Black and White Alike Honor Memory of Former Gov. Wallace

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Thousands of black and white Alabamians on Tuesday filed past the open casket of former Gov. George C. Wallace at the Civil War-era Capitol where he once vowed: “. . . segregation forever!”

“He was a straight man,” said Joe Rudolph, a black man hired to work in the governor’s office mail room in 1967. “He had respect for me as a black person.”

“I loved Gov. Wallace,” said Karen Lott, a white woman from Birmingham, Ala., who was one of the mourners filing through the Capitol where Jefferson Davis was sworn in. “I believed in what he stood for--honesty, decency, and he didn’t believe in drinking. He had family values.”

Wallace, who died Sunday of cardiac arrest at age 79, was elected governor four times--in 1962, 1970, 1974 and 1982--with his first wife, Lurleen, winning in 1966 as his stand-in.

During his years in Montgomery, Wallace attracted national attention for his fiery rhetoric on race. In 1963, when he was sworn into office, he declared: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say . . . segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Wallace was shot by a would-be assassin as he campaigned for president in 1972. The gunman, Arthur Bremer, remains in prison in Maryland.

A public funeral service will be held today at the First United Methodist Church with burial to follow at Greenwood Cemetery.