George Wallace Criticizes Busing and Open Housing Laws (1968)

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Well, what you're saying is that one might have been a little bit better, but the people of our region and those in other parts of the country who think as we do, are tired of just getting a little crumb or two from the table. Both national parties have kowtowed to the element in our country that have demanded the takeover of the public school systems of the states, all domestic institutions. Both national party leaderships, including Mr. Nixon, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Humphrey, joined together asking for the passage of a bill a month ago, a little longer, that would put you in jail in a federal court without a trial by jury if you didn't see fit to sell or lease your own home to somebody that a bureaucrat or a judge thought you ought to sell or lease it to. So we say that when Mr. Nixon joins in this movement to destroy property rights in our country, what difference is there in Mr. Nixon and Mr. Humphrey or Mr. McCarthy? I might say also that Southern people like people in Los Angeles and Chicago and Gary and Boston and all parts of the country are sick and tired of the destruction of the public school system, the busing of children,

the complete takeover of other domestic institutions. And the Republican Party did not say in Miami that they were going to turn the school systems back to control of people local in Boston, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and Alabama. On open housing, Mr. Nixon was reported to have told Southern caucuses at Miami Beach that he had had to go along with open housing when the bill was before Congress. That he wasn't really for it. Well, any candidate who says that he has to go along with something and he's really not for it when it's an attack on the property system, as vicious as this attack is, should he be president? I think people want somebody president who will speak and say what's in his heart and mind and quit this quibbling and misleading people. So I think that if he said that, that in my estimation is all the more reason why he should be defeated for the presidency and it gives rise further to the image that some have in both parties of saying one thing today and another thing

tomorrow. And I do recall, Mr. Nixon, who I have the highest personal regard for, made a statement to Southern caucuses at the convention that he wasn't going to jam anything else down the throats of southerners. Well, he's correct in that, in that he and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have jammed everything down our throats that can be jammed. There's nothing else left to jam down our throats. And as I said in North Carolina the other night, we're going to clear our throats on November 5th. And so I say, there's not any difference. Philosophically, in so far as the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is concerned, not only in our region, but other regions of the country too. I believe that will be the attitude. Governor, you said a moment ago that you would be on the ballot

George Wallace Criticizes Busing and Open Housing Laws (1968)

George Wallace, the one-time segregationist governor of Alabama, mounted a third-party run for president in 1968 that attracted 13.5% of the popular vote. According to some historians, many Wallace voters were former Democrats frustrated by racial equality legislation that they believed reached too far. The Black Freedom Struggle had successfully pressured for federal legislation that outlawed segregation in public accommodations and employment discrimination and protected Black voting rights. While those laws focused largely on the South, two other policies focused on racial inequality that was particularly pronounced in the North: The Civil Rights Act of 1968 made it illegal to refuse to sell or rent to a person on the basis of race; and school desegregation programs sought to achieve racial balance in urban school systems by busing Black students to white schools and vice versa. In this interview, from a 1968 episode of NET Journal, Wallace uses carefully race-neutral language to mount critiques of open housing laws and busing desegregation policies as forms of government overreach. Historians like Jefferson Cowie argue that Wallace’s rhetoric provided a roadmap for how to attract certain white voters away from the Democratic Party.

NET Journal | National Educational Television and Radio Center | August 12, 1968 This video clip and associated transcript appear from 08:18 - 11:15 in the full record.

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