Judge Mark Kennedy Rewrites George Wallace’s 1963 Inaugural Address
December 6th, 2011Journalism as History on the Run
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Someone once said that practicing journalism is like capturing “history on the run.”
Sometimes when you are a fly on the wall at important events you think you are witnessing a historical moment. But it is sometimes hard to tell for sure. Like they say, only time will tell.
Did any of the reporters covering George Wallace’s inaugural address in 1963 have any idea what a seminal moment that would be in American political history?
Could anyone have anticipated that the groundswell of rage embodied in Wallace’s fiery rhetoric would lead to such a transformative movement for full-scale civil rights in the United States? Or that Wallace’s message and style would result in such a rising tide of so-called “conservatism” in American politics, a tide that has not yet fully dissipated over the country — or Wallace’s homeland of Alabama?
In conversations I had with my good friend Spider Martin before he died, it was apparent that those covering the events of the 1960s did have a sense that they were witnessing big historical moments. Spider was a photographer who covered a lot of the seminal clashes in civil rights history back then. He was there on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. You can see some of his photographs on the National Park Service Civil Rights Trail. And you can see him running in and out of the television news footage often used in documentaries of the time.
He later became the official photographer for George Wallace, however, and witnessed the man’s runs for governor and president up close and personal. From 2001-2003, I taped interviews with Spider about those days. One of these days I will get around to writing some stories up about what he said. He died in April, 2003, before we could finish the book we were working on together.
In 1965, I was only 8-years -old, living in a white flight suburb east of Birmingham. We were isolated from that history, except for what we saw on the evening news at dinner time. The local newspapers didn’t cover the protests or run pictures of Bull Connor’s dogs or fire hoses.
Many people in Alabama and across the South and the country are still isolated from it, which is one of the reasons the so-called “New Conservatism” started by the likes of George Wallace and Barry Goldwater and perfected by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush still survives to this day.
People who live in isolated rural or suburban communities with no opportunities for exposure to the diversity of the wider world and higher education tend to live in and cling to the past.
Even the Alabama Democratic Party, the party of Wallace, was still clinging to this past in many ways until the most recent election cycle, when the Republican Party finally completed its mission of becoming the party of bigotry and hate, the party that hates the government so bad it wants to run it completely into the ground so that it doesn’t work anymore at all.
The heirs to Wallace’s legacy in Alabama now have names like Scott Beason, Mike Hubbard and Shadrack McGill.
But there is a problem with the way these politicians are attempting to further their own political ambitions by following in Wallace’s footsteps.
If you go all the way back to 1963 and actually read the text of Wallace’s inaugural address, you will see that he was at least for education, not out to destroy it.
True, he was for educating white kids, not the black ones, but he considered it part of his mission and one of the reasons he got elected to stand for education of Alabama’s poor people. He was a Populist, after all, not part of the moneyed elite.
“… the farmer in the field, the worker in the factory, the businessman in his office, the housewife in her home, have decided that the money can be better spent to help our children’s education and our older citizens,” Wallace said, “and they have put a man in office to see that it is done.”
He went on to develop the community college system in the state, and I am here to tell you that chances are, I would not be here writing these words today if it had not been for that decision. My college education started in a community college. It was the teachers there who inspired me to study English, History, Political Science, Sociology and Journalism and go on to the University of Alabama for a Bachelor’s degree and later a Master’s, then to pursue a Ph.D. in Tennessee and teach there and in New Orleans.
The Republicans in charge today seem hell-bent on destroying educational opportunities except for the rich kids of white folks who can afford to pay for it. Wallace at least stood up for poor white people. The Republicans running for president, governor, the Legislature and the state Supreme Court these days seem to stand only for the 1%, a term popularized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have a point.
Now let me get to mine.
I believe I witnessed some interesting history the other night in Montgomery, history you won’t see covered anywhere else. You see, I was the only reporter in the room last Friday night when the Alabama Democratic Party held its annual Hall of Fame dinner in Montgomery. It was not the only time in my career to be the only reporter in the room. At the Ritz Carlton in New Orleans once, I was the only reporter in the room with Rudi Giuliani. That got covered by UPI because I was there.
The event in Montgomery this weekend did not rate one single mention in any newspaper in the state, or on a single local television news broadcast, which I find quite odd.
True, a lot of what I witnessed was the passing of the old guard of the Democratic Party, which ruled my home state for 136 years. But I also saw something new.
While the party honored Paul Hubbert and Joe Reed of the Alabama Education Association as they pass from leadership positions in the party, the new head of the party, Mark Kennedy, did a couple of extraordinary things right in front of my eyes. For one, he declared that “there are no more back rooms” in the Alabama Democratic Party, and he encouraged young people to take up a leadership role. He refused to read the list of long-time dignitaries in his pocket, and he vowed not to have any speaker over 40 at next year’s event.
Kennedy is the son-in-law of George Wallace, having married Wallace’s baby girl Peggy in the early 1970s. He was also the only Alabama Supreme Court justice who ever beat Karl Rove’s political campaign company in a judicial election in the state, in 1994, even though he retired in 1998 rather than face the negative whisper campaign again.
Kennedy decided to re-write a little history for the Montgomery event. He re-cast Wallace’s speech from 1963 and gave it a new ending.
In case you are unfamiliar with the language from Wallace’s speech, you can watch the video below and read the text here. Here’s the key paragraph.
Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.
In his address to the Alabama Democratic Party Hall of Fame dinner crowd, Kennedy changed the wording, ending it this way (see video here or here):
“Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say justice today … justice tomorrow … and justice forever.”
Now as you know, I don’t have much faith in parties or much of anything else. Just a sliver of hope that this could hold true.
Justice?
In this state?
Imagine that…
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Tags: 1963 Inaugural Address, George Wallace, Journalism as History on the Run, Judge Mark Kennedy Rewrites George Wallace's 1963 Inaugural Address, Mark Kennedy, Spider Martin
December 6th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Through the years of one great politician….may we move forward and learn from all of the great!
May we have JUSTICE IN ALABAMA for Don Siegelman.He is one of the great!
For the great State of Alabama may we take our state back.