‘George Wallace in Wisconsin’ explores politician’s divisive campaigning
If you’ve groaned or nodded at someone calling politically turbulent Wisconsin “the Alabama of the North,” Ben Hubing has a book for you.
“George Wallace in Wisconsin: The Divisive Campaigns That Shaped a Civil Rights Legacy,” published by The History Press, takes a detailed look at the late Alabama governor’s politicking here in 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976 in his quest for the presidency.
Many political and cultural conflicts depicted in Hubing’s book will feel familiar to people today. There’s even a national anthem controversy.
While Hubing generally leaves it to readers to draw their own parallels between the 1960s/’70s and now, his book’s coda makes this declaration: “As we enter a twenty-first century that pits ‘Making America Great Again’ against the notion that ‘Black Lives Matter,’ it is evident that these divisions continue to grow deeper in the state.”
Hubing will speak about Wallace in Wisconsin and his book during a June 21 launch event at Milwaukee’s Boswell Books.
‘States’ rights’ and Black response
Hubing, a local history teacher, conceived this project during his graduate studies in history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. While reading James N. Gregory’s “The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migration of Black and White Southerners Transformed America,” Hubing learned about a Wallace rally at Serb Hall packed full of white, working-class supporters. That led him to study how a leading Southern segregationist found substantial support in this Northern state.
He examined coverage of Wallace in Wisconsin by nearly three dozen newspapers and news services, including The Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel, as well as the Appleton Post-Crescent, Fond du Lac Reporter, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Manitowoc Herald-Times, Oshkosh Northwestern, Sheboygan Press and Wausau Daily Herald. That includes their letters-to-the-editor pages, the source of many lively, sometimes vitriolic comments in his account.
Hubing also pays close attention to the Black response to Wallace, both in print and on the street. In particular, he draws in detail from coverage by the Milwaukee Star, a Black newspaper, including its editorial cartoons.
He puts Wallace’s activities in Wisconsin into the context of civil rights actions of that time, including Milwaukee Public Schools integration and the open housing marches.
In 1964, when Wallace first ran for president, he already was a national figure for his opposition to civil rights, encapsulated in his gubernatorial inaugural address as “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and for his opposition to integrating the University of Alabama, which he enacted symbolically by standing in the doorway as federal authorities tried to help two Black students register.
Opposed to the pending Civil Rights Act, Wallace entered the 1964 Wisconsin presidential primary.
“Wallace employed powerful rhetoric that utilized federalism in opposition to the national bill,” Hubing writes. “His candidacy skirted around obvert racism, focusing on a vague concept of states’ rights, which many saw as disingenuous dog whistling.”
In the 1964 Wisconsin primary, Wallace ran against Gov. John W. Reynolds, a “favorite son” or placeholder candidate for President Lyndon B. Johnson. In the final days of the that campaign, both Wallace’s supporters and opponents converged on Serb Hall for a raucous event. Two Black protesters refused to stand for the national anthem, triggering a shouting match (and prefiguring similar protests today).
The Wallace campaign tried to enlist the support of Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr, a fellow Alabaman, but that backfired when the campaign leaked a telegram without Starr’s permission, angering the player.
In that era of direct action by civil rights supporters, Wallace’s appearances were regularly protested and picketed by Black and white activists. A silent-treatment protest at St. Norbert College caused a rare instance of Wallace becoming unnerved at a public event, Hubing reports. The Milwaukee Star and other Black media covered and criticized the Wallace campaign, but it also promoted getting out the Black vote and supporting preferred candidates.
Wallace received 34% of the Democratic primary vote in 1964 (25% of the total primary vote, when the Republican total was included); Wallace declared it a win “without winning.” Hubing sifts through the reasons suggested for Wallace’s strong showing here, including a purported white ethnic backlash to liberal initiatives, and Reynolds’ unpopularity.
Met with Arthur Bremer masks
Wallace’s best showings in Wisconsin primaries, in 1964 and 1972, likely benefited from the state’s open primary system (and a lack of excitement in the Republican primaries those years), Hubing noted. Voters who might consider themselves Republicans could have crossed over to vote for Wallace either to cause mischief or because they supported his views.
In 1968, Wallace ran as a third-party candidate, garnering 13.5% of the votes and 46 electoral votes nationally, but only 7.6% of the vote in Wisconsin.
In 1972, running as a Democrat again in the Wisconsin primary, he finished second with 22% in a crowded field, though he earned no delegates here, thanks to complicated rules apportioning them. He would go on to win the Michigan and Maryland primaries that year.
However, Wallace was shot by Milwaukee native Arthur Bremer on March 15, 1972, in Maryland, leaving him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and functionally ending his presidential campaign.
He ran again in 1976, but his underpowered, underfinanced campaign made little impact here. In a macabre incident, about 10 student activists opposing Wallace showed up to a Madison campaign event wearing Bremer masks and pushing around wheelchairs. With 13% of the primary vote, Wallace finished third behind eventual nominee Jimmy Carter.
Over time, Wallace stressed opposition to “big” government and federal intervention in his Wisconsin campaign appearances.
“He spent the final years of his public life renouncing his segregationist stances, asking forgiveness of Black leaders, and even appointed African Americans to his cabinet and state positions,” Hubing notes.
Still, the historian reminds us, Wallace established a divisive playbook here that later politicians would emulate.