George Wallace, Ten Years Later

He’s grateful that God allowed him to live.

For more than a decade, George Wallace has been portrayed as a redneck southern racist who stood for violence, bigotry and hatred. Many people learned of the former Alabama governor through media accounts of his opposition to the integration of the University of Alabama in the early sixties.

Here, we were told in news columns, was a demagogue, an embarrassment to the informed political process, a hick who did not understand history or America.

Recently some national writers have been acknowledging Wallace’s awareness of political trends in America. In a January 1981 issue of the New York Times, John Saxon wrote, “Wallace saw it first.” Saxon was speaking of Wallace’s early description of deep frustration among workers, a growing tax revolt, a weakening military resolve, a bloated federal bureaucracy, moral laxity, northern hostility of integration in the North, and so on.

Last November, Johnny Ford, the mayor of Tuskegee, Alabama, said he hoped Wallace would run again for governor. Ford is chairman of the 21-member Alabama Conference of Black Mayors. Wallace, now working as director of the Office of Rehabilitation Services at the University of Alabama in Montgomery, won’t say what his intentions are.

Even as public opinion about Wallace seems to be mellowing, some of Wallace’s views also have softened. Visitors to his office have found that the attempt on his life during his presidential campaign in 1972, which left his legs paralyzed, has changed him spiritually. Although Wallace doesn’t generally grant press interviews, he agreed to talk to CHRISTIANITY TODAY about his outlook and the spiritual change that has been part of it.

He said that the incident 10 years ago that paralyzed him made him realize as never before the frailty of human life: “In the sense that people must realize that God rules our lives, what I was doing, my successes, were not [accomplished] because I had the world by the tail but because God had allowed me to do them. People who have been brought up in a religious atmosphere and who are strong physically feel and know these things, but they don’t realize God’s part until all of a sudden they can be gone.”

Far from being angry with God for his paralysis, Wallace said he is grateful God allowed him to live through it. “The law of nature is that when you develop peritonitis [from being shot in the intestines], you’re not supposed to live.… I don’t think God punishes people in the sense that if you have been a sinner, he punishes you. If he does, frankly, I deserve all the punishment I’ve gotten, because I haven’t been the kind of man I should have been, but I haven’t been the terrible, terrible criminal in the sense of taking people’s lives.

Is George Wallace a born-again Christian? He said, “I believe in the Lord. I was raised in a Methodist atmosphere, and I knew what was right, but I haven’t always done it.”

Was he a believer when he was shot? He said, “It’s hard to explain. I’m not sure. My faith tells me I was, but at the same time, I had been a backslider. I had been vain. I had been arrogant. I had been nonmeek. I felt that I was bigger than I was. I was not humble. But I believe it’s in the Gospel of John that it tells you that you know that you are saved.”

On the issue of race, in which so many people differed with Wallace, he said, “My attitude towards the matter of separate facilities [for blacks and whites] in schools was not valid,” but he said that his attitude toward blacks has never changed:

“In the first place, I have never disliked anyone because of race, color, creed, religion, or national origin. I have known all my life that every human being is made by the handiwork and in the image of God. I have always loved black people, and I was raised among black people. To have been taken away to a country where I saw no black people, I would have felt ill at ease and not at home. That was part of my life.”

But, he was reminded, he did endorse segregation, which to many is an overpowering expression of modern racism. He responded by saying, “Since I had grown up under a system that called for social separation, I did think and feel in those days that it was in the interests of both groups to maintain school segregation.… There were 17 states in 1954 which had segregated school facilities. You cannot say that these millions and millions of people were sinful and hateful because of their race.”

Wallace said the furor he caused centered basically on the charge of big government taking over people’s lives, and now that very notion has become the conventional wisdom: “Big government has failed, and the very thing I harped on in those days was that the people in the local areas be allowed to decide some things for themselves.”

Regarding race, Wallace said he has withdrawn none of his views except his support of segregation. “Now if segregation offended people, then I offended them. But I never said anyone was not capable or that God looked differently at blacks and whites. People in our region of the country, as a result of the War Between the States, had few schools, and illiteracy was high.… Those people did not hate blacks. They did believe in separation, but that’s all over now. It was over even when I was shot.”

Wallace said he holds no malice toward “anyone that God ever made. I’m not even mad at the man who shot me [Arthur Bremer]. “I’ve forgiven him, and I would hope that somehow the Lord could use him to help bring people to the kingdom.”

George Wallace, at 62, doesn’t say whether he has any more aspirations for elective office. He does say that any plans are provisional. “I now realize the frailty of human life,” he said. “I may not be here tomorrow. I may not be here this afternoon.”

WILL NORTON, JR., in Montgomery

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