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Speaker 1: Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You

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Speaker 1: Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's January fourteenth.

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Speaker 1: George Wallace was inaugurated as governor of Alabama on this

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Speaker 1: day in nineteen sixty three, and at his inauguration he

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Speaker 1: gave his famous Segregation Now, Segregation Forever. Speech. Ten years

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Speaker 1: before that, in nineteen fifty three, Wallace had been part

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Speaker 1: of the reelection campaign of Governor Big Jim Folsom, and

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Speaker 1: Folsom was really pretty progressive. He had been campaigning for

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Speaker 1: things like voting rights for black citizens and ending the

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Speaker 1: use of prison labor, improving the school system, hiring more

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Speaker 1: women for government positions, and Wallace had a reputation as

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Speaker 1: a dangerous liberal. Back in ninety eight, both he and

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Speaker 1: Folsom had been delegates to the Democratic National Convention, and

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Speaker 1: when pro segregation Democrats had walked out of the convention,

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Speaker 1: Folsom and Wallace had been some of the ones staying put.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty eight, Wallace ran for governor of Alabama

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Speaker 1: for the first time, and his platform had a lot

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Speaker 1: in common from when he had worked on the campaign

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Speaker 1: of Big Jim Folsom. It was moderate to progressive. It's

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Speaker 1: still followed a lot of what Folsom had campaigned on.

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Speaker 1: He had the support of the National Association for the

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Speaker 1: Advancement of Colored People or m double a c P. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: his opponent in the Democratic primary was Attorney General John Patterson.

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Speaker 1: Patterson was running on a pro segregation platform and had

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Speaker 1: the support of the Ku Klux Klan. In this Democratic

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Speaker 1: primary in nineteen fifty eight, Patterson beat Wallace and then

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Speaker 1: beat his Republican opponent, William Longshore, in just a landslide.

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Speaker 1: The next part of this has been widely reported in

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Speaker 1: some wording or another from a lot of different sources,

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Speaker 1: but Wallace himself denied ever saying it. When people asked

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Speaker 1: him what had gone wrong in his campaign, his response

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Speaker 1: reportedly included a racist slur, something along the lines of quote,

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Speaker 1: I got out and worded by John Patterson. This is

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Speaker 1: the first and last time I will be out and

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Speaker 1: worded by another candidate. Wallace his life in his political

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Speaker 1: career took a turn after this. He became very deeply depressed,

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Speaker 1: and this combined with other issues in his marriage to

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Speaker 1: lead his wife Lurleen, to take their children to live

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Speaker 1: with their parents and file for divorce. At the time,

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Speaker 1: Wallace was a judge for the Third Judicial Court, and

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Speaker 1: with the election over, he went back to work and

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Speaker 1: totally changed his approach to racial discrimination. He started actively

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Speaker 1: trying to block civil rights legislation instead of supporting it

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Speaker 1: like he had before. When he ran for governor again,

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Speaker 1: he was pro segregation and pro states rites, and he

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Speaker 1: had the support of the ku Klux Klan, like the

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Speaker 1: man who had beaten him the last time. Around this time,

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Speaker 1: he won the Democratic primary and got three hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: votes in the general election, even though no one else

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Speaker 1: was running against him. The speech that he gave on

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Speaker 1: inauguration Day nineteen sixty three was co written by asa

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Speaker 1: Earl Carter, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

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Speaker 1: Later on, Carter was also revealed to be Forest Carter,

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Speaker 1: author of the rebel Outlawed Josie Wales and the Education

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Speaker 1: of Little Tree. Here's that famous passage from the speech quote, today,

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Speaker 1: I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood and took

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Speaker 1: an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then,

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Speaker 1: that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart

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Speaker 1: of the great Anglo Saxon Southland, that today we sound

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Speaker 1: the drum for freedom, as have our generations of forebears

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Speaker 1: before us done time and time again through history. Let

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Speaker 1: us rise to the call of freedom loving blood that

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Speaker 1: is in us, and send our answer to the tyranny

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Speaker 1: that clanks its chained upon the South. In the name

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Speaker 1: of the greatest people that have ever tried this earth,

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Speaker 1: I draw the line in the dust and tossed the

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Speaker 1: gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, segregation today,

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Speaker 1: segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. It is not clear whether Wallace's

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Speaker 1: shift from being socially progressive to explicitly supporting segregation in

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Speaker 1: white supremacy was a genuinely held change in his views

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Speaker 1: or whether he just thought it was politically expedient to

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Speaker 1: win an election. But he shifted once again in the

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Speaker 1: opposite direction later on in his career after the passage

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Speaker 1: of the Voting Rights Act. And this is just one

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Speaker 1: moment in a decade's long career that also involved other

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Speaker 1: instances of outright racism. There's a lot more to it

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Speaker 1: in the November episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Casey Pegram and Chandler Mays for their audio

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Speaker 1: work on this show. You can subscribe to The Day

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Speaker 1: in History Class on Apple podcast, Google podcast, the I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, and wherever else to get your podcasts,

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Speaker 1: and tune in tomorrow for a flood that we told

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Speaker 1: you was coming back in October.