Black and White Alike Honor Memory of Former Gov. Wallace

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.