Screening:
Friday April 28, 10:15 AM, Charles 3

Synopsis:
"And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever !" George Wallace was a fascinating and important part of American 20th Century politics, and this film documents the whole texture of his life with an unblinking eye. The man who stood in the schoolhouse door and therefore personified resistance to the sweeping changes of the Civil Rights Movement, Wallace started his political career as a populist known for championing the little guy and ended his career reconciling with many in the African-American community he had made his enemy.

His angry message reached far beyond the South; in 1968 his 3rd party candidacy almost threw the presidential election before the U.S. Congress, and in 1972 he won the most primary votes of any Democratic candidate. As Pat Buchanan asserts in the film, Wallace was the first spokesman for a specific kind of anger against the federal government that is part of our political scene to this day.

Tidbit:
" I have no problem forgiving George Wallace. I will not forget George Wallace because we must deal with the reality of Wallace. How is it that a demagogue, insulting twenty million black people daily on the television, can rise to the heights that Wallace did ?" --J.L. Chestnut, a black attorney from Selma.

Bios:
Daniel McCabe has won two Peabody Awards, and he has worked as director, producer, and writer on episodes of the PBS series Rock and Roll. He coproduced and edited Nixon: The Fall and Eisenhower: Soldier.

Paul Stekler has won two Emmys, two Peabody Awards, and three Alfred J. Dupont-Columbia Journalism Awards. He has directing credits on Eyes on the Prize II, Vote for Me: Politics in America, and Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics.

Taylor Branch is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian best known for his work on the Civil Rights Movement, Parting the Waters, and its successor, Pillar of Fire. Taylor is a graduate of UNC-CH where he was a Morehead Scholar, and he holds a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. Among many awards he is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. He is also Executive Producing (with Harry Belafonte and Jon Avnet) an eight-hour mini-series about the Civil Rights Movement adapted from his books.

Dr. Levi Watkins is the Associate Dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Professor of Cardiac Surgery, and is the first African American to achieve these positions at Hopkins. Dr. Watkins graduated from Tennessee State University, and was the first African American admitted to and to graduate from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. In a distinguished medical career, Dr. Watkins has developed several techniques for the implantation of the automatic implantable defibrillator, surgical techniques that have saved over 100,000 lives. As a child in Montgomery, Alabama, Watkins attended First Baptist Church with Pastor Ralph Abernathy and Dexter Avenue Church with Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Watkin's father and brother had many dealings with George Wallace.

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