We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call, no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us in it.
—Tennessee Williams
On Saturday, January 12, 1963, two limousines stood parked, their engines running, in front of our temporary home on Thomas Avenue in the fashionable part of Montgomery. We were going for dinner at our new home, the Alabama Governor’s Mansion, built in 1907 as the private residence of Robert Ligon Jr., a statesman and attorney. In 1950, then governor Jim Folsom bought the house to serve as the residence of Alabama’s First Families. Its graceful neoclassical style befitted an official residence of governors. During the time Mama and Daddy served in office, it would become known as “the People’s Mansion.”
The limousines, accompanied by a state trooper escort, lights flashing, drove slowly through the streets of Montgomery before passing through the gates of the mansion on South Perry Street. Floodlights lit the white facade and stately columns. I was filled with wonder. The staff of butlers and maids stood on either side to greet us. “Welcome to your new home,” said one of the butlers. He opened the pair of mahogany front doors, and we stepped inside.
A glittering crystal chandelier lit the entryway in front of a grand staircase carpeted in red and curving back on itself on either side. On the wall of the first landing, a portrait of Daddy had already been hung. Our awestruck eyes took in all the magnificence. With great excitement in her voice, Mama said, “Just think, you can have all you want to eat at any time. All you need to do is ask.” Many years later, reflecting on that moment with Mama, I wondered if it was her way of apologizing to us for the many nights we had gone to bed hungry.
After touring the mansion’s downstairs, we were led up a back staircase to our living quarters. The bedrooms with private baths were large, with dark wood furnishings and heavy drapes. In the center of the two wings, a large sitting room overlooked the main entrance hall.
We went back downstairs and sat at a table with fine china and sterling silver, where we were served a dinner of steak with baked potatoes and salads. Beside Daddy’s plate was a large bottle of ketchup. The staff had been forewarned that Daddy put ketchup on all his food and preferred to shake it from a bottle rather than spoon it from a china bowl.
The following day, the Thomas Avenue house was chaotic as friends and relatives stopped by. My two grandmothers exchanged frosty greetings before separating, Mozelle to the living room and Mamaw to the kitchen.
Mozelle was proud of her son’s accomplishments, but she didn’t congratulate Mama for her hard work and sacrifice as well. Even at such a time, Mozelle was stoic and withdrawn. She never warmed up to Mama in spite of Mama’s many attempts to make her a part of our family.
Mama was both excited and apprehensive. The next day she was going to become Alabama’s First Lady. A small-town girl, somewhat shy and withdrawn, who liked nothing better than sitting on the bank of a river watching a floating cork bob up and down, she was about to step into the pages of history.
That afternoon Daddy’s friend Seymore Trammell came by the house and picked him up to head downtown and put the final touches on his inaugural speech. Although Seymore and Daddy had been close during the time they worked together in the circuit court when Seymore was a district attorney and Daddy was a judge, Seymore’s racism had driven him into the Patterson camp in the 1958 governor’s race.
When Daddy decided to embrace segregation and hit hard on it in every speech he made in his second statewide run, Seymore could not have been more pleased. After all, he and Daddy had been partners in crime long before that, as I would learn quite by chance.
It seemed that during the six years that Daddy and Seymore rode the circuit, they would stay together in Midway, Alabama, a small country community halfway between the courthouses of Union Springs and Clayton. I found out about this when, many years later, my husband, Mark, my son Burns, and I went to our church to have our photo taken for the church directory. We were introduced to a middle-aged woman sitting behind the photographer’s table who I could tell recognized my name.
“You look just like your dear mother,” she said. “It’s in the eyes and that thick hair of yours.”
“Well, thank you very much,” I said.
“You know, I grew up in Midway. When your daddy was a judge we would see him and Mr. Seymore Trammell. My daddy said it just made sense when the two of them stayed in that house in Midway just down the road from where we lived to cut that long drive in half. They were both real nice men.”
“We never had a house in Midway,” I responded. “Our house was in Clayton.”
Still smiling, she replied, “Well, of course you did! You did have a house in Midway because your daddy lived there on and off.”
“And I know we did not have a house in Midway,” I said in an rising voice.
The woman leaned forward and squinted. She knew she was right and not even a daughter of George Wallace was going to accuse her of lying, especially in a church.
Before I could reply, Mark spoke up. “You know, I think I did hear about that. They’re ready for us, Peggy.”
As we were being adjusted on a seat for the photograph, Burns leaned in and whispered to Mark, “Poor Mom.”
Throughout his many years of service to Daddy, Seymore Trammell presented himself as a man of gallantry and gentility. Seymore was short with freckles on his face that matched his thick red hair. His speech was precise with a hint of mint julep thrown in. His immaculate dress, with shined-up shoes and the gold chain of a pocket watch tethered to his pants, was at times hard to swallow, particularly when his racist views reared their ugly heads.
Seymore Trammell had said to others that he was going to make sure that Daddy was not out-niggered again. Toward that end, he convinced Daddy that Asa Carter, from the northwest Alabama city of Oxford, was the perfect person to help him with his inaugural speech. Carter was involved with the KKK. He was waiting in the small downtown office when Daddy and Seymore arrived the day before the inauguration. Daddy’s inaugural speech was laying on the desk. Carter picked it up and began flipping through the pages. “Here it is, on the fifth page.” He said as he handed the speech to Daddy. “This is the most important part.” It read, “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, and segregation forever.”
Wallace loyalists noted that Daddy’s speeches during his 1962 campaign had taken on a malevolent tone, more about segregation and less about progress. Only a few were aware that the new and revised language of George Wallace was from the pen of Asa Carter, one of the most virulent racists in Alabama, a thug and a criminal with a reputation for murderous violence. Perhaps Daddy thought he could backtrack once victory was his, which is a much easier pill for me to swallow—though I know it shouldn’t be—as I wonder, even today, if he really meant what he said.
January 14, 1963, Daddy’s inauguration day, was very cold, 28 degrees with a wind chill of zero. That didn’t deter the great sea of people who had gathered. They came from all walks of life—factory workers, farmers, bankers, preachers. No one thought about sitting it out. George Wallace was “just folks like us,” and he was going to take out after the cheaters and the liars that made the money while common folk couldn’t cover their bills each month. But even more important, he was going to show the blacks just how white folks felt about them and bring back law and order the way it should be. Sometimes things might get real bad for a white man: no job, no money, and a daughter pregnant at fourteen by a no-count. But in the minds of many who gathered, there was one thing to be thankful for. They were not black.
Daddy stood, as had other governors before him, on the brass star that denoted the very place where Jefferson Davis stood on the front portico of the capitol when he took his oath of office as president of the Confederate States of America. Behind him, on the second floor of the white capitol building itself, was the chamber where the Confederate States of America was formed. Catty-corner across the street was the first “White House of the Confederacy,” the house that Davis had lived in. With his hand on the Bible that had been used at Davis’s inauguration, Daddy was sworn in as Alabama’s forty-fifth governor. He faced the broad expanse of downtown Montgomery’s main boulevard, Dexter Avenue, that ran to Market Square, the place where African men, women, and children had been sold into slavery.
A military band played as we descended the capitol steps and walked up onto the reviewing stand where Daddy would speak. The crowd was expectant and hopeful that he would rouse in their hearts a sense of pride in their Alabama, the Alabama that for generations had been given short shrift by the rich, powerful, blue-nosed sophisticates in the North.
We sat on either side of the podium huddled together under electric blankets to ward off the cold. The crowd standing behind Daddy seemed restless, many dressed in work clothes and jackets rather than their Sunday best, loyalists who would fight for him at the drop of a hat. But they seemed out of place now, standing behind Alabama’s new governor, who was dressed in a long-tail morning coat and ascot with a top hat at his feet.
The inaugural parade lasted five hours and was a grand affair with bands and floats from all of Alabama’s sixty-seven counties and white colleges and universities. It particularly pains me to report that the inaugural parade committee, at Daddy’s direction, banned all African American schools and colleges from participating, including the Tuskegee Institute, on whose board of trustees he served.
That night, a lavish inaugural ball was held at Garrett Coliseum. Spotlights high on the top of the building lit the winter night. Inside, men in tuxedos and women in formal dresses grumbled when they were served punch or hot coffee rather than champagne. The stands filled up with Wallace people. They had come without invitation to watch their George and that sweet Lurleen dance the first dance.
The coliseum floor was suddenly cast into darkness. A booming voice came over the speakers as an orchestra began playing “Stars Fell on Alabama”: “Ladies and gentlemen, Governor George Corley Wallace and First Lady Lurleen Burns Wallace.” My parents were bathed in brilliant white light. The crowd roared as they slowly pivoted together, Daddy saluting and Mama waving her gloved hand. The gold-and-yellow brocade of Mama’s dress complemented her bare tanned shoulders, pearl necklace, and long white kid gloves. I wore a floor-length gown of silver metallic brocade and kid gloves. Daddy looked debonair in his cutaway tuxedo. “Sugah, are you happy?” Daddy asked as the orchestra began to play and he took my hand to dance. “Watch your step,” he said. Mama danced with my younger brother, George Jr.
It was late when we were driven back through the gates of the Governor’s Mansion. Still in my long dress, I wandered through the first-floor rooms. Low light cast shadows on the portraits in the First Lady’s Room; the dining room chandelier was lit. In the long rectangular sitting room, a pair of floor-to-ceiling pier mirrors stood directly across from each other. As I stood between them my reflection fell back on itself again and again. I was fractured but whole; a carefree life was now mine. No sadness could come calling in such a magical place. My thirteenth birthday was just two weeks away.