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Bill Clinton’s Apology: Not Accepted!
“You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.”
-– George Wallace, after winning Alabama’s governor’s office in 1962.
After losing his first run for governor in 1958, George Wallace famously told his campaign finance chief Seymore Trammell that he had been “out-niggered” by his opponent. There was no viable Republican Party in Alabama in the 1960s. Thus, winning the Democratic Party primary — any Democratic primary — was tantamount to winning office.
“I was out-niggered by John Patterson,” Wallace said. “And I’ll tell you here and now, I will never be out-niggered again,” he declared.
George Wallace lived up to this pledge in spectacular fashion. Overnight he became the single most important political tour de force of an openly racist, southern based opposition to the then surging Civil Rights Movement. To wit: During his inaugural address in ’63, Wallace issued his infamous call to arms from the steps of the Alabama Statehouse — a clarion call which epitomized and crystallized white anger, white angst, white resentment, and white fear of a seemingly unstoppable black tsunami. This declaration of racial war — “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow…
