In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the lion in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. forever.

Woo! Forever.

Hello and welcome to Whistle Stop, a podcast of Campaign Curiosity's.

I'm John Dickerson of Face the Nation. Those were the famous words of Alabama governor George Wallace, the day he was inaugurated in 1963, five years before he became the most successful third-party candidate in the last 100 years.

You'll hear his name.

You've heard his name a lot in the age of Trump.

Like Trump, Wallace, was a nationalist outsider promising a restoration of real America,

suspicious of both parties, and handy with quick and easy solutions.

If only the clueless people in charge had a little common sense.

He promised to bring that common sense.

He perfected the art of sounding the racial dog whistle,

though in his case, he played something more like a racial pan flute.

He was a virtuoso.

He keyed on white fears of blacks in the south and the north,

with jerrymades against crime, communism, and unelected judges.

Other national politicians would follow that path, explicitly and implicitly, for the next 40 years. We'll have the Wallace story from 1968 in a moment, but first a word from our sponsor.

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