Much of what we had been as a family died with Mama. There were no more vacations, Christmas lists, birthday cakes, or joyful moments. We didn’t know how to do those things without her.
Back in Clayton, when I was young, Mama would sometimes come to visit the make-believe houses I would scratch out with a tree limb or broom handle on the dirt floor of our sagging garage. She helped make my floor plan more livable. She brought glasses of Kool-Aid for the two of us, and we would sit in metal yard chairs in my “living room.”
“One day you will have a real house,” she would say. “So when I come to visit be sure you have a room for me.” I always promised I would.
In 1977, I moved into a real house of my own, and in June 1978, I brought Mama’s grandson, Leigh Chancellor Kennedy, home to live in what would have been her room. Leigh’s serene curiosity was unruffled and unafraid. His deep cerulean eyes seemed to look beyond me as if they were contemplating some universal truth.
A decade later, our son Morgan Burns Kennedy was born. His eyes narrowed when something went awry. His smiles were discreet. There was no doubt in my mind that Burns Kennedy had the “no monkey business around here” soul of Mamaw. He would have her “tell it like it is, ain’t no use in sugarcoating it” personality.
In a moment of wishing that Mama could be there with me as I was rocking Burns in my arms, I began to think how things might have been different if she had declined to run for governor. Why would she have chosen politics over us when she had so little time? The nights and days she stood on a makeshift stage shaking hands with strangers were days and nights I was at home alone. I envied friends who shopped with their mother, went to a picture show, got their daddy to help them with their algebra.
When Burns became animated and restless in my arms and stared at me through squinting eyes, his hands balled up in boxer style, I wished I could call on Mamaw and Mama. I pulled him close to comfort him but he was comfortless. He was upset but not crying. “Are you about to pitch a fit?” I asked. “How I wish I could ask Mamaw and Mama what to do with you! But they left you and me a long time ago, so I guess it’s just us.”
Burns relaxed and with his eyes wide open looked straight into mine. It was as if he understood what I said but disagreed with my opinion. Then somewhere in my heart, I came to understand that all that Mama did, she had done for us. Lurleen Wallace was a woman of courage because of her life rather than a Lady of Courage because of her death.
I dream about standing in the shallows of the Alabama Gulf with Mama as she casts her rod toward the sky. The silver spinner catches the last light as it arcs up and over the water.
“Here, hold the rod for me for a second.” Mama says as she cups her hand around a cigarette lighter to fend off a breeze. “Let’s get lucky. What do you think?”
“Yep, let’s get lucky,” I reply with a smile.
“See that biggest ship heading through the pass?” she asks as she points toward the water. “Watch it now, as it heads out to sea. It will look like it’s getting smaller and smaller, but it will always stay the same. That’s because of the way we see it, not because of the way it really is.”
“Are we like that ship?” I ask. “We are always the same, even if we are very far away and even when no one can see us?”
“I think we are.”
My mother was reminding me that she would always be there with me in spirit. She would endure in my heart as the mother I loved. That would never change.
In April 1968, a few weeks before she died, Mama called me to her room. It was the night of the senior prom. “Turn around,” she said as I walked through the door. “Mary Jo showed me the material she was going to use to make your dress. Come closer so I can see how lovely you are. Now turn around so I can see the back. Come sit by me. I have something for you.”
Mama reached beneath the cover and retrieved a small gift box. “This is your graduation present, but I am so excited about all of this that I just can’t wait that long, and I knew they would look so pretty with your dress. I can’t wait to see them on you.”
I took the pair of small diamond earrings from the box and put them on.
“Now, keep your hair pulled back so everyone can see them. Give me a kiss and go have some fun.” Mama lay back on the pillow. “I want to hear all about it real soon.”
I never got to tell Mama about that night. I sometimes wish I could have. Some years later, I took those earrings and had them mounted on either side of the diamond in my engagement ring to remind me of the night Mama said goodbye.
“This is where your grandmother walked …” Me, Leigh, and Burns in Gulf Shores, Alabama, 1990.
16
Stand Up
They’re building a bridge over the Potomac for all the white liberals fleeing to Virginia.
—George Wallace
Late in the afternoon of Thursday, May 9, 1968, we returned to the Governor’s Mansion following Mama’s funeral. Earlier that day, thousands of Alabamians stood three and four deep along the streets and boulevards on the route of Mama’s funeral cortege. Their love for Lurleen was palpable. Mama had directed that these lines by Elizabeth Barrett Browning be read at her funeral as an expression of her love for the people of Alabama:
I love you not only for what you are,
but for what I am when I am with you.
I love you not only for what you have made of yourself,
but for what you are making of me.
I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
The Governor’s Mansion was veiled in sorrow as we drove through the gates. The house was reminiscent of a hotel ballroom following the last dance; no more music, just occasional rustlings as from petals dropping from dying roses or crepe paper streamers floating to the floor.
There was nothing there that could reassure me or comfort me. I wondered what it would feel like to soon be a guest in my mama’s house, hesitant to climb the stairs or venture into my old bedroom. I felt the same way as I had many years before when I watched Daddy turn out the lights and lock the door behind us on the day we left Clayton for the last time.
Governor Albert Brewer, the former lieutenant governor and Mama’s friend, offered to allow us sufficient time to regain our composure and collect ourselves before moving out. Daddy declined his offer. And we did have a home to go to where the remnants of Mama’s last bits of her fleeting life resided. Whether it was Mama’s sense of the inevitable outcome of her illness, or her desire to have the home she always dreamed of after she was out of office, she and Daddy had purchased a rambling ranch-style house in one of Montgomery’s newest housing developments, across the street from our church and in a neighborhood filled with acquaintances and friends. During the summer and fall of 1967, Mama spent as much of her time at that house as her cancer and her work obligations allowed. She left that house behind for us to live in.
“Not a place to cry in,” I could hear her telling me. “Lord knows we’ve done enough of that in our lives. I’ve worked hard to get you all set up, everything I could think of. And every once in a while, I want you to remember that we finally made it. No more holes in your shoes, Peggy Sue. Just come on in and sit with me and have a Coke or a cup of coffee.” And with a smile veiled in smoke from her Benson & Hedges cigarette: “Guess our ship finally came in.”
Daddy’s determination to make a swift departure from the mansion was not to accommodate Governor Brewer; it was due to the unraveling of his ability to keep himself pulled together. His stiff upper lip was about to crumple. As soon as the last moving van pulled away from our new home and the security guards retreated to a small office on the other side of the rear driveway, Daddy wandered from room to room. He then collapsed on the den sofa. With his shoes still on and a thin black tie knotted neatly beneath the collar of his short-sleeved white dress shirt, Daddy turned his face to the wall. His sorrow was mixed with a healthy dose of regret. He cried for hours without stopping and refused to pull himself together during brief mome
nts between waves of anguish, indifferent to the way the rest of us felt.
After several days, my attempted words of comfort turned to anger as I demanded that he get up and take care of us. If visitors were allowed or family members stopped by, he managed to sit up for a conversation or usher them to a small and dingy wood-paneled room chock-full of wooden plaques and framed awards. These mementos climbed all four walls and spilled out over the linoleum floor.
Several weeks after Mama’s funeral, Daddy called Governor Brewer and invited him to come to the house for a visit. He wanted to talk to Brewer about the rumor that Daddy planned to run for governor in 1970. Daddy promised Brewer that there would be no Wallace on the ballot in two years. He reminisced about Mama’s affection for Brewer and his wife. Upon overhearing Daddy’s promise that he would not challenge Brewer in the next election, I was relieved that we would remain in the house that Mama had prepared for us. Her presence was strong there—it was where she had wanted us to be. Finally there would be some stability in our lives—a place to build a life.
After spending more than a month in seclusion, Daddy turned his attention back to his presidential campaign. The campaign staff breathed a collective sigh of relief. There were no stand-ins who could incite the rabid enthusiasm Daddy inspired, replicate the Wallace bravado, or whip the rising tide of discontent amid forlorn and forgotten working-class whites who were the engine of “Stand Up for America.”
Without an established political party or a stable of wealthy donors to fuel a national advertising campaign on behalf of the American Independent Party, Daddy became more than a political party’s standard-bearer—his character and personality became the message itself.
It’s worth noting that while Daddy had not created the American Independent Party, it hadn’t existed in the way it did after he decided to run as an Independent. Previously, the AIP had been on the ballot in a very limited number of states. Daddy and his campaign were able to get it on the ballot in every state in the union—a feat that was to recast American politics in the later part of the twentieth century. He was able to say: “I am running as an independent because there’s not a dime’s bit of difference between the Republican and Democratic parties and neither of them represents the values of the people I represent.” Those people were overwhelmingly comprised of the white working class who felt the rest of the country didn’t give a damn about them. Through Daddy’s efforts, they now had a national party of their own. Their grandchildren would one day be voting for Trump.
Daddy had no illusions he would win the presidency, but through the reach of the AIP he had positioned himself as a power broker and defined an electorate that today holds the levers of power. No one thought he could pull it off. But he did, and it was shocking—much like Trump’s victory in 2016.
Even after a monthlong absence from politics, Daddy’s poll numbers were holding steady. They would climb as white working-class Americans felt cast into bubbling pots of fear and discontent. An incendiary mix of hatred and grief roamed the streets of American cities following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The month of May was the bloodiest month of the Vietnam War: 2,415 American soldiers killed. Antiwar protesters marched on college campuses. On May 12, the first African American demonstrators arrived at the National Mall in Washington to occupy Resurrection City as part of the Poor People’s Campaign led by Rev. Ralph Abernathy.
America the Beautiful was coming apart at the seams. Down-and-out white folks who had worked all their lives, gone to church on Sundays, never asked for a handout, and still took their hats off when the flag went by were furious. Their response to the protests and calls for change? America, love it or leave it. To this constituency Daddy was no longer just another presidential candidate with the right ideas, he was a part of their family: someone who talked the way they talked, looked the way they looked, and thought the way they thought. The very things about Daddy that reporters made fun of and scoffed at endeared him to his supporters. Daddy’s affinity for custom suits, expensive cigars, and manicures were offset by his habit of spitting into a handkerchief, the ever-present cigar in his mouth, and the sheen of his Brylcreemed hair. His countrified, bombastic, and in-your-face manner gave him an authenticity that politicians often lack.
The Stand Up for America campaign moved from town to town like a national county fair with hawkers, barkers, and bevies of Southern belles, personified by one of Alabama’s own traveling music duos, the Mona Lisa Singers.
Mona Taylor and her sister Lisa were daughters of a wealthy but eccentric coal mine operator from northwest Alabama. Several archival films of Wallace rallies catch the two singers belting out catchy tunes as they sway beneath petticoats, beating tambourines on their thighs. I didn’t know it at the time, but Lynda Lee “Lisa” Taylor was head over her high heels for George Wallace. If I had known she would one day become my stepmother, I might have introduced myself!
By the middle of June, Daddy’s populist message was gaining more traction. The anti-Wallace backlash intensified—he was a fascistic redneck racist from a backward state with backward ideas. The Wallace caravan moved from city to city. It had homespun humor and young girls prancing up and down the aisles with plastic donation buckets. It also had Wallace supporters with baseball bats. They were there to quell the rising tide of shouted invective and flying objects that were hurled at the stage. Chair-throwing, fist-fighting, stage-rushing, and arrests had become part of the anti-Wallace campaign culture. When chaos erupted at Wallace rallies, before he was rushed off the stage by his security detail, Daddy would stand behind his lectern and observe the scene with an almost serene expression.
In late June, I began traveling with Daddy’s campaign. For me, it was a reprieve from my overwhelming sadness over Mama’s death. Daddy and I would sit together in the first row of seats on the campaign plane. His white-knuckle fear of flying always kept him buckled up; he would lean back with his braced feet planted halfway up the galley wall in front of us. The campaign crew seldom approached us, and for the most part we sat in silence as he stared out the window. Attempts to reminisce about Mama or talk about the past fell flat. He was lost in his own thoughts.
On July 26, Daddy’s plane departed from Montgomery early in the morning on a flight to Providence, Rhode Island. The aircraft was filled with staff members, reporters, and lots of female Wallace volunteers. A small crowd of respectful anti-Wallace protesters greeted our limousine in the parking lot of the downtown Sheraton hotel. Daddy made it a point to shake hands with each one. The scheduled rally that night was to be held at a Shriners hall on the outskirts of town.
The crowd was large and anxious. Protesters unrolled banners and began to chant as Daddy rose to speak. He taunted them and their rage with impertinent remarks, telling them, “All you hippies and pseudo-intellectuals are going to be through come election day. You use all those nasty four-letter words when you are talking about us. Well, how about these two for you, work and soap.” Pointing to a male protester in the crowd, he would say, “You’re a pretty little thing”—then, after a pause—“Oh, my goodness, you’re a he, not a she.” And the crowds would roar.
Amid shouts of anger and roars of approval, fights broke out from one end of the hall to the other. Several protesters rushed the stage. Incensed women joined in the melee. Daddy’s voice rose above the crowd with more taunts, advising that the next anarchist that lay down in front of his car would find it the last one they ever lay down in front of. Eventually, the police gained the upper hand and the protesters were driven out of the hall.
After the rally, security guards helped me escape from an angry mob congregated behind the stage and outside. I was lifted up and over grabbing hands as obscenities were shouted at me. As I sat shivering in the back of the limousine, I noticed that the dress Mama had given me for my birthday was covered with black spray paint and ink marks. A woman came up to the car and began beating on my window with a leg from a metal folding chair. Then sh
e was gone, fallen back and away into the crowds of fury. I’ve sometimes wondered what she would have done to me if I had rolled down the window.
In late June, I had applied for admission to Mississippi State College for Women. My MSCW application had been submitted well past the application deadline. I worried that my high school grades, high school activities, and tardiness would doom me. But what I did not know was that the MSCW president, William Hogarth, was an avowed segregationist. While many presidents of colleges and universities throughout the South had accepted integration, there weren’t going to be any red carpets, welcoming teas, or happy smiles awaiting African Americans at MSCW as long as Dr. Hogarth was in charge. As the daughter of America’s perhaps most prominent and influential segregationist, my application was quickly approved. At the time, I had no idea why I had been so eagerly admitted.
On campus at Mississippi State College for Women, October 27, 1968.
On the drive to Columbus, I took a detour to Knoxville to see Mamaw and Mr. Henry. Mamaw stepped through the screen door as I rolled to a stop. “I told Henry that I hoped you would stop by on your way to Mississippi,” Mamaw said, hugging me. “I don’t have anything cooked up for you to take along, but come up in the house and I’ll find something to feed you. Tell me how things are back home. Your daddy is gallivantin’, I see. Guess you might be movin’ to the White House. I hope he at least gives you some walkin’-around money to have in your purse for little extras.”
Mamaw’s chatter continued. I sat at the kitchen table and chased half a ham sandwich with a jelly glass of iced tea. Mr. Henry stuck his head in the front door and waved before disappearing around the side of the house. Mamaw and I walked on the rim of our collective sadness. We knew that if we started crying about Mama we wouldn’t be able to stop.
The Broken Road Page 12