During an episode of CNN's "The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper" that aired last week, former State Treasurer and Public Service Commissioner George Wallace, Jr., son of former Gov. George Wallace, discussed the attempt on his father's life in 1972 at a shopping center in Laurel, Md. during a presidential campaign event.
The show's focus was on political violence in the wake of last month's attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.
The attempt on Wallace left him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. The younger Wallace discussed how it changed his father.
Partial transcript as follows:
SIDNER: The powerfully divisive George Wallace infamously blocked the doors to stop desegregation at the University of Alabama. He was Alabama's governor during the Birmingham sit-ins where peaceful protesters were met with fire hoses and attack dogs, the bombing of the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church which killed four little Black girls, and 1965 Selma march, which devolved into what is known as Bloody Sunday.
WALLACE: Don't worry about what the news people say about us. They call us extremists. I want to say we are passionate.
SIDNER: Wallace spoke to this Madison Square Garden crowd during his 1968 presidential bid.
NAFTALI: George Wallace was fighting elites. Wallace also rallied disaffected members of the working class. He fashioned himself a white populist. His appeal was always a racial appeal.
SIDNER: But his 1972 campaign would be the turning point.
BRINKLEY: He was shot in a shopping mall in Maryland and he became crippled to the point he could never walk again.
GEORGE WALLACE JR, SON OF FORMER ALABAMA GOVERNOR GEORGE D. WALLACE: He always thought he might be shot. He always believed it will be a head wound, and he would die from that.
SIDNER: Why did he think that?
WALLACE JR.: Because he was so volatile. He was very controversial and he knew that, and he knew he might be shot.
He was resigned to that, though.
SIDNER: Do you think in any way, shape, or form that some of his vitriol, some of the way that he spoke actually encouraged the violence that was perpetrated on him?
WALLACE JR.: He would have been raised to believe that segregation was in the best interest of both races. He was a man of deep faith. He had a lot of regrets, Sara, about what his early positions.
SIDNER: Do you think the attempted assassination on your father's life catapulted him to change?
WALLACE JR.: The shooting, when he suffered so much every day from constant chronic pain, he realized he had caused suffering to others.
That bothered him until the day he died.
NAFTALI: George Wallace did not retire from public life, but George Wallace changed or at least he decided to change his appeal.
BRINKLEY: He will then meet with people like Jesse Jackson, the King family, John Lewis and asked for them for forgiveness.
NAFTALI: He refashioned himself as a more tolerant, more open-minded George Wallace.
And when he ran again for governor of Alabama, and he did so successfully, he campaigned for Black votes.
WALLACE JR.: During the last race for governor, he received 90 percent of the Black vote.
GOV. WALLACE: I made a mistake and that's all pay in the past and I -- I am sorry that I did that because it gave the wrong opinion of the kind of a man that I was.
Jeff Poor is the editor in chief of 1819 News and host of "The Jeff Poor Show," heard Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-noon on Mobile's FM Talk 106.5. To connect or comment, email jeff.poor@1819News.com or follow him on Twitter @jeff_poor.
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