The New Yorker: Why Roy Moore’s Law-School Professor Nicknamed Him Fruit Salad

George Thomas Wilson, a retired magazine-marketing and P.R. professional now living in New York City, has never forgotten his first criminal-law class, at the University of Alabama School of Law, in 1974. It was taught by Clint McGee, who graduated from the law school himself, in 1940. Early in the class, McGee called on one of Wilson’s classmates, a United States Military Academy graduate named Roy Moore. “And, for the entire hour, McGee kept him standing and talking, standing and talking,” Wilson told me recently. “Finally, at the end of the hour, McGee said to him, ‘Mr. Moore, I have been teaching in this school for thirty years, and in all of that time you’re the most mixed-up person I’ve ever taught. I’m going to call you Fruit Salad.”
John D. Saxon, a civil-rights attorney practicing in Birmingham, also took McGee’s class. He confirmed Wilson’s account. “We’re all sitting there just kind of praying. ‘Dear Lord, glad this isn’t me, please help old Roy out.’ But he was totally, hopelessly confused.” Two days later, Saxon said, McGee called on Moore again. “He says, ‘Fruit Salad, take this case.’ ” Roy was puzzled, Saxon said, and McGee repeated himself. “He says, ‘Professor McGee, it’s me, Mr. Moore.’ At which point McGee gets him in front of the room, takes Moore’s hand, and starts turning him in circles. He says, ‘Mr. Moore, you’re all mixed up, like a fruit salad.’ He proceeded to call him Fruit Salad for the rest of law school.” Saxon added, “Years later, I’m watching the ten-o’clock news with my wife and there’s this circuit judge up in Etowah County with this little plaque with the Ten Commandments on the wall behind him, and I said to her, ‘Look, there’s Fruit Salad.’ “