'Segregation Forever': A Fiery Pledge Forgiven, But Not Forgotten
It was just a single line in a speech given 50 years ago today. But that one phrase, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever," is remembered as one of the most vehement rallying cries against racial equality in American history.
The year was 1963. Civil rights activists were fighting for equal access to schools and the voting booth, and the federal government was preparing to intervene in many Southern states.
And on Jan. 14, in Montgomery, Ala., newly elected Gov. George Wallace, a Democrat, stepped up to a podium to deliver his inaugural address.
Historian Dan Carter, who wrote The Politics of Rage, a biography of George Wallace, recalls how the streets of Montgomery were packed the day of Wallace's inauguration. His followers from across the state crowded around the platform, Carter says, "many of them wearing these white flowers, which were meant to symbolize their commitment to white supremacy."
All of the major news networks covered Wallace's inaugural address on national television that day. And Wallace, Carter says, decided to "milk that for everything that he can."
The late Wayne Greenhaw, a newspaper reporter in Montgomery at the time, made a similar observation. "He was putting on a show. He marched back and forth, shook his fist," Greenhaw recalled shortly before his death in 2011. "He was promising that he would stand alone for the Southern cause and the cause of the white people."
Wallace's speech — and its delivery — was "vehement ... mean spirited ... hateful. It's like a rattlesnake was hissing it, almost," Greenhaw said.
"Let us send this message back to Washington, via the representatives who are here with us today," Wallace told the crowd. "From this day, we are standing up, and the heel of tyranny does not fit the neck of an upright man.
"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," Wallace declared from the podium. "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever."
(more)
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/14/169080969/segregation-forever-a-fiery-pledge-forgiven-but-not-forgotten
Wallace almost sounds tame compared to today's wingnut rhetoric...
