re: #238 Decatur Deb

The local legend is that Wallace was faking much of his racism for crass political advantage. He created the Alabama Community College system, now named for him. It has done more than anything to pull Alabama blacks out of the muck. (Famously, it is a college system that operated school buses to get kids out of the neighborhoods to class.)

I’ve heard about how he “Didn’t want to get out Ni*CLANG*’ed again” and Wiki says that he was apparently polite to blacks in his court (although I am always wary about personal gentility among southerners being indicative of anything except, perversely, a recognition of the wrongness of their public acts, with the gentility often contemporaneous to these acts.)

And, of course, his later apology to civil rights leaders could be seen as political.

But, better angels and all that.