The College Fix

This is a powerful story of one woman’s fight to battle the sins of her family’s past. The daughter of infamous Alabama segregationist, Gov. George Wallace, is now working to heal the racial wounds her father helped to create:

At the height of the civil rights movement, [Gov.] Wallace defiantly defended state and local laws that sought to keep blacks and whites separated in schools, restaurants and many other public places. He gained worldwide attention when he tried to block two black students from attending the all-white University of Alabama.

Peggy Wallace — just 13 years old at the time — recalls the impact of her father’s actions.

“The rest of the world, when they saw his name or a picture of him, there’s an asterisk by his name or picture: ‘That’s the man who stood in the Schoolhouse Door, that blocked the two African-American students from entering that university,’” she said.

Confronted by federal authorities with a court order, Wallace finally stepped aside and the black students entered the school.

Peggy Wallace married and raised a family — rarely speaking about her father until the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first black president in 2008.

“I decided that day that I had to do something, you know,” she said. “I had to stand for something, leave a legacy to both of my children.  And that was later on in my years, but I was able to find my own voice and step away from the shadow of the Schoolhouse Door.”

Now Wallace is doing all she can to erase the bigotry her father promoted by advocating racial tolerance.  For the last several years, she has joined forces with black civil rights activists in commemorating a bloody siege on a bridge in Selma, Alabama.  It’s where her father ordered state police to brutally attack civil rights marchers.  Crossing the bridge years later, Wallace even joined hands with Congressman John Lewis who was beaten by police there nearly 50 years ago…

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