Reading the American Past: Printed Page 259
DOCUMENT 28–3
George C. Wallace Denounces the Civil Rights Movement
Alabama governor George C. Wallace declared in his 1963 inaugural address, “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and he won a large regional and national following for his hard-line opposition to racial change. He entered Democratic presidential primaries in 1964 and ran as the presidential nominee of the American Independent Party in 1968. In a 1964 speech in Atlanta about civil rights, Wallace outlined arguments that appealed to many people who opposed the changes under way in American society during the 1960s.
The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham, and Hoax, July 4, 1964
We come here today in deference to the memory of those stalwart patriots who on July 4, 1776, pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to establish and defend the proposition that governments are created by the people, empowered by the people, derive their just powers from the consent of the people, and must forever remain subservient to the will of the people. ...
It is therefore a cruel irony that the President of the United States has only yesterday signed into law the most monstrous piece of legislation [the 1964 Civil Rights Act] ever enacted by the United States Congress.
It is a fraud, a sham, and a hoax.
This bill will live in infamy. To sign it into law at any time is tragic. To do so upon the eve of the celebration of our independence insults the intelligence of the American people.
It dishonors the memory of countless thousands of our dead who offered up their very lives in defense of principles which this bill destroys.
Never before in the history of this nation have so many human and property rights been destroyed by a single enactment of the Congress. It is an act of tyranny. It is the assassin's knife stuck in the back of liberty.
With this assassin's knife and a blackjack in the hand of the Federal force-cult, the left-wing liberals will try to force us back into bondage. Bondage to a tyranny more brutal than that imposed by the British monarchy which claimed power to rule over the lives of our forefathers under sanction of the Divine Right of kings.
Today, this tyranny is imposed by the central government which claims the right to rule over our lives under sanction of the omnipotent black-robed despots who sit on the bench of the United States Supreme Court.
This bill is fraudulent in intent, in design, and in execution. It is misnamed. ...
To illustrate the fraud — it is not a Civil Rights Bill. It is a Federal Penal Code. It creates Federal crimes which would take volumes to list and years to tabulate because it affects the lives of 192 million American citizens. Every person in every walk and station of life and every aspect of our daily lives becomes subject to the criminal provisions of this bill.
It threatens our freedom of speech, of assembly, or association, and makes the exercise of these Freedoms a [F]ederal crime under certain conditions.
It affects our political rights, our right to trial by jury, our right to the full use and enjoyment of our private property, the freedom from search and seizure of our private property and possessions, the freedom from harassment by Federal police and, in short, all the rights of individuals inherent in a society of free men.
Ministers, lawyers, teachers, newspapers, and every private citizen must guard his speech and watch his actions to avoid the deliberately imposed booby traps put into this bill. It is designed to make Federal crimes of our customs, beliefs, and traditions. Therefore, under the fantastic powers of the Federal judiciary to punish for contempt of court and under their fantastic powers to regulate our most intimate aspects of our lives by injunction, every American citizen is in jeopardy and must stand guard against these despots. ...
Yet a Federal judge may still try one without a jury under the provisions of this bill. It was the same persons who said it was a good bill before the amendment pretending to forbid busing of pupils from neighborhood schools. Yet a Federal judge may still order busing from one neighborhood school to another. They have done it, they will continue to do it. ...
It was left-wing radicals who led the fight in the Senate for the so-called civil rights bill now about to enslave our nation. ...
I am not about to be a party to anything having to do with the law that is going to destroy individual freedom and liberty in this country.
I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy our free enterprise system.
I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy neighborhood schools.
I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that will destroy the rights of private property.
I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that destroys your right — and my right — to choose my neighbors — or to sell my house to whomever I choose.
I am having nothing to do with enforcing a law that destroys the labor seniority system.
I am having nothing to do with this so-called civil rights bill. ...
It would have been impossible for the American people to have been deceived by the sponsors of this bill had there been a responsible American press to tell the people exactly what the bill contained. If they had had the integrity and the guts to tell the truth, this bill would never have been enacted. ...
We couldn't get the truth to the American people. You and I know that that's extremely difficult to do where our newspapers are owned by out-of-state interests. Newspapers which are run and operated by left-wing liberals, Communist sympathizers, and members of the Americans for Democratic Action and other Communist front organizations with high sounding names.
However, we will not be intimidated by the vultures of the liberal left-wing press. We will not be deceived by their lies and distortions of truth. We will not be swayed by their brutal attacks upon the character and reputation of any honest citizen who dares stand up and fight for liberty. ...
Nor would we have had a bill had it not been for the United States Supreme Court. ...
Now on the subject of the court let me make it clear that I am not attacking any member of the United States Supreme Court as an individual. However, I do attack their decisions, I question their intelligence, their common sense and their judgment, I consider the Federal Judiciary system to be the greatest single threat to individual freedom and liberty in the United States today, and I'm going to take off the gloves in talking about these people.
There is only one word to describe the Federal judiciary today. That word is “lousy.”
They assert more power than claimed by King George III, more power than Hitler, Mussolini, or Khrushchev ever had. They assert the power to declare unconstitutional our very thoughts. To create for us a system of moral and ethical values. To outlaw and declare unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral the customs, traditions, and beliefs of the people, and furthermore they assert the authority to enforce their decrees in all these subjects upon the American people without their consent. ...
The court today, just as in 1776, is deaf to the voices of the people and their repeated entreaties: they have become arrogant, contemptuous, highhanded, and literal despots. ...
Today, 188 years later, we have actually witnessed the invasion of the State[s] of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama by the armed forces of the United States and maintained in the state against the will of the people and without consent of state legislatures.
It is a form of tyranny worse than that of King George III who had sent mercenaries against the colonies because today the Federal Judicial tyrants have sanctioned the use of brother against brother and father against son by federalizing the National Guard. ...
Today, we have absolute proof that the Federal Department of Justice has planned, supervised, financed and protected acts of insurrection in the southern states, resulting in vandalism, property damage, personal injury, and staggering expense to the states. ...
Today, the Federal judiciary asserts the power not only to dissolve state legislatures but to create them and to dissolve all state laws and state judicial decrees, and to punish a state governor by trial without jury. ...
The United States Supreme Court is guilty of each and every one of these acts of tyranny. ...
It is perfectly obvious from the left-wing liberal press and from the left-wing law journals that what the court is saying behind all the jargon is that they don't like our form of government.
They think they can establish a better one. In order to do so it is necessary that they overthrow our existing form, destroy the democratic institutions created by the people, change the outlook, religion, and philosophy, and bring the whole area of human thought, aspiration, action and organization, under the absolute control of the court. Their decisions reveal this to be the goal of the liberal element on the court which is in a majority at present.
It has reached the point where one may no longer look to judicial decisions to determine what the court may do. However, it is possible to predict with accuracy the nature of the opinions to be rendered. One may find the answer in the Communist Manifesto.
The Communists are dedicated to the overthrow of our form of government. They are dedicated to the destruction of the concept of private property. They are dedicated to the object of destroying religion as the basis of moral and ethical values.
The Communists are determined that all natural resources shall be controlled by the central government, that all productive capacity of the nation shall be under the control of the central government, that the political sovereignty of the people shall be destroyed as an incident to control of local schools. It is their objective to capture the minds of our youth in order to indoctrinate them in what to think and not how to think.
I do not call the members of the United States Supreme Court Communists. But I do say, and I submit for your judgment the fact that every single decision of the court in the past ten years which related in any way to each of these objectives has been decided against freedom and in favor of tyranny. ...
The record reveals, for the past number of years, that the chief, if not the only beneficiaries of the present court's rulings, have been duly and lawfully convicted criminals, Communists, atheists, and clients of vociferous left-wing minority groups. ...
Let us look at the record further with respect to the court's contribution to the destruction of the concept of God and the abolition of religion.
The Federal court rules that your children shall not be permitted to read the bible in our public school systems.
Let me tell you this, though. We still read the bible in Alabama schools and as long as I am governor we will continue to read the bible no matter what the Supreme Court says. ...
So, let me say to you today. Take heart. Millions of Americans believe just as we in this great region of the United States believe.
I shall never forget last spring as I stood in the midst of a great throng of South Milwaukee supporters at one of the greatest political rallies I have ever witnessed.
A fine-looking man grabbed my hand and said:
“Governor, I've never been south of South Milwaukee, but I am a Southerner!” Of course, he was saying he believed in the principles and philosophy of the southern people ... of you here today and the people of my state of Alabama.
He was right.
Being a southerner is no longer geographic. It's a philosophy and an attitude.
One destined to be a national philosophy — embraced by millions of Americans — which shall assume the mantle of leadership and steady a governmental structure in these days of crises.
Certainly I am a candidate for President of the United States.
If the left-wingers do not think I am serious — let them consider this.
I am going to take our fight to the people — the court of public opinion — where truth and common sense will eventually prevail.
From George C. Wallace, “The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham, and Hoax,” Speech in Atlanta, July 4, 1964.
Questions for Reading and Discussion