Report from Kenya #619 -- The Redemption of George Wallace
David Zarembka
__________________________________________________
The Redemption of George Wallace
Report from Kenya #619 – September 4, 2020
On June 11, 1963 Governor George Wallace blocked the court-ordered admission of the first two black students to enroll in the University of Alabama. He then gave a fifteen minute speech that segregation was the way of life in Alabama. When the US marshals confronted him the second time, he backed down and the students peacefully entered the university. Nonetheless George Wallace made the point that he was a staunch segregationist.
Rwandan genocide perpetrator: I have known the Pastor since childhood and he is a neighbor… In my area there were 28 people which I helped to kill. I did not kill anyone myself, but brought people to a place where others killed them, and among those were the Pastor’s mother and two of his children.
Congolese refugee in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya: I was brought up in Uvira [South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo]. My parents were killed when I was 19 years old. I was forced to go to Fizi where my uncles lived. While I was there war broke out again between the outlawed Banyamulenge group and the Congolese government. One night we were attacked and I was taken hostage with my eight uncles and we were taken to the forest where we stayed for seven weeks.
I was trained and lured into the militia group. I don’t know how many people I killed. The most horrifying thing is that one Sunday we took my eight uncles back to the village and together we were forced to dig a ten foot trench. After finishing it I was given ropes and told to tie up each of my uncles. Then I helped to throw them in the trench and we buried them alive.
These quotes are from testimonies from our Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) workshops. There are many other examples where people confessed to killing, helping to kill, or performing other atrocities. It has always amazed me that these people were willing to talk about what they did in a group of twenty or so people, including in some instances, survivors from the atrocities they had committed. One of the principles of the HROC program is that those who have committed violence against other people are traumatized by what they did. If a peaceful, healed community is envisioned, then these perpetrators must also confront and heal from their trauma.
There seems to be something in American culture where people are unwilling to publicly acknowledge any wrongs they have done. In this blog, we are discussing public figures. Take, for example, the case of Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. In his 1995 memoir McNamara admitted that his role in shaping the war was “wrong, terribly wrong.” Yet he did not make any apology and amends for the millions of Vietnamese killed in the war, the destruction of that country, nor the 58,000 American soldiers killed in the fighting.
George Wallace was four times governor of Alabama. In his first election in 1962, his slogan was “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” He secured sufficient votes from the almost completely white electorate for him to win that election. Only a few months after he was inaugurated as governor, he opposed the admittance of the first two black students to the University of Alabama (see photo at beginning of article). He used his segregation, state’s rights stance to become a major factor in presidential elections. In 1968 as an independent candidate for president, he won 13.5% of the presidential vote, carried five southern states, and won 46 electoral votes.
Yet when he was elected for his fourth term in 1982, he received 90% of the by then more substantial black vote. What happened?
In 1972, Wallace ran for president in the Democrat party primaries. His policies were opposition to busing to desegregate schools, state’s rights, tough on crime, and anti-communism (calling Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists “communists”) . In much of this he was a precursor to Donald Trump in 2016. He did well. He placed first in the Florida (winning 42% of the vote), and won the North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, and Michigan primaries. But on May 15, 1972, Wallace was shot five times by 21 year old Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland. Bremer was determined to kill either President Nixon or Governor Wallace. When he failed to get close enough to Nixon to shoot him, he settled on shooting Wallace.
George Wallace was paralyzed from the waist down, confined to wheel chair, and in constant pain for the rest of his life. His 1972 presidential campaign was finished.
By 1975 Wallace began to reassess his life. He met with Rosa Parks who has initiated the Montgomery bus boycott and with John Lewis who was savagely beaten while leading a demonstration at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama (this occurred while Wallace was governor), and began appointing blacks to government positions.
But his most spectacular act of forgiveness occurred on a Sunday in 1979. He had been governor when the 16th Street Baptist Church had been bombed and four little girls were killed; with his militant segregation rhetoric he had been accused of promoting that violence. Unannounced and therefore with no media presence, Wallace was wheeled into Martin Luther King, Jr.’s former church, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. When he was given a chance to speak, he said,
I have learned what suffering means in a way that was impossible before I was shot. I think I can understand something of the pain that black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I only ask for your forgiveness.
The congregation was stunned into silence, but then sang Amazing Grace. The parishioners, one at a time, smiling went up to Wallace in his wheel chair and shook his hand. This is the redemption of George Wallace.
From newspaper reports I remember Wallace’s change of heart in the 1970s. Yet it was never given much publicity and his reputation is still based on his early segregation stance. To me, though, his willingness to change, to publicly admit he was wrong, to ask for forgiveness, and to give restitution as much as he was able (such as appointing blacks to Alabama state government positions) is what is most significant about his life story.
Do you expect Donald
Trump to change and ask forgiveness for his racism? Do you expect Dick Chaney
and George W. Bush to admit and apologize that their “war on terror” only
increased suffering in the world? Do you expect Barack Obama to apologize for
drone attacks that killed people including American citizens? That is why I
think what George Wallace did is so remarkable. In these tough times in the
United States his example is something we ought to keep in mind.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy, daughter of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who has dedication her life to racial reconciliation, apologizing to the late Congressman John Lewis for the racist actions of her father in 1965. (Photo by Alex Hetherington)
__________________________________________________
To be added to or removed from this listserve, please send your name and email address to davidz...@gmail.com.
__________________________________________________
DONATE
To make a tax deductible (US) or gift aid eligible (UK) donation through GlobalGiving,
For Transforming Community for Social Change (TCSC), click on goto.gg/31755
To donate to TCSC by M-pesa go to Pay Bill: 891300, Account: GG31755
For the Friends Women’s Association (FWA), click on goto.gg/31891
To support Helping Girls and Young Women in Bujumbura Slum, click on goto.gg/38276.
To support Building FWA’s Maternity Ward, click on goto.gg/32980
For Innovations in Peacemaking – Burundi (IPB), click on goto.gg/33287
For HROC Center in Rwanda, click on goto.gg/44648.
__________________________________________________
David Zarembka
Phone 254 (0)726 590 783
Reports from Kenya: www.davidzarembka.com/
Email: davidz...@gmail.com
__________________________________________________