After the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 and 1968, many white Southerners were outraged. They believed that the federal government and the Republican Party had abandoned their values by supporting civil rights for Black Americans. In response to this, Alabama Governor George Wallace ran for president in 1968 under the American Independent Party. Known for his infamous statement, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” Wallace became the only third-party candidate in the past 75 years to win any electoral votes. He won five Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Wallace’s campaign wasn’t just about segregation, it was about preserving a racialized social hierarchy that many white Americans relied on. The idea that Black Americans would be afforded equal rights and treatment under the Civil Rights Act was deemed unacceptable by many white Americans. While poor white Americans might not have been well off, many they reasoned that at least they held social power over Black Americans.
Many Americans believe that because our country was founded on individual freedom and equal opportunity, we don’t have a class system. The Constitution was designed to reject the old European systems of nobility and feudalism, and the “American Dream” has long promised that anyone can rise to success through hard work. Yet, economic mobility in America has always been restricted by systemic barriers that are a product of the racial hierarchy.
From the very beginning, America relied on a social order where Black people were forced into the permanent role of the lower class. Enslaved Black people were the laboring class that sourced the economic system, while white Americans rendered enslaved people not fully human. Even after slavery was abolished, Black Americans were forced into sharecropping across the South, which was essentially a continuation of slavery.
Through sharecropping, Black families worked on a plantation owner’s land, with minimal benefits, dignity and no chance for employment growth or economic mobility. America claimed to be a democracy, but it operated on a system that kept Black Americans at the bottom and white Americans, regardless of class, above them.
Class inequalities, hidden behind racial hierarchies, have become more visible over time. After the Civil Rights era, Black people, under law, were no longer America’s de facto poor class. Civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King Jr., were fighting for a vision of equality for Black Americans, demanding they have access to housing, education, jobs and social assistance programs. President Lyndon B. Johnson implemented civil rights legislation, affirmative action, housing acts and Section 8 programs to support the vision of equality.
But what does all of this have to do with our democracy now?
White Americans had grown used to having a designated group beneath them, and without a permanent peasant class of Black Americans the social order they depended on began to crumble. Today, conservative forces fight to bring the country back to what they see as the “Golden Age” of America, which is why we’ve seen the reversal of affirmative action and the attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
Many people don’t want Black Americans to advance because they believe it threatens their position in society. Some people believe that the programs advancing the opportunities of Black Americans are unfair “shortcuts,” though they refuse to acknowledge that systemic racism has made these programs necessary. They argue that DEI undermines meritocracy, but they fail to realize that America’s meritocracy only ever existed for white Americans.
America has never been a true democracy, as historically our feudal system kept marginalized groups at the bottom. Even today, non-white citizens are framed as “takers” — of American jobs, American houses, American safety. This rhetoric hasn’t gone away, it has been recycled and reproduced.
Wallace’s campaign for racial segregation is significant because it set the tone for what was to come, and many of the people who voted for him in 1968 are still alive, passing down those ideas. America’s two-party system continues to rely on the racial divisions Wallace exploited; racism prevents the class solidarity that could make America truly free.
Until white Americans recognize that their economic struggles are deeply connected to those of Black and other BIPOC Americans, we will stay trapped in the same system. We will never have a real democracy until we dismantle the racial and economic hierarchies that political leaders like Wallace ran on.
Melanie Guilderson can be reached at [email protected].
