Playboy Interview: Governor George Wallace

a candid conversation with alabama's demagogic segregationist

On June 11, 1963, millions watched on television as George Corley Wallace, the pugnacious governor of Alabama, stationed himself in the doorway of the registrar's office at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, to block the entrance of Negroes Vivian Malone and James Hood, whom the Federal courts had ordered enrolled at the school. But the gamecock governor, who had vowed to oppose integration by going to jail if need be, obediently stepped aside and allowed the pair to pass when ordered to do so by the commanding general of his own Alabama National Guard, which had been Federalized by President Kennedy to enforce the court order. Surrender or not, with this empty but melodramatic gesture of defiance, George Wallace had replaced Governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas and Ross Barnett of Mississippi as the South's most intransigent elected exponent of racial segregation.

Last spring, the ambitious Alabaman announced his intention to enter the Democratic primaries as a "conservative" candidate for the Presidency—with the purpose of proving his contention that Southern antagonism to the Negro civil rights movement is shared by Northern whites. Hitting the campaign trail in Wisconsin, he was greeted by large and noisy crowds—both pro and con—but with unanimous hostility by party regulars and Wisconsin's press. Milwaukee's Catholic Herald Citizen declared that "moral evil is invading Wisconsin." Protestant ministers gave him harsh treatment at a question-and-answer session in Oshkosh. College students jeered him during a speech at Wisconsin State University. But on April 7, to everyone's surprise but his own, Wallace walked off with a whopping 34 percent of the Democratic vote.

Proclaiming a "moral victory," he went on to campaign in Indiana, where he proceeded to rack up an equally unsettling 30 percent of the vote. Supremely self-confident now, he intensified his demagogic appeals to bigotry, and two weeks later alarmed moderates of both parties by polling nearly 43 percent of the vote in Maryland's primary. He would have won, said political analysts, except for heavy voting in Baltimore's predominantly Negro and Jewish districts.

The governor returned to a hero's welcome in Alabama, having demonstrated that the ugly racist attitudes once assumed to be a Southern near-monopoly were actually a nationwide phenomenon. The term "backlash" was coined to describe this unspoken tide of white resentment of Negro gains and aims. Wallace's subsequent decision to run for President in at least 16 states was followed in July by his sudden withdrawal from the race—immediately after the Republican Party, at its virtually lily-white convention in San Francisco, drafted a feeble civil rights plank and nominated Goldwater as its standard-bearer. Amidst indignantly denied rumors of a "deal" with the Goldwater forces—which stood to become the benefactors of his backlash vote—Wallace bolted the Democratic convention and intimated that he might throw his support to the Arizonan, and possibly even organize a "conservative" third party (headed, presumably, by himself) in time for the 1968 election.

In the interest of clarifying his racist convictions—which promise to have a significant bearing on the outcome and aftermath of this month's election— Playboy sent a correspondent to Montgomery, first capital of the Confederacy and present capital of Alabama, with our request for an 11th-hour interview—just before this issue went to press—with the arch-segregationist governor.

He consented to talk with us over a late dinner in a small Greek restaurant not far from his Statehouse office. Though the fatigue of long hours had deepened the lines and shadows of his saturnine face, the 45-year-old governor still cut a fastidious figure in his dapper gabardine suit and tie, and he walked with us to the restaurant—hailing cronies and glad-handing passers-by—with the springy stride of a bantam-weight boxer (which he was: Golden Gloves state champion in 1936 and 1937).

No friend of the press—which he has branded "lying," "distorted" and "communistic"—he asked us if his grammatical errors would be printed verbatim in order to embarrass him. He need not have been concerned, for though he lapses into a corn-pone dialect with his "down-home" constituency, his conversation with our reporter was above grammatical reproach and virtually without accent. As will be seen, we refrained from turning an interview into a debate, by allowing certain statements of "fact" to go unchallenged, in the belief that wallace's own words would be of greater interest to an enlightened readership than would reiterated issue-taking with such debatable statements as his assertion that white Alabamans have always been peace-loving friends of the state's Negroes. (Since the first official keeping of records in 1882, Alabama has been the scene of 299 Negro lynchings.)

We began by asking him to indulge in a bit of election-eve prognostication.

[Q] Playboy: As of this moment, would you care to predict who will win the election?

[A] Wallace: No. Is that a clear enough answer? I honestly cannot give you a firmer one at this point.

[Q] Playboy: As we go to press, the latest nationwide Gallup Poll gives President Johnson more than a two-to-one edge over Senator Goldwater. Even if this margin is reduced between now and election day, wouldn't these figures seem to indicate a decisive Democratic victory?

[A] Wallace: It is in the voter's booth that the election will be decided, not in the polls. Some of these surveys have been accurate, but just as many have proved notoriously unreliable.

[Q] Playboy: What do you feel will be the effect of your own withdrawal from the race on the outcome of the election?

[A] Wallace: Let me put it this way: If I had remained in the race, I would have drawn more votes from Senator Goldwater's supporters than from President Johnson's.

[Q] Playboy: Are you among those Southerners who view the President's espousal of the civil rights cause as a "betrayal of his heritage"?

[A] Wallace: The President has changed his attitude 180 degrees. He was vigorously opposed to the Civil Rights Bill and said about it the identical things that I have said—until he got to be President. Then he had a sudden change of attitude. I don't want to impugn his motives. If he truly had a change of heart and is sincerely convinced of what he now says, I'll have to take his word for it. But my own convictions are the same as they always have been and always will be.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that the "backlash" vote is going to have a significant impact on the election?

[A] Wallace: Certainly. Millions of people hate this Civil Rights Act, and they are angry enough to vote against those who passed it. The primary votes I received in Wisconsin, Indiana and Maryland startled the leaders of both parties and scared plenty of them, for that tremendous vote which I rolled up was just from Democrats; no Republicans were permitted to express their feelings. Also it was the Democratic regulars who counted the ballots. I do not know how many more votes I would have polled if I had helped count them. All the left-wing liberal press told distorted stories of what I stood for, how mean and evil I was. Well, I offered to debate the two governors and the Senator who ran against me. If I were as evil as they say I am in the left-wing press, and if the Civil Rights Act is as good as they say it is, one debate on state-wide television should have convinced the people I did not deserve their support. But my opponents never dared confront me because, frankly, they never read the bill. It was just presented as promoting civil rights and therefore inviolate.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that Goldwater's vote against the bill will be a deciding factor in the Southern vote?

[A] Wallace: Any vote on so controversial an issue as the Civil Rights Bill is bound to play a profound role in the election. Naturally, since most of us Southerners opposed the bill, his vote against it will cause him to be looked upon with some favor.

[Q] Playboy: If Goldwater is elected, do you think he will enforce the Civil Rights Act less energetically than President Johnson?

[A] Wallace: No, I don't. Any President must and will do his duty to enforce the law. Senator Goldwater would have no more choice than President Johnson.

[Q] Playboy: Apart from civil rights, do you think he would make a better President than Johnson?

[A] Wallace: No comment.

[Q] Playboy: Has Johnson, in your estimation, proved to be a better President than John Kennedy?

[A] Wallace: That is a hard question. But I think I understand the import of it—and your reason for asking. Let me say simply that one of the most tragic days in American history was the day of President Kennedy's assassination.

[Q] Playboy: Is that your answer?

[A] Wallace: All the answer I intend to give.

[Q] Playboy: All right. Another Kennedy, the late President's brother Robert, has made himself the enemy of Southern segregationists with his firm enforcement of civil rights legislation. Do you welcome his resignation from his office to run for the Senate?

[A] Wallace: I have never had anything but the highest regard for the Kennedys. You will never get me to say anything unkind about any member of the Kennedy family. I don't agree with the Kennedys politically, but there is nothing personal about this.

[Q] Playboy: To return to the election: In the South, most observers concede Alabama, Mississippi and probably Arkansas to Goldwater. Would you agree with that prognostication?

[A] Wallace: What all candidates and all political parties must start to learn is that no state can be taken for granted anymore. Too long have our national political figures taken the South for granted. Those days are over, as they will shortly learn.

[Q] Playboy: The South has traditionally voted Democratic; are you now predicting a Republican sweep of the Southern states?

[A] Wallace: I repeat: The South is tired of being taken for granted. Southern voters are going to make up their minds about their votes according to what the candidates and parties offer them.

[Q] Playboy: Have you made up your own mind yet?

[A] Wallace: Not yet. I must wait to see how the campaign develops and how the candidates present themselves.

[Q] Playboy: Are you leaning toward either man at this point?

[A] Wallace: Well, let me say this. Neither party can take us for granted any longer.

[Q] Playboy: Can you be more specific?

[A] Wallace: Originally a liberal was a believer in freedom. But the name has been taken over by those who believe in economic and social planning by the Federal Government to interfere in everybody's private business. The liberalism of today shows a loss of faith in the individual. Conservatives still believe in the individual, in private enterprise. Conservatives are not hostile to progress, however. Education, help for the aged and unfortunate, road building, that kind of aid to the people is a legitimate function of government. But just because I believe Alabama should do good things for her people, that the state should protect the people's welfare, does not mean I believe the Government has the right to tell a businessman whom he can hire and whom he cannot hire, a café or restaurant or motel owner whom he can serve and whom he cannot, a homeowner whom he must and must not sell his house to. A conservative tries to preserve freedom for business and labor. If a businessman wants to run a segregated business, that's his affair.

[Q] Playboy: Most rationales for segregation are predicated on the belief that Negroes are mentally and morally inferior to whites. Do you take this view?

[A] Wallace: I am not an anthropologist, or a zoologist, or a biologist, or a psychologist, or any other kind of -ologist, so I am not qualified to decide whether anybody is inferior. In my whole life I have never made a public utterance that any person was inferior because of his race. We have always had segregation in Alabama, not on the basis of the inferiority of the Negro, but because it has been proved the sane, sensible, common-sense way to maintain peace and tranquillity between the races. The schools of the South have traditionally been the center of social life. That is why they have been segregated. Integration has never worked anywhere in the United States where there have been large numbers of both races. In Philadelphia they couldn't even play football games with spectators last year because of the threat of race violence. They didn't even let the public know where or when the game would be played. You know what happened in Washington, D. C., at the Thanksgiving game two years ago. You know what happens in Indianapolis, in New Jersey. In Washington, D. C., the school system was all white till it was integrated. Now it is virtually all Negro, for the whites have fled to Virginia or Maryland or put their children into private schools. Many of them are Government officials who rant and rave and beat their breasts about the holiness of integration, but, by George, they don't put their own children into integrated schools. That is nothing but rank hypocrisy. We in Alabama, on the other hand, openly acknowledge that we have a separate school system for Negro and white, and it is second to none. I feel that this arrangement is in the best interests of both races, and I feel it deep in my heart.

[Q] Playboy: Deep enough for you to have considered membership in the segregationist White Citizens' Council?

[A] Wallace: I have not joined, but I have been made an honorary member. The council in this state is made up of very fine people, the highest type of citizens. The council meetings I have visited and spoken to were orderly, and the membership has never advocated violence.

[Q] Playboy: The Ku Klux Klan has a long and bloody history of racist violence. Are you a supporter or admirer of this organization?

[A] Wallace: I have never been to a K.K.K. meeting. They are a secret order, so I don't know if there are many Klan members in this state. I am not even familiar with what the Klan is for, other than its announced stand that they are for segregation. So far as that goes, I am for anybody who is for segregation in Alabama. I am against anyone who advocates violence or hatred for people of any religion, race or creed.

[Q] Playboy: As a devout churchgoer, how do you reconcile your segregationist views with the Christian precepts of universal brotherhood and equality?

[A] Wallace: Though there are those who say God is a myth, I believe there is a God Who made all of us and Who loves all of us. Anybody who despises somebody because of his color is despising the handiwork of God, and I feel sorry for him. I did not run for governor on an anti-Negro platform. Anybody who ran for governor in this state on a down-with-the-Negro basis would not get to first base. He would be ostracized. I hope it will always be that way.

[Q] Playboy: Yet in your first unsuccessful bid for the governorship, commentators noted that your opponent, John Patterson, was more violently segregationist than you. How do you account for his victory?

[A] Wallace: You are probably quoting Time magazine, which quoted me as saying "They have just out-segged me." I had never heard that expression before in my life. It is not an Alabama expression. It is the figment of the imagination of another of those Time writers who lie about everything. Why not check my speeches instead of talking to a lying Time writer? After all, Time is the magazine that had a Communist for an editor.

[Q] Playboy: If you're talking about Whittaker Chambers, the facts are that he quit the party in April 1938—more than a year before joining Time's staff.

[A] Wallace:Time has also said that Mao Tse-tung, Castro and Ben Bella were good men.

[Q] Playboy: In what issues?

[A] Wallace: Look it up. What I am trying to tell you is that Time is either stupid or they don't have the truth in them. Get my speeches and you'll see that I was as strong for segregation in 1958 as in 1962. The lying press therefore portrays me anti-Negro, but I have never been anti-Negro. You will never convince the left wing and the liberals of that, but I don't care.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any Negro friends?

[A] Wallace: I have Negro friends I feel as close to as I do any white people in this state. I'll admit that the people of the South in years past have had a paternalistic attitude toward the Negro, but we have never despised them because of their color. Negro people have been part of our environment. I was raised among Negroes. I have shed tears at their funerals and I have shed tears at their bedsides as they lay dying—Negroes who had helped to raise me and my father and my grandfather. A Negro named Carlton McInis helped raise my father and me. I visit his grave when I go back to my little home town of Clio. Another old friend was Cas Welch, whom I loved. When I was a kid, Cas Welch taught me to play the guitar. He played the violin and he taught me the chords at his house after school. So we started playing together. When I was about 14 or 15, the white folks used to have square dances and Cas and I played the music. Then he moved to Ozark, Alabama. Years later I was elected judge and when I went to court at Ozark, Cas would be sitting on the lawn in front of the courthouse waiting to meet me and grasp my hand. He died about three years ago and I miss him this very moment. Negroes have been part of my life. I would feel strange living where there were no members of the Negro race. The people of the South after the War Between the States had the Reconstruction put upon us, and it was the white people of the South who raised the Negroes to where they are today. The Negro's best friend has been the Southern white man, and the Southern white man has had a good friend in the Southern Negro.

[Q] Playboy: If you're such good friends, it seems strange that you're not integrated. According to some estimates, about 80 percent of American Negroes have mixed blood. Inasmuch as the majority of Negroes live in the segregated South, or under de facto segregation in Northern ghettos, it would appear that segregation hasn't been notably successful in keeping the races apart. How do you account for that?

[A] Wallace: Obviously there's been mixing. But because it has happened doesn't make it good.

[Q] Playboy: Your views on the race question are not shared by the National Council of Churches, which has denounced segregation as "anti-Christian." Any comment?

[A] Wallace: The National Council of Churches is not going to instruct me in what is Christian and what isn't. They do not know any better than I do what is Christian. Each sin emanates from the heart. If a man believes in segregation because he hates the black man, then he is evil. But if he believes in segregation because it is in the best interests of both races, then he is not irreligious, immoral or sinful.

[Q] Playboy: Because of its pro-integration stand, the N. C. C. has been branded "Communist-dominated" by many Southern whites. Do you feel there's any substance to this charge?

[A] Wallace: Yes, from what I read I believe it is thoroughly infiltrated.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have documentary evidence to substantiate this belief?

[A] Wallace: I have many documents so saying. Those documents have been published the length and breadth of the country. I haven't heard that anybody has dared bring a libel suit, so I believe the documents.

[Q] Playboy: Is there any evidence, in your opinion, to support the conviction of many white Southerners that Communists have been playing a leading role in the civil rights movement?

[A] Wallace: Yes. J. Edgar Hoover has (continued on page 154)Playboy Interview(continued from page 64) said so. We Southern governors have pointed out that Communists were involved in every demonstration held in our area. Sixteen members of the Communist Party or Communist front organizations were involved in the demonstrations in Birmingham. These people are not interested in the welfare of the Negro. They are interested in creating trouble, chaos, ill feeling between the races. Many leading members of civil rights organizations have been cited as Communist-fronters—people like Bayard Rustin, who was a member of the Young Communist League.

[Q] Playboy: Rustin resigned from the League in 1941 and is today considered one of the most moderate and responsible Negro leaders in the country.

[A] Wallace: I don't know what he is calling himself these days. But this moderate and responsible Negro leader, who led the march on Washington, has also served 27 months in prison as a draft dodger.

[Q] Playboy: He was a conscientious objector during World War II.

[A] Wallace: If he had been, he would not have been convicted as a draft dodger. Whatever he was or is, the mass of Negroes is not involved in the Communist movement and should be commended.

[Q] Playboy: Communism aside, would you concede that sit-ins and Freedom Rides are winning for Negroes many rightful freedoms and opportunities heretofore denied them in the South?

[A] Wallace: Any action that disturbs the peace is calculated by those who cause it to worsen race relations. Violence helps nobody.

[Q] Playboy: But most of these demonstrations have been nonviolent.

[A] Wallace: Nonviolent or not, we have had violence during these demonstrations, and so I deplore them.

[Q] Playboy: The violence has been directed at the demonstrators rather than initiated by them.

[A] Wallace: It was the disturbance of the peace that provoked the violence in the first place. I do not condone violence, but there would have been no violence without the demonstrations.

[Q] Playboy: Malcolm X has advocated the formation of Negro rifle clubs for self-defense from white violence, and is recommending that Negroes take training in guerrilla warfare. How do you feel about that?

[A] Wallace: If he is doing that, then this is not good. Thank goodness we have had only a little violence here. Of course, it has been magnified in the leftist press in order to minimize what happens in the big cities of the North.

[Q] Playboy: How would you have coped with the Harlem and Rochester riots if they had occurred in Alabama?

[A] Wallace: We have never had such an outbreak in Alabama, and we never will, so I shall not be called upon to solve that problem.

[Q] Playboy: How can you be so sure?

[A] Wallace: There has always been a continuous good feeling between white and black here, which I hope will continue.

[Q] Playboy: Do you regard last year's Birmingham riots as manifestations of good feeling?

[A] Wallace: Magnified enormously by the leftist press. You are sitting right now almost on the spot where the Freedom Riders had their little trouble. It was such a little bit of trouble that the people of this city were not aware it had happened till they read the screaming headlines in other parts of the country. As for the Birmingham riots, they were not riots at all.

[Q] Playboy: What would you call them?

[A] Wallace: Compared with what has been happening in other parts of the country, the Birmingham business was a Sunday-school picnic; they were just having a little fun. In 45 days of Birmingham riots, or whatever you want to call them, 69 people were injured—22 Negroes and 47 policemen and other folks. Not a single one of the Negroes was hurt badly enough to go to a hospital. I don't call that much violence.

[Q] Playboy: Most people would disagree.

[A] Wallace: Less than one half of one percent of the Negro citizens of Birmingham were involved, and most of them were school children. The majority of the Negro citizens of Alabama are to be commended. There is not as much racial violence here in a year as in the twinkling of an eye in Philadelphia, Rochester or Harlem. Take housing, for example. We do not have so-called blockbuster riots such as they have in the North. This is because mingling of the races in Alabama's residential districts has been going on for a long time. We take it for granted. There are five Negro houses on the same block as the governor's mansion right here in Montgomery. I don't throw rocks at my Negro neighbors and they don't throw rocks at me. We live on the same block in peace and mutual toleration. What little violence does happen in the South is overplayed by the left-wing liberal press.

[Q] Playboy: Exactly what—and whom—do you mean by "left-wing liberal press"?

[A] Wallace: I am not alone in my idea that the press is dominated by left-wing liberals. I was speaking to 2300 people in Cleveland, I believe it was, when I said that the national news media were lying, distorted, left-dominated, communistic-minded, and I sort of waved my hand over toward where the news reporters were sitting, and those 2300 people came to their feet cheering because somebody had finally had the nerve to say what they had all been thinking.

[Q] Playboy: What evidence can you offer to support this accusation?

[A] Wallace: I'll give you some examples of the treachery and the corruption of the press. When I was campaigning in Maryland, I took along with me a young newsman from one of the weekly news magazines, treated him like a friend, wined him, dined him, took him into my deepest confidence. When he wrote his story about me, it was all about what a slob I was, sucking my teeth and making coarse noises while I eat. Time did the same thing to Governor Faubus, wrote all about how he would eat with milk dribbling down his chin. You know that is a lie. If anything, he is a most fastidious man.

[Q] Playboy: What's all this got to do with leftist bias?

[A] Wallace: I am in the midst of explaining. Take another case. I can count on this treatment every time. A reporter quotes me usually as speaking some kind of hayseed dialect hardly understandable by an educated man, but in the same story, if he quotes a field hand right out of the cotton patch, he makes that fellow speak English an Oxford scholar would be proud of. That's what I mean about the lying, distorting press. Let's deal with the issues and never mind the personal insults.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible that your resentment of the press is motivated partly by the national publicity given to recent racial disturbances in the South, and its effects on your campaign to attract outside industry to Alabama?

[A] Wallace: It may interest you to know that last year, when we made the most screaming headlines, we had the largest amount of new industry in Alabama's history. Industrialists are intelligent people. They do not believe the headlines written by some left-wing editor. They check for themselves. They know that Alabama's reputation is an invention of the left-wing liberal press. If the Negro leaders spent as much time persuading industrialists to build plants in Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama as they do leading Negroes in the streets, they would do the Negro more real good. While they lead demonstrations and foment trouble, Southern governors like myself are on an industry hunt to provide jobs for Negroes.

[Q] Playboy: With what success?

[A] Wallace: Last year we brought $344,000,000 of new and expanded industry to Alabama. And we are going to have more this year than last. Every industry brings jobs for Negroes and whites. Last year we created 20,000 new industrial jobs, 7000 among Negroes. Those who advance the Negro are those who advance the economy, those who advance the Negro's education, because no Negro who has finished high school and college has any trouble getting a job.

[Q] Playboy: But what kind of job? Many Negroes say they cannot get a good job no matter how extensive their education.

[A] Wallace: In Alabama you will see at every construction site more skilled Negro workmen than whites—carpenters, plumbers, brick masons, electricians. There is little unemployment here. Negroes have always worked beside whites in the South, so they are not new to us. They are new in large numbers in the North and Midwest, and so they have a hard time getting jobs because there is no tradition of working beside them.

[Q] Playboy: Do any Negroes in Alabama hold supervisory jobs over whites?

[A] Wallace: Well, let me say this. Negroes in Alabama hold many responsible positions.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any objection to Negroes supervising whites?

[A] Wallace: I do not object to a businessman running his shop any way he likes. But I object to the Government telling him who must supervise and who must be supervised.

[Q] Playboy: The jobs you've mentioned are entirely on the workmen's and laborers' levels. What opportunities are available in the professions for Negroes in Alabama?

[A] Wallace: A Negro professional man has a wonderful opportunity in Alabama. We have 10,000 Negro schoolteachers. In other places the chance of a Negro getting a teaching job is ten or twelve times less than it is here. And the Negro teacher here is paid $69 per year more on the average than the white.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Wallace: We pay teachers according to their education. Teaching is a sure job for the educated Negro, so he tends to stick with it and get more degrees in it. Whites have many other opportunities and drift off to other professions.

[Q] Playboy: Then you admit that job opportunities—other than teaching—are not equally available to Negroes and whites in Alabama?

[A] Wallace: Negroes have perhaps a little harder time than whites in getting certain jobs, it's true. But the reason so many Negroes experience this difficulty is that they drop out of school. They drop out by the hundreds of thousands in the third and fourth grades. We are trying to stop dropouts among both races, but the Negro rate is terrific.

[Q] Playboy: Are you doing anything else to improve Negro educational standards in your state?

[A] Wallace: Certainly. I was author of a bill in 1947 to build the largest Negro school in the South. I served two years on the board of trustees of the most renowned Negro school in the world at Tuskegee. My administration gives that school—a private institution—nearly $700,000 a year. And I am building Negro junior colleges and trade schools on a scale unparalleled in my state's history. Within the next year, every youth in Alabama regardless of color will be within bus distance of a trade school or junior college.

[Q] Playboy: Will these be integrated schools?

[A] Wallace: Certainly not. But most middle-income and lower-income families, white or Negro, will be able to send their children to advanced schools. In the past that was often impossible because of the high cost of keeping a student away from home on a college campus. Now the students will commute to school daily.

[Q] Playboy: Will the facilities for Negro and white students be equal as well as separate?

[A] Wallace: In every way.

[Q] Playboy: Can you be more specific? How much, for example, does Alabama spend per year to educate each white child?

[A] Wallace: Alabama, at the state level, spends the same amount of money, based on average daily attendance, for all of its school children. Each white child and each Negro child receives the same amount of money based on their daily attendance. Sometimes misleading figures are given to indicate that white children receive more than Negro children. This is incorrect. This is arrived at occasionally because statisticians take the total enrollment and divide it into the amount of money received by the school from the state. This is not the proper way, because Alabama law specifies that the money shall be given to the school systems based on the average daily attendance. Thus, schools with a high rate of absenteeism are penalized to a certain degree, although, once again, the amounts received are exactly the same based on the number of students attending daily.

[Q] Playboy: Were you appearing in your role as champion of Negro education when you attempted last year to prevent two Negroes from obtaining an education at the University of Alabama by blocking the doorway to the registrar's office?

[A] Wallace: When I stood in the doorway, it was not to prevent Negro citizens from getting an education. It was to determine if Alabama should be free to run its school system or if our schools would be taken over by the Federal Government.

[Q] Playboy: It seems that they were legally entitled to an education there. In any case, they were admitted, so what do you think you accomplished?

[A] Wallace: I deliberately tested a principle. I was testing whether the governor of a state and the legislature of a state can run the schools of that state, or whether the Federal courts and the Federal Government can run them. If I had violated a valid court order, I should have been cited and tried for contempt of Federal court, convicted and fined a million dollars or whatever, or sent to jail. But they did not want to face the question in court, so they pushed me aside with 18,000 troops. I also wanted to dramatize that we are in danger of having military rule in this country. We have had military rule in Arkansas and Mississippi. In those two states, the pretext was that there was uncontrolled violence. But the Constitution says it is unlawful to send troops to a state, even to quell domestic violence, unless the troops are requested by the legislature or the governor. Neither in Arkansas nor Mississippi were Federal troops called for by the legal authority. That violated Article Four, Section Four of the Constitution. Also, the statutes of this nation say that it is unlawful to use Federal troops to enforce the execution of Federal court orders; that is a matter for Federal marshals. Though the Government could use the pretext that there was violence in Arkansas and Mississippi, in Tuscaloosa on the day the troops arrived, it was the safest place in the United States—a lot safer than walking in the shadow of the White House. There wasn't a catcall. There wasn't a rock thrown. Perfect peace. And yet they brought in 18,000 troops with bayonets.

[Q] Playboy: According to published reports, only 100 troops were actually on the scene—in addition to 500 fully armed members of the Alabama National Guard whom you'd mobilized yourself.

[A] Wallace: Inasmuch as the President saw fit to Federalize these men, they certainly were not there on my behalf. My point is that they did not need all that muscle. Nobody was going to fight anybody. Nobody wanted violence. And there was no violence. Thank goodness we are not a violent people here in Alabama.

[Q] Playboy: Then how do you account for last year's Birmingham church bombing, in which four Negro girls were killed?

[A] Wallace: This was a tragic but isolated incident. It was the act of a demented fool or fools and I hope that some day this crime will be solved. There is still less violence here in a year than on one subway ride in New York.

[Q] Playboy: Do you foresee the possibility of increased racial violence in Alabama as Negro and white rights workers move into the state for the purpose of putting the various provisions of the Civil Rights Act to the test?

[A] Wallace: I hope not. I believe and pray that we can work out our problems without violence. But you must realize that outside pressure to force the mixing of the races—in schools, restaurants, hotels, theaters, swimming pools—is going to be resented, and resented deeply.

[Q] Playboy: You've been quoted as saying that the 1954 Supreme Court decision desegregating schools represented "a gross usurpation of legislative power by the judiciary." Did you say that?

[A] Wallace: I did, for I feel that school policy is rightly not the concern of the Federal Government, but of the states. Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Minnesota—many Northern states—once had separate schools, and their courts held that the system was lawful. They later repealed those laws—which action I do not oppose, because each state has a right to its own school policy without interference from Montgomery, Alabama, or from Washington, D. C. But for a hundred years the Supreme Court said that my state and the other states—I believe there were 16 or 18—that wanted separate schools could have separate but equal facilities. We spent millions of dollars on the separate school system. And then after we had spent millions and into the billions on separate schools, they jerked the rug out from under the people of the country who acted in good faith in conforming to the law and the Court's earlier decisions. We resent this act, and we reject it, for it was a decision made for political purposes only. It will be forever resented. Mind you, I do not recommend segregation for any state but my own. If any state wants integrated schools, that should be their right. But if they want segregated schools, that should be their right also.

[Q] Playboy: On the outskirts of Montgomery and throughout Alabama are huge billboards, posted by the John Birch Society, urging the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court. Do you approve of these signs?

[A] Wallace: Chief Justice Warren was not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court when he was appointed and he still is not. He was a political appointment, and he is still a political appointment.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think he should be impeached?

[A] Wallace: When I see one of those signs, it makes me smile. I would rather return to the subject of the 1954 decision, if I may. Not only was it a gross usurpation of authority by the Supreme Court, but there was a misleading of the Court by those who testified. That decision was based not on law but on the sociological writings of Gunnar Myrdal, and the testimony of K. B. Clark and Dr. Alfred Kelly of Wayne University. Dr. Kelly has since admitted he misled the Court.

[Q] Playboy: In what way?

[A] Wallace: He said, more or less, "We slid off facts, we ignored facts, we emphasized certain facts. We were told by Thurgood Marshall and others in the NAACP to work up a historical background that would get by the Supreme Court."

[Q] Playboy: When and where did he make this statement?

[A] Wallace: He made this disclosure publicly in a speech. I have the date and place in my office. I'll let you know. But there's more. K. B. Clark later refuted his own testimony with later studies in which he found there was more damage to the personality of children in schools that had been integrated than in those still segregated.

[Q] Playboy: When and where were these studies conducted?

[A] Wallace: I wish I had the documents with me. They're in my office, too.

[Q] Playboy: We'd like to see them.

[A] Wallace: I'll have the information sent to you.

[The governor's allegations have been denied by Doctors Clark and Kelly, and rejected by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.]

[Q] Playboy: Now that the Civil Rights Bill has been passed, are you ready to concede that segregation is illegal?

[A] Wallace: No, I am not. It is not a constitutionally valid law, for the public-accommodations section of a bill similar to this was held unconstitutional many years ago. However, the Supreme Court we have now will probably hold anything to be constitutional so long as it is brought to them in the name of so-called civil rights. Even the Supreme Court, however, will have to lean over backward to find this act constitutional. There is some small chance that this one time they will decide the question on the basis of what the Constitution is and not what they would like it to be.

[Q] Playboy: If they do find it constitutional, do you plan to observe the law?

[A] Wallace: I have never advocated disobedience of any law. We will have to obey it. If we don't, they'll throw us in jail, put a bayonet in our back. The people who oppose this law are not the kind of people who advocate disobedience of any law. It is the leaders of the radical left-wing civil rights movement who say you can and must disobey any law you feel is unjust. Martin Luther King says you have a duty to disobey an unjust law. To the liberals and the Communist-fronters, Martin Luther King is a man who cannot speak anything but inspired truth. That is a dangerous theory. If we go by what Martin Luther King advocates, we will have chaos. If this act is held constitutional, the people will have to endure it.

[Q] Playboy: You don't plan to disobey it?

[A] Wallace: I do not like the law. I detest the law. But I will not disobey the law. Neither, however, will I enforce the law, for it is not my responsibility. It is the responsibility of the Federal Government and the Justice Department and the Federal courts to do so. But they will not succeed, for we plan to destroy this legislation.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Wallace: Many Congressmen who voted for this bill are going to bite the dust. Already one Congressman from Utah said that he was defeated in his primary because he had voted for the Civil Rights Bill. People all over the country are going to check how their Congressmen voted; and they will defeat at the polls those who supported the bill. The vote for me in the three primaries proved that. Inevitably, this law is going to have a fate similar to the 18th Amendment. The regulation of so-called civil rights, like the control of alcohol, is going to be turned back to the states, for the act is going to be hard to enforce. There are going to be all sorts of dodges to evade it, to circumvent it, to thwart it, to get around it.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Wallace: We will take lessons from our Northern brethren. They have long circumvented integration of schools by gerrymandering school districts according to residential patterns. We in the South have always said openly that we wanted separation of the races in schools, while up North they preach one system and practice another. We preach and practice the same system.

[Q] Playboy: How do you plan to thwart the public-accommodations section of the act? Gerrymandering won't help.

[A] Wallace: You've noticed, I suppose, that every table and booth in this restaurant has a Reserved sign on it? That is just one of a thousand dodges the people will invent to thwart this law.

[Q] Playboy: If you owned a restaurant or motel yourself, would you refuse Negro patronage?

[A] Wallace: If I lived in an area where integration was accepted, I might not. Since I live in Alabama, however, I would refuse them. It depends on what section of the country you are talking about. But this is an academic question now. The Federal Government has taken away my freedom of choice. Understand that I do not object to the Federal Government being a partner in certain fine projects. But just because the Federal Government levies a four-cent gasoline tax and helps build an interstate highway does not give it the right to take over the restaurants along that highway, and to tell the owner whom he must serve. A man running a private business should be entitled to serve only men with green eyes and red hair if that is his whim. He is the one risking capital and hope and years of his life, not the Federal Government; so he should have the privilege of risking them his own way. There are millions who feel as I do. The people resent this law, and eventually they will kill it.

[Q] Playboy: When you speak of "the people," do you mean white Southerners?

[A] Wallace: I mean the entire nation. If the Civil Rights Bill had been put to a popular vote, the American people would have defeated it in almost every state.

[Q] Playboy: While we're on the subject of voting, what would you do if Alabama were chosen for a state-wide Negro voter registration drive such as the one staged this year in Mississippi by COFO [Council of Federated Organizations]?

[A] Wallace: They would not choose Alabama, because they would be wasting their time. Negroes register to vote freely all the time in our state. There are more than 100,000 registered Negroes. There is no reason for COFO to single out Alabama. There is nothing for them to do here.

[Q] Playboy: Their spokesmen disagree. In view of the heavy Negro voter registration around Tuskegee, however, do you think that Alabama may soon elect its first Negro Congressman?

[A] Wallace: Naturally, the more Negroes register to vote the more likely that is to happen. But I don't think anybody should be elected on the basis of color.

[Q] Playboy: Or barred from public office for the same reason?

[A] Wallace: Qualified voters can elect anybody they want to. I am opposed, however, to the Federal Government taking over the registration process in Alabama and registering Negroes who are clearly not qualified to vote under the laws of this state. That is another flagrant example of Federal take-over.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to share Senator Goldwater's distrust of "big government" in any and all forms.

[A] Wallace: I do. The encroaching specter of big government is the gravest threat to liberty that we face today.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Wallace: Some say the Constitution was written many years ago under different conditions and has become obsolete. I do not agree. There is more need for local government today than ever before. If we are going to change, to centralize, it should be done by constitutional amendment and not by brutal usurpation of power by the Federal Government. The people of Alabama, of Wisconsin, of Maryland, are better qualified to determine what is best for themselves and their children than are social engineers a thousand miles away.

[Q] Playboy: Do you also share Goldwater's opposition to the extension of such Federal welfare programs as Social Security?

[A] Wallace: I am for the Social Security program. In 1951 I sponsored legislation to bring Alabama state, county and municipal employees under the bill. The Social Security program is a fact of life in America and I support it.

[Q] Playboy: Though he's since modified his position, Senator Goldwater was at one time in favor of abolishing the graduated income tax. Do you think that's a sound idea?

[A] Wallace: No, but unquestionably the graduated income tax is too high. It is especially burdensome on the small wage earner. We must have taxes, of course, but I object to the waste of much of our tax money—in the foreign aid program, especially—which has been cataloged in the millions and billions of dollars.

[Q] Playboy: You have often declared yourself foursquare for a strong national defense. If Russia were threatening to overtake us in the nuclear arms race, would you advocate raising the income tax in order to maintain our military superiority?

[A] Wallace: If you increase the income tax further, you'll have to put everybody on relief. Then you'd have a weaker national defense. Of course we have to keep a strong defense force, but it is not a question of whether I would advocate raising the income tax. It is at the absolute limit now.

[Q] Playboy: Senator Goldwater once said he favored selling the TVA system, which serves the northern part of Alabama, among many other areas in the South. Are you for or against such Federally administered utilities?

[A] Wallace: Where private utilities can handle flood control or a power project, the Government should not do it. The need for TVA came about when private industry could not or would not handle it during World War I, and the Federal Government built Wilson Dam, some fertilizer plants and other structures which eventually became TVA. It was necessary at that time for national defense. But I am against the Government, in peacetime, trying to make a TVA out of every brook and stream in the United States. If the need ever arises again and private enterprise cannot or will not handle it, however, that is another matter. I am not against the TVA system; it's here to stay. Nobody can do away with it. You have to be realistic.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that the UN is here to stay—or, again, do you agree with Goldwater that its effectiveness is limited, and its days numbered?

[A] Wallace: The basic principle of sitting around a conference table to iron out differences instead of resorting to war is good. The present setup, however, is faulty. Russia is not paying its fair share; we are bearing an undue share of the costs. And nations you never heard of before have an equal vote with the United States in the General Assembly. We should have a system of weighting votes according to a formula based on power and wealth, not on population. Also, the UN charter relegates property rights to second rank behind human rights. As I see it, in those countries where there are no property rights, there are no human rights. The only nations that grant human rights are those that guarantee property rights—such as the United States. Finally, I would never yield one iota of United States' sovereignty to a world organization.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you believe we will be called upon to do so?

[A] Wallace: There is a trend for many people to want to surrender our Government to One Worldism—to international courts, for instance, and the international peace force. I would not be for giving up control of our own soldiers to any organization or group of nations.

[Q] Playboy: Considering the divergence between your views and those of the Administration, have you considered the possibility of switching parties, or, as some have speculated, of forming a third party with yourself as its leader?

[A] Wallace: I have never said anything about switching parties. Neither have I ever said anything about a third party. That speculation arose from a willful misinterpretation of what I said to the Democratic convention platform committee. I said that a movement would be started to correct certain tendencies which many consider inimical to American life. Now a movement can take place within either or both parties without the necessity of forming a third party.

[Q] Playboy: What, then, are your political ambitions? We understand that the Alabama state legislature is considering a bill to make it possible for you to succeed yourself as governor.

[A] Wallace: I am not pushing that bill. I have urged consideration of many other bills first. As for the future, that will take care of itself. My prayer is that God will bless all the people of this state, white and black. I shall continue to work against a take-over by big government. I shall try to prevent the destruction of the private-ownership system, of free enterprise, and of the rights of local governments. In what capacity I shall carry on that fight, only time will tell.