actually ever change their views?

 

Well, on a Sunday morning in 1979, an unexpected guest to that same Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, that had been the home of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., George Wallace, in a wheel chair, rolled up the center aisle of that church.

When he arrived at the front of the congregation, with its pews full of African Americans, George Wallace has been quoted as asking: “I have learned what suffering means, in a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain Black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask for your forgiveness.”

 

And yes, this Black congregation did give George Wallace that forgiveness. 

 

But that was not the end of that issue for the governor.

 

George Wallace went on to convince those in his state that he had seen the light, and that he meant what he said.  In 1983, George Wallace won back more than 90% of the Black vote in his last winning race for governor.  

 

In 1985, Wallace met privately with Reverend King’s widow, Coretta Scott King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, as they finished a four-day reenactment of the second, highly successful march from Selma to Montgomery.

 

Wallace also appointed more than 160 African Americans to his own administration, including a Black man as his press secretary. When the 30th anniversary of the Selma march took place in 1995, Wallace attended and sang “We Shall Overcome” with his former adversaries and with some of his former victims.  Those gestures impressed many Black Americans as acts of true and genuine contrition.

 

Even the same Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who had been beaten unconscious on Bloody Sunday, wrote in a New York Times op-ed soon after Wallace’s death in 1998: “I had to forgive him, because to do otherwise, to hate him would only perpetuate the evil system we sought to destroy. George Wallace should be remembered for his capacity to change. And we are better as a nation because of our capacity to forgive and to acknowledge that our political leaders are human and largely a reflection of the social currents in the river of history.”

 

So I guess if this can happen to someone as dedicated to racial segregation as George Wallace once was, there is hope for some of my family members living in the deep South today.  But let’s hope they are able to get there without going through the same suffering as Governor Wallace.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017