Kennedy H. Mark - The broken road: George Wallace and a daughters journey to reconciliation

For my sons, Leigh and Burns.

I love you for the sons you are and the men you have become.

On those cracks and upheaved parts of the broken road where we sometimes found ourselves living on,

you never left me standing there, all alone.

Mom, over here, this way, there is a meadow of flowers just over the hill.

Now, you hold our hands until we get there.

Dont you worry, if the dark of night falls round us,

we have a lantern to light the pathway home.

For my daughters-in-law, Stephanie and Hannah, amazing and beautiful in their hearts.

You lift me up because you believe in me.

You inspire me with every sunrise.

And for that and for so much more,

I give you my love and heartfelt gratitude.

For my granddaughter, Maggie Rose.

A sometimes prickly but otherwise beautiful flower, you bring me joy.

Your life of uncomplicated living challenges me to wonder.

When I am with you, nothing seems to be impossible.

You make me smile within this grandmothers heart of mine when I hear

I love you, Grandma Peggy.

For my husband, Mark.

Who oft reminds me,

What is a storm without thunder and lightning?

Rainbows following rain.

No climbing without holding on.

Without sunsets, no sunrises.

Without valleys, no mountains to climb.

No mending of hearts unless they are broken.

Love is different in times of our lives

and life can complicate things

but love, my dear, endures.

CONTENTS

Anyone trying to make sense of our current divided America should read The Broken Road , Peggy Wallace Kennedys wonderfully written memoir about the most famous political family in Alabama history. All the elements of white working-class rage that surged to the surface of American politics in 2016working-class fury at social and education elites that they felt were demeaning them and their culture; economic and technological changes that overwhelmed them; immigrants whom they saw as competing for their low-wage jobs; religious do-gooders who seemed to emphasize justice for the poor while ignoring the old-time working-class gospels of hard work and family valueshad emerged half a century earlier in Governor George C. Wallaces politics of rage. As fate would have it, it may have been Arthur Bremers failed 1972 assassination attempt, which left Wallace a paraplegic, that spared the nation a racist Democratic president whose campaigns first cultivated the rich nativist soil of Stand Up for America and Make America Great Again.

Although historians and biographers have carefully narrated George Wallaces political career, they have not penetrated the inner sanctum of his closely guarded and dysfunctional family. In this deeply moving memoir, Peggy Wallace Kennedy depicts her mother, Lurleen Wallace, as a grand and noble figure, and her father as essentially an insecure, brilliant demagogue consumed by ambition. Always solicitous of white evangelicals and foregoing alcohol in public, they hid their hard liquor in the Governors Mansion. While portraying himself as an example of traditional family values, George Wallace and his retinue of handlers carefully shielded from the public his neglect of family and legendary womanizing. And their children became casualties of parental ambition.

The Irish writer Oscar Wilde once wrote that children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. Readers of this memoir are fortunate that Peggy Wallace completed that entire life cyclefrom childhood innocence to adult revulsion, to forgiveness, reconciliation, and finally to personal wholeness. The result may well be the most emotionally searing portrait ever written of an opportunistic American political demagogue, his threat to American values, and the tortured legacy he bequeathed his state, nation, and family. Among the readers, one might hope, would be the children and grandchildren of President Donald Trump, for one can easily imagine some distant Trump descendent wrestling with his legacy, and then going on to pen a similar exorcism of family demons.

Dr. Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Auburn University

In the South, we knew our adversary would stop at nothing to silence our activism. We knew we could never match his readiness to annihilate our resistance. So, we ceded to him that ground and challenged him instead to defend himself against the work of loving peace.

John Lewis

It was a sun-filled and breezy early spring day in Selma, Alabama, home to one of the most significant events of the civil rights era. Congressman John Lewis held my hand as we walked toward the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where in 1965 sheriffs deputies and Alabama State troopers had attacked the vanguard of approximately five hundred to six hundred people as they began a march for voting rights. The tempo of beating drums and our voices singing We Shall Overcome rode over and above the sound of our footsteps. John seemed oblivious to the disapproving eyes of some of those people who recognized me not for who I was but for what my father, George Wallace, had done in 1965 when he was governor of Alabama.

I had been asked to speak at the forty-fourth annual bridge crossing ceremony, commemorating what had come to be known as Bloody Sunday. After Bloody Sunday, the marchers had tried two more times to cross the bridge. It was only after President Lyndon B. Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect them that they succeeded. They walked for three days and then rallied at the capitol, which led to the passage of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965.

My daddy had been a key playeron the wrong sideof this inspiring and heart-wrenching history. He publicly maintained that he had given an order to stop the marchers but not to harm them. He claimed that his deputy, Al Lingo, disobeyed. Even if this was true, though, he should have, at the very least, protected the marchers and their right to march. It would have been easy enough for him to issue an order to stop Lingo. Daddys public denials that he had any part in what took place that day were like Pontius Pilate washing his hands.

I knew that I had to come to Selma following the inauguration of President Obama in January 2009. It wasnt easy for me. I had risked the disapproval of friends and family with my open support for Obamas candidacy, and I wondered if I dared to come before those who had suffered at the hands of my father in the 1960s and speak. It was a test of my courage. Would I be able to stand up and introduce Americas first African American attorney general, Eric Holder? Holders wife, Sharon, was the sister of Vivian Malone, who had met my father for the first time during another key event in the struggle for civil rights. Daddy had made his stand in the schoolhouse door, as it came to be known, in June 1963, blocking Vivians admission to the University of Alabama, which he had refused to desegregate. He infamously proclaimed: Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

My husband, Mark, and I parked a few blocks from the church where I was slated to introduce Holder. Few recognized me as we walked through the streets, which were busy with people coming to commemorate the day, but as we approached the churchs front doors, it became apparent word was spreading that George Wallaces daughter was going to be on the program.