Donald Trump’s narrow escape from an assassin’s bullet led me – a historian who has written about political polarization and the Civil Rights Movement – to think back to another norm-smashing populist who encountered death on the campaign trail: former Alabama governor and U.S. presidential candidate George Wallace.
By 1972, Wallace’s image was fixed in most Americans’ minds as the face of the white South’s violent response to the Civil Rights Movement. Wallace had skillfully deployed divisive, racially tinged attacks against liberals, government and protesters to become a serious contender for the presidency.
