November 5, 1968: Richard Nixon Is Elected President

November 5, 1968: Eight years after losing one of the closest Presidential elections, former Vice President Richard Nixon wins one that's nearly as close. The Republican nominee wins 301 Electoral Votes, with 43.4 percent of the popular vote. With the incumbent, President Lyndon Johnson, having dropped out of the race, the Democratic Party nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a former Senator from Minnesota, who won 191 Electoral Votes, with 42.7 percent of the vote.

Former Governor George Wallace of Alabama ran a 3rd-party candidacy based on racism, crime and anti-Communism, and won 5 States (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, plus 1 Electoral Vote in South Carolina) for 46 Electoral Votes, with 13.5 percent of the vote.

Nixon's popular vote advantage, not that it mattered, was just 512,000 votes. (He lost to John F. Kennedy by 118,000 votes in 1960.) Wallace did not win the following States, but almost certainly threw them from Humphrey to Nixon: Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin. That's 197 Electoral Votes. If Humphrey had gotten even 40 percent of those, 79, he would have won, 270-222-46.

The Republicans also gained 5 seats in the Senate -- but only 5 in the House. Among the new Senators elected were Republicans Bob Packwood of Oregon; and Democrats Thomas Eagleton of Missouri and Alan Cranston of California. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who had lost his seat after being nominated for President and losing in 1964, won an open seat this time, and returned.

Despite rising to fame as an anti-Communist crusader in the late 1940s, Nixon was not the Republican nominee that the conservative movement wanted. Nor did he become the President that the movement wanted. They would have to wait.

But he certainly wasn't the President that some liberal activists, who thought of Humphrey as having sold them out with Johnson, and thus stayed home, helping to elect Nixon, wanted, either.

Johnson had stopped the bombing of North Vietnam on October 31. But the Paris Peace Talks stalled anyway. Nixon had a 30-point poll lead on Humphrey after the Conventions in August. In the last week, the polls showed a statistical dead heat. Someone wrote at the time that, if the election had been the next day, November 6, Humphrey would have won.

Think about what that would have meant. We don't know when he would have ended the Vietnam War, or how, but he wouldn't have kept it going for 4 more years, just so he could use it as an election issue again in 1972, like Nixon did. Certainly, there would have been no Cambodian Incursion in 1970, meaning no Kent State Massacre, and no "Killing Fields."

Humphrey certainly wouldn't have been as paranoid as Nixon, and wouldn't have had the war to be paranoid over. When the "Pentagon Papers" were published in 1971, Nixon started his "Plumbers" unit, to "stop leaks." That led directly to what was originally known as "the Watergate matter." Humphrey and his people wouldn't have committed any of the crimes that eventually fell under the umbrella term "Watergate."

The good things Nixon did? In 1970, he heavily increased spending on health care, and signed into law the creations of the Environmental Protection Agency (and the accompanying Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act), and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) -- both ideas proposed by Democratic Senators who ended up running for President in 1972 (Henry Jackson of Washington and George McGovern of South Dakota, respectively), but Nixon signed them into law, thus taking those accomplishments away. It was both good policy and good politics on his part. Surely, Humphrey would have had no trouble signing them into law as well.

Would Humphrey have made overtures to Red China, as Nixon did? I doubt it: "Only Nixon can go to China" has become a phrase meaning that only someone who was once so incredibly opposed to an issue could seriously tackle it. Nixon also "triangulated" China and the Soviet Union against each other, and got the Soviet Premier, Leonid Brezhnev, to sign the SALT treaty in 1972. Humphrey could have gotten an agreement with Brezhnev, but not with Mao Zedong. (Mao's fatal illness would also have been an obstacle to this: He died in 1976, in what would have been the last 4 months of Humphrey's 2nd term.)

Would Humphrey have been re-elected in 1972? His health hadn't yet become an issue, although he developed cancer in 1976, and chose not to make a 4th run for the Presidency, and died in 1978.

But a Humphrey Administration might have given Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, an additional 4 years following his half-hearted attempt at the Republican nomination in 1968, to become the leader of the conservative movement (as actually happened after 1972, once Nixon couldn't run again). With California, much of the rest of the West, and the South (which had hated Humphrey since his 1948 election to the Senate because of his support of civil rights) in his pocket, and with the Democrats possibly "growing stale in power" after 12 years, maybe the slogan, already old when Reagan was elected in 1980, "It's time for a change," might well have worked in this alternate 1972.

But the problems Nixon faced in 1973 and 1974 before his forced resignation over Watergate were hard enough for an intelligent man like him. For Reagan, who was, to put it politely, not as smart as Nixon? (Or Humphrey, or LBJ, or RFK.) He would have botched the recession that began in late 1973.

And the Yom Kippur War? That was one of the moments between the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall that could have brought us into World War III. Nixon had Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State, with his "shuttle diplomacy." Reagan would have had... Who? Alexander Haig? That wouldn't have been good. George Schultz? That might have worked.

Presuming a Reagan elected in 1972 didn't get us into World War III, then, with his own scandals (just as he had in the 1980s), particularly with the recession raging, he wouldn't have been able to thread the needle, and he would have lost in 1976, especially if Jimmy Carter ran as a moral leader as he did in real life. Only this time, with the conservative movement completely discredited, Carter might have won in 1980 even with the Iran Hostage Crisis -- or, at the least, would not have lost nearly as badly.

Republican Presidents since might have included George H.W. Bush, but not George W., who went out of his way to be more like Reagan than his father. Bob Dole? John McCain? Mitt Romney? Maybe. Donald Trump? Not a chance: The American people would not have elected a celebrity again, especially one so dumb, he made Reagan look like Albert Einstein.

Democratic Presidents after Carter? Probably not Ted Kennedy. Bill Clinton? Maybe. Barack Obama? Maybe. Somebody else? Who knows.

The President in 2022? It would not be a Trump type. It would not be a paranoiac, alternately blustery and insecure, causing problems with both. But it wouldn't have been Joe Biden, either. The political setting that Trump built was probably a unique situation for Biden: As Marvel Comics' Dr. Strange might put it, the only scenario in which he wins.

The Nixon victory is where it all began. Donald Trump is not the betrayal of the Republican Party ideals set forth by Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s He is the culmination of the Republican Party ideals set forth by Richard Nixon in the late 1960s. Trump is not the cause, he is the effect.

Nixon won in 1968 because liberals, saddened over the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, disillusioned by the candidacy of Senator Eugene McCarthy, and angry over Humphrey's refusal to oppose LBJ on the Vietnam War sooner than his September 30 speech in Salt Lake City, mainly stayed home.

Humphrey remains the person born in South Dakota, ahead of George McGovern, and the person representing Minnesota in politics, ahead of Walter Mondale, who has come the closest to becoming President. A terminal at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, the Department of Health and Human Services Building in Washington, and a bridge in Florida are named for him.

So was the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the stadium in Minneapolis that served as home for MLB's Minnesota Twins, the NFL's Minnesota Vikings, and the football team at the University of Minnesota. Many baseball players complained about the white roof, which made a white baseball harder to see. Billy Martin, who managed the Twins, among other teams, and became a friend of Humphrey's may have been channeling his former teammate and coach Yogi Berra when he said, "It's a shame a great guy like HHH had to be named after it."

The University of Minnesota is also home to the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, but that's not the same thing as a Presidential Library.

This was the 1st time the left's refusal to vote for the most liberal candidate in the race doomed the Democratic Party, ending up with the candidate least like the President they'd hoped for. They have since done it once every generation. They didn't get Ted Kennedy or Jerry Brown in 1980, so they didn't vote for Jimmy Carter, and they got Ronald Reagan. They voted for Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore in 2000, and they got George W. Bush. They didn't get Bernie Sanders in 2016, so they didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, and they got Donald Trump. When will they ever learn? Hopefully, in 2020, they did, and will keep that knowledge in 2024.

The 1968 Presidential election is proof that every vote counts. As are those of 1980, 2000, 2016 and 2020. But 1968 is where the Trump phenomenon began, even if we didn't know it for years, even decades, to come. 1968: Remember, remember, that 5th of November.

*

November 5, 1968, like all modern U.S. Election Days, was a Tuesday. Actor Sam Rockwell was born.

The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. And there were no games scheduled in the NHL. There were 3 pro basketball games played:

* The New York Knicks lost to the San Diego Rockets, 113-109 at the San Diego Sports Arena. Despite getting 26 points from Cazzie Russell, and scoring 39 points in the 4th quarter, the Knickerbockers couldn't overcome 28 points from Don Kojis. Future Knick, Laker and Heat coach Pat Riley scored 22 for the Rockets, who moved to Houston in 1971. The Arena still stands, under the name is now named the Pechanga Arena.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Chicago Bulls, 112-109 in overtime at the Chicago Stadium. Elgin Baylor scored 31, and Wilt Chamberlain 24 with 21 rebounds.

* And in the ABA, the Oakland Oaks beat the Dallas Chaparrals, 135-116 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. Rick Barry scored 30 for the Oaks, who went on to win the ABA Championship -- and then moved to become the Washington Capitals, and again in 1970 to become the Virginia Squires, and then folded with the ABA in 1976. The Chaps became the San Antonio Spurs in 1973, and entered the NBA when the ABA folded.

October 4, 1968: Old Iron Pants

George Wallace (left) and Curtis LeMay

October 4, 1968: Former (and future) Governor George Wallace of Alabama, running for President on a 3rd-party ticket, selects his Vice Presidential nominee: Former Air Force General Curtis LeMay. This would prove to be a big mistake.

Born in 1906 in Columbus, Ohio, LeMay graduated from Ohio State University, and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Rising through the ranks, he was known for relentlessly training the men under his command, believing that they would only perform their duties properly in combat if they were second nature to them. The men called him "Old Iron Pants" and, for his smoking, "The Big Cigar." He didn't mind either nickname.

He determined that a difference in weather meant that the kind of bombing that was done to Nazi Germany wasn't working on Imperial Japan, and changed the tactics. He led Operation Meetinghouse, the B-29 firebombing of Tokyo, describing it as follows: "The U.S. had finally stopped swatting at flies and gone after the manure pile." (That was for his official report. I suspect that, privately, he used a word other than "manure.")

Upon hearing his announcement as Wallace's running mate, Robert McNamara, who had recently resigned as Secretary of Defense to become Chairman of the World Bank, released a statement, saying of LeMay, "He was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in war. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal."

The U.S. Air Force was separated from the Army in 1947. LeMay became a full 4-star General in 1951, during the Korean War, and retired in 1965, early in the Vietnam War. Early in 1968, conservatives in California wanted him to challenge Senator Thomas Kuchel in the Republican Primary, but he declined. Kuchel was subsequently beaten in the Primary by Max Rafferty, the State's Superintendent of Schools, who then lost the general election to Democrat Alan Cranston, formerly the State's Controller.

Initially, LeMay supported Nixon in the 1968 election. Wallace had served under LeMay in 1947, and asked him to be his running mate. Twice, LeMay turned him down. Wallace's history as a segregationist didn't faze LeMay: He simply wanted Nixon to win, and thought Wallace would pull votes from him.

Wallace also asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who shared his beliefs about Communists and civil rights. Hoover turned him down. He also asked former Governor John Connally of Texas, a conservative Democrat who would later switch to the Republican Party. Connally also turned him down. At this point, instead of realizing that he, himself, might be the problem, Wallace asked LeMay a 3rd time, and he accepted.

At a press conference in Pittsburgh on October 4, Wallace announced LeMay as his running mate. LeMay spoke for 7 minutes, and undid all the work Wallace had put in to build himself up over the last 4 years. He said, "We seem to have a phobia about nuclear weapons." He added:

I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them. I don't believe the world would end if we exploded a nuclear weapon.

He also said, of the North Vietnamese, that American firepower could "bomb them back to the Stone Age." This was just 4 years after Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was nominated for President by the Republicans, and scared the voters by saying that the tactical use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam should be considered. And he was accused of racism, for voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Voters thought him too extreme, and he got just 37 percent of the vote, the lowest total for a Republican nominee between 1936 and 1992.

Now, LeMay was making Wallace look like the "mad bomber" that Goldwater really wasn't, when Wallace was already the racist that Goldwater really wasn't. Just as Goldwater tried to qualify his remarks with, "I don't think we would ever use them," LeMay tried to backtrack a few days later, saying, "I never said we should bomb them back to the Stone Age. I said we had the capability to do it." It didn't help.

Many people who were supporting the populist, racist stances of Wallace were realizing that this ticket simply wasn't acceptable. The Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, started calling Wallace and LeMay "the Bombsy Twins." (As opposed to literary figures the Bobbsey Twins.) Nixon said nothing: He knew, contrary to what LeMay suspected, that, as long as Wallace was in the race, he would take more votes from Humphrey than from Nixon.

On October 24, Wallace headlined the 1st political rally at the new Madison Square Garden in New York, which had replaced "The Old Garden" the preceding February 11. The Garden, hosting George Wallace? Anything for a buck, I suppose. There were protesters, but they should have ignored Wallace, to let his campaign die of silence, and then have gone after Richard Nixon. It might, almost literally, have made all the difference in the world.

On November 5, Nixon won 301 Electoral Votes, with 43.4 percent of the popular vote. Humphrey won 191 Electoral Votes, with 42.7 percent of the vote. Wallace won 5 States -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, plus 1 Electoral Vote in South Carolina -- for 46 Electoral Votes, with 13.5 percent of the vote.

Wallace did not win the following States, but almost certainly threw them from Humphrey to Nixon: Alaska, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin. That's 197 Electoral Votes. If Humphrey had gotten even 40 percent of those, 79, he would have won, 270-222-46. LeMay probably didn't cost Wallace a single State. But did he, more than Wallace himself, throw any States from Humphrey to Nixon? Who knows.

LeMay never ran for office again, and died in 1990.

*

October 4, 1968 was a Friday. Baseball was between Games 2 and 3 of the World Series, which the Detroit Tigers would win in 7 games. And it was too early for the NBA, ABA and NHL seasons. But there was one score on this historic day, in college football: The University of Houston, then ranked Number 12 in the country, beat the University of Cincinnati, 71-33 at the Astrodome in Houston. Yes, that's in football, not basketball.

September 15, 1963: The Birmingham Church Bombing

A recent photo of the restored 16th Street Baptist Church

September 15, 1963: A bomb goes off at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing what became known as the "Four Little Girls."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who preached in Montgomery, the State capital of Alabama, from 1954 to 1960, had called Birmingham, the State's largest city, "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." Whether he was correct or not, the city did little to convince people otherwise: It had no black police officers, and no black firefighters.

On January 14, 1963, George Wallace was sworn in as Governor of Alabama. the State's Governors are sworn in on a star on the floor of the front of the State House, where Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America. And in his Inaugural Address, Wallace promised, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!"

On April 3, Dr. King began the Birmingham Campaign, and on April 12, he was arrested. On April 16, he wrote what's become known as the Letter from Birmingham Jail, saying, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." He was soon bailed out by Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, who had been working for racial equality since Dr. King and his contemporaries were children, and could see how important the Birmingham Campaign was.

On May 2, people walked out of the 16th Street Baptist Church, intending to march to Birmingham's City Hall, to talk to the Mayor, Albert Boutwell. The Mayor didn't want that. Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor had been Commissioner of Public Safety from 1937 to 1952, and had been again since 1957. Boutwell called Connor, and by the end of the day, 959 children were arrested. Nearly one thousand children.

The next day, the march was even bigger, and Connor ordered the use of attack dogs, German shepherds. He ordered the use of fire hoses -- "water cannons," powerful enough to cause internal injuries. These actions were caught on film, and broadcast on the evening news.

Bombings at the homes of black people, and at black-run institutions, had occurred 21 times in Birmingham between 1955 and 1963, earning the city the nickname "Bombingham." Despite the destruction, there had not yet been any deaths.

On June 11, Wallace stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium, then both the main indoor athletic facility and the registration building for the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. The purpose was to deny the registration of the school's 1st black students. Two were making the attempt: James Hood and Vivian Malone. He said, as Governor, he had to "denounce and forbid this unwarranted and illegal action by the central government!"

It was not illegal: The Supreme Court had ruled segregation illegal in 1954, so Wallace was the one breaking the law. And it was not unwarranted.

President John F. Kennedy knew beforehand that Wallace was going to do this, and wanted his Attorney General and brother Robert F. Kennedy to do something about it. So RFK sent his Deputy, Nicholas Katzenbach, and federal marshals to Tuscaloosa. Katzenbach showed Wallace a federal warrant for his arrest, and essentially told him, "Get your sorry scrawny ass out of that door, or you will be handcuffed and arrested, and exposed as a federal criminal on national television."

Everybody remembers Wallace's Stand In the Schoolhouse Door. Most people forget that he backed down, because he didn't want to go to jail. Martin Luther King was willing to go to jail to challenge a law he believed was unjust. George Corley Wallace was not.

On August 28, the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom was held. About 300,000 people attended an assembly at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King was not even considered the main speaker going in: A. Philip Randolph, a longtime union leader, who had first proposed such a march in 1941, and had gone through with it this time, was. But with his "I Have a Dream" speech, he made himself an American legend.

Finally, the white supremacists could take no more. On September 15, a bomb was placed under the front steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church -- a building specifically targeted, for its role in the Birmingham Campaign. At 10:22 AM, a phone call was placed to the church. Carolyn Maull, just 14 years old, and one of the children who had been hit by the water cannons, picked up the phone. A male voice said just 2 words before hanging up: "Three minutes."

It wasn't three minutes. It was less than one minute before the bomb went off. In a basement bathroom, five girls were changing into choir robes for the day's service. One, Sarah Collins, 12, barely survived, was badly cut, and lost the use of an eye. Four others were killed: Sarah's sister, Addie Mae Collins, 14; Carole Robertson, also 14; Cynthia Wesley, also 14; and Carol Denise McNair (usually listed as "Denise"), only 11.

Plaque at the church

No one else was killed, but the explosion was powerful enough that it knocked over a passing car, and the driver was thrown from it, sustaining some injuries. The total number of injuries may have been as high as 22.

If the bombers thought that this would intimidate the Civil Rights Movement, they guessed wrong: If anything, it was emboldened. On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. On March 7, 1965, a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery began. While the police brutally broke it up, it was finished, and it inspired LBJ to demand a Voting Rights Act. He signed that into law on August 6, 1965.

Dr. King kept pressing for more advancements until his assassination on April 4, 1968. That turned out to be the turning point the white supremacists hoped for: The Movement began to lose steam, although it has never really gone away.

In 1965, the FBI, then run by Director J. Edgar Hoover, who was no friend of the Movement, foolishly thinking it run by Communists, concluded that the bombing was committed by 4 known members of the Ku Klux Klan: Thomas Blanton, Herman Cash, Robert Chambliss and Bobby Frank Cherry. But the Bureau refused to prosecute any of them. They refused to do their job.

It took years, but State prosecutors finally took action. On November 18, 1977, Chambliss was convicted of the murder of Denise McNair. He was only charged with one murder, in case he was acquitted, so that the prosecution could then move on to one of the other three. 

On February 7, 1994, Herman Cash died, having never been prosecuted. He was the only one who got away with it for the rest of his life. On May 1, 2001, Blanton was convicted of his role in all 4 murders. On May 22, 2002, Cherry was convicted of his role in all 4 murders. All 3 surviving defendants died in prison: Chambliss on October 29, 1985; Cherry on November 18, 2004; and Blanton on June 26, 2020.

In 2017, Doug Jones, the prosecutor of Blanton and Cherry, won a special election for U.S. Senator from Alabama, as a Democrat. It seemed to be an affirmation that the system works. In 2020, he was defeated in his bid for a full term, by Tommy Tuberville, a far-right idiot who had failed as head football coach at Auburn. So much for justice.

Carolyn Maull McKinstry, who took the phone call at the church warning about the bomb, survived a 2nd bomb, that destroyed a large portion of her home in 1964. She went on to graduate from Fisk University in Nashville, and received a Master of Divinity Degree from Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. She has written several books about the civil rights experience, and is still alive as of September 15, 2022.

*

September 15, 1963 was, as I said, a Sunday. It was the opening week of the NFL season.

* The New York Giants beat the Baltimore Colts, 37-28 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

* The Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburg Steelers played to a 15-15 tie, at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* The Cleveland Browns beat the Washington Redskins, 37-14 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Chicago Bears beat their arch-rivals, the Green Bay Packers, 10-3 at Green Bay City Stadium. This was the replacement for the previous City Stadium, renamed Lambeau Field in 1965, after team founder Earl "Curly" Lambeau died.

* The Minnesota Vikings beat the San Francisco 49ers, 24-20 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.

* The day before, the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Dallas Cowboys, 34-7 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

* Also the day before, the Detroit Lions beat the Los Angeles Rams, 23-2 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The AFL season started the week before. However, the New York Jets, in their 4th season, but their 1st after dropping the New York Titans name, had the week off. So did the Kansas City Chiefs, who had been the Dallas Texans in the AFL's 1st 3 seasons.

* The Oakland Raiders beat the Buffalo Bills, 35-17 at Frank Youell Field in Oakland.

* The day before, the San Diego Chargers beat the Boston Patriots, 17-13 at Balboa Stadium in San Diego. This was a preview of the AFL Championship Game, and the Chargers won that in a blowout.

* Also the day before, the Houston Oilers beat the Denver Broncos, 20-14 at Jeppesen Stadium in Houston.

And there were Major League Baseball games played on the day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins, 2-1 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Whitey Ford went the distance to advance to 23-7 on the season, and backed by a 2-RBI single by Clete Boyer in the 2nd inning.

The Yankees had clinched the American League Pennant by beating the Twins 2 days earlier, so there was no reason to risk Mickey Mantle, who'd missed 2 months in the middle of the season, for another injury.

* The New York Mets got swept in a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds, by their 1962 expansion brethren, the Houston Colt .45s. The Astros-to-be won the opener 5-4, and the nightcap 5-0. Chris Zachary pitched 6 innings, allowing 3 hits, and Hal Woodeshick went the last 3, hitless, completing the shutout.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-1 at Connie Mack Stadium, in Philadelphia.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 13-5 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Willie Mays went 2-for-4 with a home run and 4 RBIs for the Giants. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-4 for the Pirates. This was the day all 3 Alou brothers played in the outfield at the same time, with Mays having been taken out late. I have a separate entry for that event.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 2-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept a doubleheader from the Milwaukee Braves at the 1st Busch Stadium in St. Louis, formerly named Sportsman's Park. The Cards won the 1st game 3-2, and the 2nd game 5-0. Ray Sadecki pitched a 5-hit shutout.

In his last month as an active player, Stan Musial went 0-for-4 in the doubleheader, appearing only as a pinch-hitter in the nightcap. Hank Aaron went 2-for-7 with a home run and 2 RBIs.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 5-3 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* And the Cleveland Indians beat the Los Angeles Angels, 6-3 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where the Angels played before their stadium in suburban Anaheim opened.

June 11, 1963: George Wallace Is Removed from the Schoolhouse Door

June 11, 1963: Everyone remembers that George Wallace "stood in the schoolhouse door." What everyone should remember is that he was removed from that door.

On January 14, 1963, Wallace was sworn in as Governor of Alabama for the 1st time -- of what would be 4. Alabama's Governors are sworn in while standing on a star on the floor of the front of the State House in Montgomery. That star marks the spot where Jefferson Davis stood as he was sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America on February 22, 1862. And in his Inaugural Address, Wallace promised, "And I say to you: Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!"

On June 11, Wallace stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium, then both the main indoor athletic facility and the registration building for the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. The purpose was to deny the registration of the school's 1st black students. Two were making the attempt: James Hood and Vivian Malone. He said, as Governor, he had to "denounce and forbid this unwarranted and illegal action by the central government!"

It was not illegal: The Supreme Court had ruled segregation illegal in 1954, so Wallace was the one breaking the law. And it was not unwarranted.

President John F. Kennedy knew beforehand that Wallace was going to do this, and wanted his Attorney General, also his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, to do something about it. So RFK sent his Deputy, Nicholas Katzenbach, and federal marshals to Tuscaloosa. Katzenbach showed Wallace a federal warrant for his arrest, and, with all the gentility of a graduate of Philips Exeter Academy and Princeton University, essentially told him, "Get your sorry scrawny ass out of that door, or you will be handcuffed and arrested, and exposed as a federal criminal on national television."

Everybody remembers Wallace's Stand In the Schoolhouse Door. Most people forget that he backed down, because he didn't want to go to jail. Martin Luther King Jr. was willing to go to jail to challenge a law he believed was unjust. George Corley Wallace was not: He decided that looking weak was better than looking like a criminal, and he backed down. But he was still a hero to America's bigots.

Nevertheless, accompanied by Katzenbach and the marshals, Malone walked in, and became the 1st black person to register as a student at the University of Alabama. Hood followed. 

Vivian Malone graduated from 'Bama in 1965. She worked in the U.S. Department of Justice, the Veterans' Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. She married a doctor, and had a son and a daughter. In 1996, having founded an award named for his late wife, the Lurleen B. Wallace Award of Courage, George Wallace personally chose Vivian Malone Jones as the 1st recipient.

Hood left 'Bama after only 2 months. He went to Detroit's Wayne State University, and received degrees from there and Michigan State, and taught at a college in Wisconsin, before returning to 'Bama for his Ph.D.

The desegregation of the University of Alabama's in-State rival, Auburn University, was considerably less dramatic, as Harold A. Franklin was the 1st black student admitted, in 1964. Franklin didn't complete his degree at Auburn, either, transferring to the University of Denver, and getting a Ph.D. He taught at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), including Alabama State and the Tuskegee Institute.

Wallace died in 1998, Malone Jones in 2005, Katzenbach in 2012, Hood in 2013, Franklin in 2021.

Foster Auditorium opened in 1939, named for Richard Clarke Foster, the University President who got it built. Seating 3,800, it was home to Alabama basketball from 1939 to 1968. It remains home to the university's volleyball teams.

The movie Forrest Gump shows a fictionalized version of the events, with Malone dropping a book on her way in, and Gump, an Alabama football player who wandered onto the scene, picking it up and handing it to her. Winston Groom, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, died in 2020. If Gump were a real person, he would probably have been born the same year as Groom, 1943; so, if he were still alive, he would be 79 years old as of June 11, 2022.

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June 11, 1963 was a Tuesday. This was also the day that Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk, committed suicide by burning himself to death in Saigon, in protest of South Vietnam's Catholic-dominated government oppressing the country's majority-Buddhist population. I have a separate entry for that event.

These baseball games were played on that day:

* The New York Yankees and the Washington Senators were not scheduled to play.

* The New York Mets lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 8-3 at the Polo Grounds. Frank Robinson went 0-for-5, but Vada Pinson and Tommy Harper hit home runs.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Milwaukee Braves, 8-7 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Hank Aaron went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Clay Dalrymple singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Baltimore Orioles, 9-5 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Jim "Mudcat" Grant outpitched Robin Roberts. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-4.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-1 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Bob Gibson won the game, and Roberto Clemente went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 7-3 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-4 with 3 walks. Al Kaline went 2-for-5. Tiger reliever Terry Fox -- no relation to the later Canadian runner and anti-cancer activist -- collapsed in the top of the 15th inning, including giving up home runs to Frank Malzone and Dick Stuart.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-6 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-3 with 2 walks and an RBI.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Los Angeles Angels, 5-2 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Houston Colt .45s beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-2 at Colt Stadium in Houston. The Colts became the Houston Astros in 1965. Ernie Banks went 3-for-5 with an RBI. Bob Aspromonte won the game with a home run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Juan Marichal pitched a 7-hit shutout, to outduel Don Drysdale. Willie Mays went 0-for-3, but Willie McCovey hit a home run.

May 15, 1972: Governor George Wallace Is Shot

May 15, 1972: Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, campaigning for the next day’s Maryland Primary, is shot at the Laurel Shopping Center, about halfway between Baltimore and Washington. He survives, but is paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.

 

Although Wallace already had significant support from the blue-collar and country votes in Maryland and Michigan, which also had its Primary the next day, it may have been a sympathy vote that put him over the top. In Maryland, Wallace won 38 percent of the vote, to 26 percent for Senator and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and 22 percent for Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. In Michigan, it’s Wallace 51, McGovern 27, Humphrey 16.

Wallace with his wife Cornelia,

at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland,

holding up the May 17 Baltimore Sun headline on his win

The shooter, Arthur Bremer, a janitor from Milwaukee, had been following Wallace around, after realizing that his original target, the man Wallace wanted to replace as President, Richard Nixon, would be too difficult to get close to. His motive was self-aggrandizement, not politics.

 

An appeal to have his mental illness taken into account was rejected, and he was sentenced to 53 years in prison, and was released after 35, in 2007. As of May 15 2022, he is still alive, 71 years old. Since it could not be proven that Wallace’s death in 1998 was directly connected to the shooting, he was not then charged with murder.

Wallace could not continue as a candidate, but, if any single day can be said to be the one where it became clear that the Democrats were doomed for November, this was it. McGovern won only 2 Counties in Michigan, and only 2 in Maryland. Humphrey didn’t win any in either.

To people the Democratic candidates needed to reach, the disaffected within each party's ranks and the independents, Humphrey, a civil rights and labor icon who had been Vice President under Lyndon Johnson in the years of the Great Society, race riots and the early Vietnam War, represented a past they didn’t want to go back to; and McGovern, the favorite of the younger, more radical Democrats, represented a future that terrified them.

Each in their own way, Wallace and President Richard Nixon represented a past they did want to go back to, a time when they were the people being listened to, not black people, Hispanics, gays, feminists, abortion-rights activists, people looking to get drugs decriminalized. They wanted, as both Wallace and Nixon said, "Law and order," and seemed willing to give up other people's rights to get it -- not realizing that they might have to give up something themselves.

The Democratic Party's only hope seemed to be Nixon falling into a terrible scandal. He did -- but nobody seemed to care until the Spring of 1973.

When Wallace ran as a 3rd-party candidate in 1968, he got just under 10 million votes, and won 5 Southern States with 45 Electoral Votes: His native Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, plus 1 Electoral Vote in North Carolina, to give him 46.

Humphrey was the Democratic nominee, and Wallace's presence on the ballot may have swung several other States to Nixon: Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, Delaware, Alaska, Ohio, Missouri, New Jersey, Illinois, Wisconsin and California, for as many as 206 Electoral Votes. Wallace couldn't beat Nixon, but he did beat Humphrey, despite finishing far behind him.

Overall, in 1968, the combined Nixon-Wallace vote meant that 57 percent of American voters, representing 347 Electoral Votes, were willing to say, "We have had enough of progress for the poor and minorities." In 1972, with McGovern edging Humphrey for the Democratic nomination, and almost everybody who hoped to vote for Wallace in November going to Nixon, Nixon won 60.7 percent of the vote, the 2nd-most ever behind Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, and 49 out of the 50 States, all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, for 520 Electoral Votes to McGovern's 17 (and 1 stray Elector).

So which was the nightmare scenario: Wallace dying, or Wallace surviving with only a minor wound?

* Had Wallace died: He would have become a martyr to white supremacy, and, eventually, this country might have had a President Jesse Helms.

* Had Wallace been able to continue campaigning: He could have won the Democratic nomination, and the Party would have been fractured, possibly irrevocably, in its worst shape in 100 years. A new liberal party would have had to grow out of the old New Deal coalition that McGovern, Humphrey, and the later Senator Robert F. Kennedy or New York (who was trying to do so more in the way adopted by McGovern than in the way Humphrey had always done it) had been trying to revive.

And with former Governor Ronald Reagan of California ready to take up the conservative mantle in 1976, it might have taken many years for the Democrats to recover -- just as it actually did, until 1992, as the 1976 win of former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia represented something of a false dawn, a win that wouldn't have been possible if not for the falls of Nixon and his Vice President, Spiro Agnew, in separate scandals.

Wallace did run for President again in 1976, but he didn't get very far. Aside from his home State of Alabama, he didn't win a single Primary, although he did win the Mississippi Caucus. He finished 2nd in Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina, but Carter projected himself as a son of the "New South" that was ready to move past the hatreds of the 1960s. His moment had passed.

Plus, Wallace faced a problem that Roosevelt didn't face: Television coverage of himself in a wheelchair. Although he did get elected to a 3rd and a 4th term as Governor, and lived until 1998 (though in constant pain throughout), he didn't look healthy enough to be President in 1976. A big part of his 1968 and 1972 persona was that he was a strong man who would hold the line against them. After being shot, he didn't look like he could hold the line against anything.

Art imitated life: The film Taxi Driver is partly based on Bremer's pursuit of Wallace, although there appears to have been no real-life counterpart to the teenage prostitute played by Jodie Foster. Then, life imitated art: Inspired by Robert De Niro’s taxi driver and his desire to protect people like Foster's character, John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

*

May 15, 1972 was a Monday. There were 9 Major League Baseball games played that day, none postponed due to the attempted assassination. I suspect that, given the polarization he engendered in the American people, if Wallace had died before the games could begin, none would have been postponed, except maybe the one in Maryland, in Baltimore, had the Orioles been at home that day. But they weren't:

* The New York Mets beat the Montreal Expos, 5-3 at Shea Stadium. Tommie Agee and Jim Fregosi hit home runs in support of Jon Matlack.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-0 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Woodie Fryman pitched a 6-hit shutout, to beat Ferguson Jenkins. The next night, the Cubs won, 8-1, with Rick Monday hitting 3 home runs. Greg Luzinski hit one off the mockup of the Liberty Bell on the Vet's mezzanine. After that, to make sure that he would remain the only one ever to hit it, it was moved up to the stadium's roof.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-1 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente hit a 3-run homer, and Willie Stargell went 1-for-4. For the Cards, Lou Brock went 1-for-4 with a stolen base, and Joe Torre went 1-for-3 and was hit with a pitch. Dock Ellis outpitched Bob Gibson.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 3-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Merv Rettenmund hit a home run, and Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 in support of Jim Palmer, who helped his own cause with a triple in this last year without the designated hitter in the American League. Al Kaline did not enter the game for the Tigers.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Harmon Killebrew hit a home run. Rod Carew went 0-for-3, but drove in a run with a sacrifice fly. But knuckleballer Wilbur Wood outpitched Jim Perry.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Texas Rangers, 5-4 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves, 8-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Hank Aaron had 2 hits, but neither of them was a home run. He had 645 of those for his career.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres, 2-1 at San Diego Stadium. (It was later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium, Qualcomm Stadium and SDCCU Stadium.) Frank Robinson, in his only season with the Dodgers, went 0-for-3, but also walked and scored, driven in by Bobby Valentine.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the California Angels, 2-1 at Anaheim Stadium. (It was later renamed Edison International Field, and Angel Stadium of Anaheim.) A home run was hit for the A's by... Angel Mangual. Not Reggie Jackson, who went 0-for-4. John "Blue Moon" Odom was the winning pitcher. Nolan Ryan left the game in the 4th, after giving up Mangual's homer, but it appears to have been due to an injury. On this day, the trade that sent Ryan to Anaheim and Fregosi to Flushing Meadow looked like a win for the Mets.

* The Cincinnati Reds were supposed to play the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, but the game was rained out. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Reds swept, winning the opener, 4-3; and the nightcap, 2-0. 

In the twinbill, Pete Rose went 1-for-6 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs, Johnny Bench 1-for-4 (he didn't play in the 2nd game), Joe Morgan 0-for-4 with 3 walks, and Willie McCovey did not play.

* The New York Yankees were supposed to play the Cleveland Indians at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and the Boston Red Sox were supposed to play the Milwaukee Brewers at Milwaukee County Stadium. Both of these games were rained out, and neither was ever made up.

Football was out of season. The hockey season ended 4 days earlier, when the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, beating the New York Rangers in 6 games.

The basketball season wasn't quite over. True, 4 days before the Bruins' Cup win, the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA Championship, beating the New York Knicks in 5 games. But the American Basketball Association Finals were ongoing. In Game 4, at the Nassau Coliseum, the New York Nets beat the Indiana Pacers, 110-105, to tie the series. But the Pacers won the next 2 games to take the title.

February 9, 1976: "Taxi Driver" Premieres

February 9, 1976: The film Taxi Driver premieres, directed by Martin Scorcese. Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam War veteran who drives a taxicab in New York City.

I consider the film part of a series that shows the decline of New York City. In 1961, Breakfast at Tiffany's showed a New York that was still classic and magical. By 1969, Midnight Cowboy showed the City to have become a garish mess of crime and poverty. In 1976, Taxi Driver showed things as even worse, where what was once good had become crazy (including Travis), and what was bad was irredeemable. Things bottomed out in 1981, with Fort Apache: The Bronx.

Travis starts, then ruins, a relationship with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who works for Senator Charles Palantine, who is running for President. (He was played by Leonard Harris, who played another New York politician, the Mayor, in Hero At Large, starring John Ritter as another taxi driver who ends up thinking too much of himself.)

Travis buys a gun, and tries to act tough, looking at his reflection in a mirror, and saying, "You talkin' to me?" The line became the one everybody who does impressions does when imitating De Niro. He meets Iris (Jodie Foster), 12 years old and already a prostitute, and tries in vain to get her to quit that life.

He then goes to a campaign rally, planning to assassinate Palantine, but the Secret Service chase him away. He goes to the brothel where Iris works, and shoots Sport Higgins (Harvey Keitel), her pimp. A shootout results, and Travis, despite killing everybody in the room but Iris, is wounded himself.

The film's ending is ambiguous: Travis appears to recover, is hailed as a hero for what he did, is not prosecuted, keeps his job as a cabdriver, and even picks Betsy up as a fare, hearing her say she followed his story in the newspapers, and he refuses to take her money.

None of this is realistic, not even by the standards of 1970s New York City. It's been suggested that the film's epilogue is actually Travis' imagination of what should happen to him, as he dies. Scorcese has acknowledged this theory, but has refused to confirm it.

First, art imitated life: Scorcese has compared Travis to Arthur Bremer, who went around the country in the Spring of 1972, intending to assassinate President Richard Nixon; but, deciding that Nixon's security was too tight, instead went after Governor George Wallace of Alabama, who was running for the Democratic Party's nomination for President. Bremer's attempt paralyzed Wallace, and forced him to drop out of the race.

Then, life imitated art: John Hinckley wanted to assassinate President Jimmy Carter in 1980; unable to get close enough to him, he got his chance in 1981, shooting the new President, Ronald Reagan, who nearly died. Hinckley said he wanted to "impress" Foster.

The film was released just 5 months after the incumbent President, Gerald Ford, faced 2 failed assassination attempts within a matter of days; less than 4 years after the attempt on Wallace; 6 years after an attempted assassination of Pope Paul VI; 8 years after the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Senator Robert F. Kennedy; 11 years after the assassination of Malcolm X; and within 13 years of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Medgar Evers. For some people, it hit a little too close to home. Within 6 years, the world would see the murders of former Beatle John Lennon and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and attempts on the lives of Reagan and Pope John Paul II.

In 1982, De Niro starred in The King of Comedy, as a comedian who wanted to impress the host of a Tonight Show-like program, played by Jerry Lewis. Failing in that, he kidnapped the host, but did kill him.

Both Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy would be influences on the 2019 film Joker, a re-imagining of the origin stories of both the superhero Batman and his arch-nemesis, the Joker. In this film, set in Batman's fictional hometown of Gotham City (named for an old name for New York) in 1981, the now-much-older De Niro plays the Tonight Show-style host, Murray Franklin; while Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a mentally ill man in a world going madder around him, until he sees Franklin mock his standup comedy act, and he takes matters into his own hands, killing Franklin live on the air.

As with Taxi Driver, we're never sure just how much of Joker is really happening, especially the ending, or if it's happening in the protagonist's head. Phoenix even copied the "You talkin' to me?" scene.

*

February 9, 1976 was a Monday. Actor Charlie Day was born.

Baseball and football were out of season. There were no games in the NHL or the World Hockey Association. There was 1 game played in the NBA: The Houston Rockets beat the Kansas City Kings, 105-86 at The Summit in Houston. (The arena has since been converted into the Central Campus of the Lakewood Church, Dr. Joel Osteen's "megachurch.")

There were 2 games played in the American Basketball Association. The New York Nets lost to the Denver Nuggets, 138-119 at the Nassau Coliseum. And the Spirits of St. Louis beat the Virginia Squires, 112-105 at The Scope in Norfolk.

January 14, 1963: Governor George Wallace Declares "Segregation Forever!"

January 14, 1963: George Wallace is sworn in as Governor of Alabama for the first time. All Governors of that State are sworn in on a star on the portico of the State Capitol in Montgomery, marking the spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the Presidency of the Confederate States of America (before the capital was moved to Richmond).

Wallace couldn't help that. What he could help was what he said in his Inaugural Address.

He was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1946. In 1948, as a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention, he did not join the walkout of Southern Delegates over the Party platform's civil rights plank. But he did consider President Harry Truman's civil rights program an infringement on States' rights.

In 1952, he was appointed a State Judge. Although he spoke to black lawyers, witnesses and defendants from the bench with the same courtesy that he gave their white counterparts, his rulings were always pro-white. He argued that he was a segregationist, but not a racist. As if that was possible.

In 1958, Wallace made his 1st campaign for Governor. At the time, with the Republican Party still thought of as "The Party of Lincoln," there was hardly any presence for it in the Southern States. Therefore, in such States, winning the Democratic Primary was said to be "tantamount to election."

But Wallace was beaten in the Primary by the State's Attorney General, John M. Patterson, 32 percent of the vote to 26. Patterson had taken a stand against organized crime in the State. But, in the wake of the Little Rock Crisis the year before, he announced, "If a school is ordered to be integrated, it will be closed down." He was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Wallace knew why he lost, but, in expressing it, he used a word that I won't use here. In cleaned-up language, Patterson had outdone him on racial issues, and he swore that no one would ever outdo him on racial issues again.

At the time, the State Constitution forbid a Governor from succeeding himself: He could wait out 4 years, then run and win again, but not in back-to-back terms. When a supporter asked why he started using racist messages, Wallace replied, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about (N-word)s, and they stomped the floor."

In the Primary, Wallace got 32 percent. State Representative Ryan deGraffenried Sr., who favored civil rights, got just over 25 percent. Big Jim Folsom, Patterson's predecessor as Governor, ran again, and got just 1,000 fewer votes than deGraffenried. Had he finished 2nd, the history of American politics might have been changed. But the runoff would have only the top 2 candidates, and Wallace won it with 55 percent.

And so, it was Wallace who was sworn in on Jeff Davis' star on January 14, 1963. In a speech written by Klansman and former radio host Asa Earl Carter, Wallace said, "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!" The crowd in Montgomery roared its approval.

Five months later, Wallace stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium in Tuscaloosa to prevent the enrollment at the University of Alabama to 2 black people. Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and federal Marshals ordered him to get out of the doorway or face arrest on federal charges, and he got out.

America's racists chose to remember that he "stood in the schoolhouse door," and to forget that he caved in. Unlike Martin Luther King Jr., George Wallace wasn't man enough to defy a law he hated.

He had to leave the Governorship after the 1966 election, ran for President as a 3rd-party candidate in 1968, regained the Governorship in 1970, ran for President in the 1972, Democratic Primaries before being shot and paralyzed, left the Governorship again after the 1974 election, made one more Presidential run in 1976; and, with the State Constitution now allowing a Governor to run for re-election, was elected again in 1978 and 1982.

His near-death experience, and the pain caused by his condition, made him more compassionate, and led him to seek forgiveness from civil rights groups, and even embrace legislation that addressed their needs. He was forgiven by Coretta Scott King and Jesse Jackson.

On the other hand, he had, since his 4th and final term as Governor ended in 1987, fully embraced conservative ideology, though he never officially left the Democratic Party. and even what would later be called Christian Coalition, Tea Party and MAGA ideology.

In 1995, 3 years before his death, interviewed by John F. Kennedy Jr., the son and nephew of the men who sent Katzenbach to get him out of the schoolhouse door, for George magazine, Wallace said, "And now, segregation's gone. Good riddance." He died in 1998, and I'm sure he would have opposed Barack Obama every step of the way, but, somehow, I doubt he would have bought into the stupid Birther theories.

Former Governor John Patterson would also express regret for his racist campaigning and policy, and died in 2021, 4 months short of his 100th birthday.

Asa Earl Carter did not express any regret. Quite the opposite: He expressed regret that Wallace had a change of heart. He would later write the Western novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, which was turned into a film starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. Carter died in 1979.

*

January 14, 1963 was a Monday. Film director Steven Soderbergh was born.

Baseball and football were out of season. No games were scheduled in the NHL. There was 1 game in the NBA: The San Francisco Warriors beat the New York Knicks, 142-134 at the Cow Palace, outside San Francisco in Daly City, California. It was just another day at the office for Wilt Chamberlain: He scored 48 points and grabbed 33 rebounds.