Mama was both excited and apprehensive. The next day she was going to become Alabama’s First Lady. A small-town girl, somewhat shy and withdrawn, who liked nothing better than sitting on the bank of a river watching a floating cork bob up and down, she was about to step into the pages of history.
That afternoon Daddy’s friend Seymore Trammell came by the house and picked him up to head downtown and put the final touches on his inaugural speech. Although Seymore and Daddy had been close during the time they worked together in the circuit court when Seymore was a district attorney and Daddy was a judge, Seymore’s racism had driven him into the Patterson camp in the 1958 governor’s race.
When Daddy decided to embrace segregation and hit hard on it in every speech he made in his second statewide run, Seymore could not have been more pleased. After all, he and Daddy had been partners in crime long before that, as I would learn quite by chance.
It seemed that during the six years that Daddy and Seymore rode the circuit, they would stay together in Midway, Alabama, a small country community halfway between the courthouses of Union Springs and Clayton. I found out about this when, many years later, my husband, Mark, my son Burns, and I went to our church to have our photo taken for the church directory. We were introduced to a middle-aged woman sitting behind the photographer’s table who I could tell recognized my name.
“You look just like your dear mother,” she said. “It’s in the eyes and that thick hair of yours.”
“Well, thank you very much,” I said.
“You know, I grew up in Midway. When your daddy was a judge we would see him and Mr. Seymore Trammell. My daddy said it just made sense when the two of them stayed in that house in Midway just down the road from where we lived to cut that long drive in half. They were both real nice men.”
“We never had a house in Midway,” I responded. “Our house was in Clayton.”
Still smiling, she replied, “Well, of course you did! You did have a house in Midway because your daddy lived there on and off.”
“And I know we did not have a house in Midway,” I said in an rising voice.
The woman leaned forward and squinted. She knew she was right and not even a daughter of George Wallace was going to accuse her of lying, especially in a church.
Before I could reply, Mark spoke up. “You know, I think I did hear about that. They’re ready for us, Peggy.”
As we were being adjusted on a seat for the photograph, Burns leaned in and whispered to Mark, “Poor Mom.”
Throughout his many years of service to Daddy, Seymore Trammell presented himself as a man of gallantry and gentility. Seymore was short with freckles on his face that matched his thick red hair. His speech was precise with a hint of mint julep thrown in. His immaculate dress, with shined-up shoes and the gold chain of a pocket watch tethered to his pants, was at times hard to swallow, particularly when his racist views reared their ugly heads.
Seymore Trammell had said to others that he was going to make sure that Daddy was not out-niggered again. Toward that end, he convinced Daddy that Asa Carter, from the northwest Alabama city of Oxford, was the perfect person to help him with his inaugural speech. Carter was involved with the KKK. He was waiting in the small downtown office when Daddy and Seymore arrived the day before the inauguration. Daddy’s inaugural speech was laying on the desk. Carter picked it up and began flipping through the pages. “Here it is, on the fifth page.” He said as he handed the speech to Daddy. “This is the most important part.” It read, “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 now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”
Wallace loyalists noted that Daddy’s speeches during his 1962 campaign had taken on a malevolent tone, more about segregation and less about progress. Only a few were aware that the new and revised language of George Wallace was from the pen of Asa Carter, one of the most virulent racists in Alabama, a thug and a criminal with a reputation for murderous violence. Perhaps Daddy thought he could backtrack once victory was his, which is a much easier pill for me to swallow—though I know it shouldn’t be—as I wonder, even today, if he really meant what he said.
January 14, 1963, Daddy’s inauguration day, was very cold, 28 degrees with a wind chill of zero. That didn’t deter the great sea of people who had gathered. They came from all walks of life—factory workers, farmers, bankers, preachers. No one thought about sitting it out. George Wallace was “just folks like us,” and he was going to take out after the cheaters and the liars that made the money while common folk couldn’t cover their bills each month. But even more important, he was going to show the blacks just how white folks felt about them and bring back law and order the way it should be. Sometimes things might get real bad for a white man: no job, no money, and a daughter pregnant at fourteen by a no-count. But in the minds of many who gathered, there was one thing to be thankful for. They were not black.
Daddy stood, as had other governors before him, on the brass star that denoted the very place where Jefferson Davis stood on the front portico of the capitol when he took his oath of office as president of the Confederate States of America. Behind him, on the second floor of the white capitol building itself, was the chamber where the Confederate States of America was formed. Catty-corner across the street was the first “White House of the Confederacy,” the house that Davis had lived in. With his hand on the Bible that had been used at Davis’s inauguration, Daddy was sworn in as Alabama’s forty-fifth governor. He faced the broad expanse of downtown Montgomery’s main boulevard, Dexter Avenue, that ran to Market Square, the place where African men, women, and children had been sold into slavery.
A military band played as we descended the capitol steps and walked up onto the reviewing stand where Daddy would speak. The crowd was expectant and hopeful that he would rouse in their hearts a sense of pride in their Alabama, the Alabama that for generations had been given short shrift by the rich, powerful, blue-nosed sophisticates in the North.
We sat on either side of the podium huddled together under electric blankets to ward off the cold. The crowd standing behind Daddy seemed restless, many dressed in work clothes and jackets rather than their Sunday best, loyalists who would fight for him at the drop of a hat. But they seemed out of place now, standing behind Alabama’s new governor, who was dressed in a long-tail morning coat and ascot with a top hat at his feet.
The inaugural parade lasted five hours and was a grand affair with bands and floats from all of Alabama’s sixty-seven counties and white colleges and universities. It particularly pains me to report that the inaugural parade committee, at Daddy’s direction, banned all African American schools and colleges from participating, including the Tuskegee Institute, on whose board of trustees he served.
That night, a lavish inaugural ball was held at Garrett Coliseum. Spotlights high on the top of the building lit the winter night. Inside, men in tuxedos and women in formal dresses grumbled when they were served punch or hot coffee rather than champagne. The stands filled up with Wallace people. They had come without invitation to watch their George and that sweet Lurleen dance the first dance.
The coliseum floor was suddenly cast into darkness. A booming voice came over the speakers as an orchestra began playing “Stars Fell on Alabama”: “Ladies and gentlemen, Governor George Corley Wallace and First Lady Lurleen Burns Wallace.” My parents were bathed in brilliant white light. The crowd roared as they slowly pivoted together, Daddy saluting and Mama waving her gloved hand. The gold-and-yellow brocade of Mama’s dress complemented her bare tanned shoulders, pearl necklace, and long white kid gloves. I wore a floor-length gown of silver metallic brocade and kid gloves. Daddy looked debonair in his cutaway tuxedo. “Sugah, are you happy?” Daddy asked as the orchestra began to play and he took my hand to dance. “Watch your step,” he said. Mama danced with my younger brother, George Jr.
It was late when we were driven
back through the gates of the Governor’s Mansion. Still in my long dress, I wandered through the first-floor rooms. Low light cast shadows on the portraits in the First Lady’s Room; the dining room chandelier was lit. In the long rectangular sitting room, a pair of floor-to-ceiling pier mirrors stood directly across from each other. As I stood between them my reflection fell back on itself again and again. I was fractured but whole; a carefree life was now mine. No sadness could come calling in such a magical place. My thirteenth birthday was just two weeks away.
10
1963
I was a citizen of Birmingham close to the age of the girls who died in the bombing. But I was growing up on the wrong side of the revolution.
—Diane McWhorter
Daddy never trusted more than a handful of people, and at times he was willing to look the other way when close friends or allies did mischief in his name. But back him into a corner or embarrass him, whether in fun or intentionally, and you were doomed. He had an unnerving penchant for remembering the slightest insult, whiff of disloyalty, or even hint that you thought you were smarter than he was. That applied not only to the public but to our family as well.
But Daddy also had an aversion to throwing hatchets at people in his inner circle who did things that did not meet with his approval, which meant that he had to have others close by who would do that for him. Al Lingo was Daddy’s hatchet man. His trademark oversized black plastic-framed glasses gave him a comical but sinister look. He was thick-bodied, with large hands and short legs. In public, he was never seen without a hat. He carried a sidearm and a billy club much as a businessman would carry a briefcase and pocket watch.
Lingo was born in my childhood hometown of Clayton but grew up in Eufaula, where I was born. He owned his own plane and flew Daddy to various political events in 1958. He was a strong supporter of Daddy’s in the 1962 election. He was an outsider, a devout racist, and a man’s man, tough, with a temper, ready to fight. Although Lingo had no law enforcement training or work experience (he was a cabinet manufacturer), Daddy announced soon after his election that Lingo would be appointed to the position of director of public safety and would thereafter be known as Colonel Al Lingo.
Daddy took pride in his belief that he was good at reading people, judging their character. To many, his appointment of Lingo would prove to be one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. Perhaps he felt obligated to show the people of Alabama that when he said, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever,” he really meant it.
Within weeks of his appointment, Lingo renamed the Alabama Highway Patrol the Alabama State Troopers, refitted their uniforms, and issued them steel helmets and short-barrel carbines, a shoulder-fired rifle with a barrel length of less than sixteen inches, a firearm for the military but not for a law enforcement officer whose primary job was to issue speeding tickets on state highways.
Alabama state law was ambiguous on issues relating to the enforcement powers of the Highway Patrol. The primary issue was whether Highway Patrol officers had the authority to engage in law enforcement activities outside the boundaries of state highways. Local police officers enforced the law within a city boundary, and county sheriffs within the boundaries of their county jurisdictions. State law officials such as game wardens, health inspectors, and marine police had jurisdiction only to the extent of the powers and duties prescribed by state law. It was generally presumed that there was no state law enforcement agency that had general law enforcement jurisdiction over the entire state. However, even before Daddy was elected, there were suggestions that the Highway Patrol should be given general jurisdiction throughout the state.
Lingo took advantage of the uncertainty of the situation and proclaimed that the Highway Patrol did in fact have general jurisdiction and that the newly named Alabama State Troopers had general law enforcement duties as directed by the governor. When neither he nor Daddy was challenged on the issue, Lingo became Alabama’s most powerful law enforcement officer—answering to no one but Daddy.
This development set the scene for the violent, heart-wrenching battles over civil rights during Daddy’s first term. In the spring of 1963, after suffering a defeat in attempts to desegregate public facilities and schools in Albany, Georgia, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. searched for the right place and moment to remind the world once again of the harsh reality of the American apartheid. Dr. King and the civil rights movement were at a crossroads. He had not won a major civil rights struggle in the seven years since the Montgomery bus boycott had ended. The time had come. His crusade would be called “Project C,” for confrontation.
King chose Birmingham, the largest industrial city in the South, for his new campaign, a city where African Americans had been terrorized by the KKK for years. Blacks called Birmingham “Bombingham.” They called one of their neighborhoods “Dynamite Hill.” They were targeted by white terrorists, and the perpetrators always went unpunished. The white community blamed these incidents on black “agitators” seeking to “stir up” a black population who were supposedly just fine with their lot in life and were patiently waiting on the white man’s largesse.
The day after the city election runoff, April 3, King called for lunch counter sit-ins in downtown Birmingham. Twenty protesters were arrested.
On April 12, Good Friday, the Birmingham News published a statement written by clergymen concerning the city’s state of affairs as it related to the black issue. Although admitting that there was systematic segregation within the city, the ministers’ letter condemned outsider influence and suggested that the matter should be the subject of civil discourse and legal action if necessary. They opposed civil disobedience of the kind that had been visited on their fair city.
That afternoon, Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy led a retinue of black ministers into the city’s streets. Local and state law enforcement officers attacked the crowds of African Americans who stood on the shaded sidewalks to watch the peaceful march. King, Abernathy, and many others were arrested and jailed.
As King sat in solitary confinement, he wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in the margins of the Birmingham News in which the white Birmingham ministers had published their letter:
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? … Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”
And then there was Al Lingo. According to one of Daddy’s closest friends, Oscar Harper, Daddy issued a direct order to Lingo to stay away from Birmingham. But despite Daddy’s directive, Lingo deployed state troopers and joined forces with the Birmingham police commissioner, Bull Connor. However, Daddy did not fire Lingo for this transgression, perhaps because of his deep-seated angst over losing political allies.
Angry mobs of low-income men and women and the KKK were not the only supporters of segregation in Birmingham. On the crest of Birmingham’s Red Mountain, in mansions with gorgeous views of downtown Birmingham, the old-line families and business magnates were more than happy for these ruffians to do what they would not stoop to do. George Wallace was not their kind of governor; there was not a whit of gentility or refinement in either his personality or pedigree. And yet many of them had secretly voted for him, and they were more than a little pleased with his constant railing against out-of-state black and white civil rights “agitators.”
On April 26, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, accompanied by the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Burke Marshall, arrived in Montgomery to meet with Da
ddy to discuss the integration of the University of Alabama. Before their arrival, Daddy ordered that the Confederate battle flag be raised on the dome of the state capitol. (It would remain there until 1991, and only on January 4, 1993, was it forever banned from flying above the capitol.)
On May 2 in Birmingham, more than one thousand children were arrested and hauled away to jail for demonstrating not far from the 16th Street Baptist Church. As additional children came to take their place the next day, Bull Connor ordered that fire hoses and police dogs be used to disperse the crowd. A photograph of an African American teenager standing in a seemingly penitent/passive pose as a snarling German shepherd ripped at his clothes was published in newspapers the following day. That photograph shifted the national perception of what was happening in the South and captured the essence of King’s beliefs about the power of nonviolent confrontation. Who could not be outraged and moved?
On Monday, June 10, Daddy left the Governor’s Mansion on his way to Tuscaloosa to prepare for what he believed would be seen as his finest hour: his literal stand in the schoolhouse door. Although his advisers disagreed as to the appropriateness of what he was planning, everyone knew his attempt to block two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling in the University of Alabama would fail. Daddy, though, saw it as an opportunity to fulfill his promise to Alabamians and show that his commitment to protect the culture of segregation was real.
Daddy was at ease and spoke glibly as a film crew followed him around the mansion prior to his departure. Footage shows the mansion foyer and sitting rooms. My father points out two portraits hanging on the wall, two Southern heroes of the Civil War, and extols their nobility and character. The camera traces his steps into the kitchen where the African American staff prepares our dinner. He descends to the mansion’s rear parking area and waves to a line of African American men dressed in white uniforms, some leaning on what appear to be hoes and rakes. Daddy waves and they wave back. He notes to the camera that all of the African American men who are working in the mansion are convicts. Daddy smiles as he climbs into a car and drives away.
The Broken Road Page 8