Alabama two centuries behind Washington

If you want to understand why an accused sexual predator may become the state’s newest United States senator, blame Alabama.

It’s the place itself: miserable, misbegotten and messianic.

“Life here . . . was full, rich, original and real,” writes Rick Bragg in All Over But the Shoutin’, his lyrical memoir of growing up in Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s, “but harsh, hard and mean as a damn snake.” His was not the genteel Old South of creampillared mansions, black servants, lemonade in cut- crystal glasses. His kin never saw a mint julep; they sipped “likker out of ceramic jugs and Bell jars until they could not remember their Christian names.” Bragg’s wretched world explains the suspicion around the nine women who have accused Roy Moore of unwanted advances, verbal and physical. Some were younger than 16.

Moore’s interest in young girls was once so disturbing, reports say, that he was banned from a local mall. He was in his 30s. Imagine Judge Moore, the original mall rat.

Yet Moore’s past does not faze the Republican Party of Alabama ( even as Republicans in Washington disown him). Kay Ivey, the governor, says she will vote for him, though she has no reason to “disbelieve” his accusers.

Among his loyalists, support is unwavering. The charges are false, they say. It was a long time ago. Wasn’t Joseph twice the age of Mary?

Moore’s loudest disciples, the devout Christians, fill television with twisted rationalizations.

None of this is terribly surprising if you know something about Alabama.

The voices supporting Roy Moore today echo the voices of the slaveowners, the segregationists and the states- rights champions who defended slavery, resisted Reconstruction, disenfranchised African- Americans and spent a century after the Civil War lynching them in the piney woods and bloodred fields.

The white supremacist ruling class avoided integration as long as it could, while railing against the “dictatorial” central government.

Poor, poor Alabama. According to U. S. News and World Report, it is 47th among the 50 states in the quality of its health care and public education. Its economy ranks 45th. It is 42nd in crime and 42nd in the quality of its government.

If misery loves company, Alabama has Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, which rank even lower. All were members of the Confederacy.

When Moore speaks, we hear the rasp of George Wallace standing in the “schoolhouse door” on June 11, 1963. Wallace ignored the courtordered integration of the University of Alabama, the last of the all- white southern institutions.

But Wallace was determined to make a show of denying admission to two black students. He was prepared to humiliate them. Jack and Bobby Kennedy called out the National Guard, faced him down and quietly enrolled the students.

Wallace became a folk hero. He served four terms as governor and ran four times for president. Late in life he apologized for his racism, and the students forgave him. Today, streets and schools bear his name in Alabama, but he is marooned forever on the wrong bank of history.

Moore is not apologizing for anything. His opponent in the Senate special election, Doug Jones, represents a rejection of the Alabama of the 1960s.

Jones prosecuted the killers of the four girls who died in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963.

To see the other Alabama, visit that church on a Sunday. Let the Gospel music wash over you. Feel the congregation’s warm embrace and cherish a moment of grace.

On Dec. 12, when Alabama chooses Roy Moore or Doug Jones, we will know which Alabama rules.

— Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author.