On this day in 1963

Jan. 14, 1963 

Alabama Gov. George Wallace stands against desegregation while being confronted by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach at the University of Alabama in 1963. Credit: Wikipedia

On the same portico of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy, Alabama Gov. George Wallace delivered his inaugural address, telling the crowd, “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!” 

Asa Carter, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote his speech, which made national headlines and thrust Wallace into the national spotlight. 

Seven months later, Martin Luther King Jr. responded to that speech, saying, “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification’ — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” 

Before his death, Wallace called his most famous phrase “his biggest mistake.”

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