What a George Wallace Rabbit Hole Taught Me
I often work inside the Tribeca Film offices.
Which means that on my way to mediate high-stakes human conflict, I walk past walls covered in movie history. Posters. Portraits. Faces that mean something to millions of people. It’s an oddly cinematic commute.
One afternoon, waiting for a client, I found myself standing in front of a poster with Robert De Niro’s face. He looked relaxed and friendly. Smiling. It was a comedy. And then there was Taxi Driver. The hollow stare. The menace mixed with loneliness. Travis Bickle.
The character’s disturbing in a quiet, slowly evolving way. He’s not a typical villain and many even consider him to have semi-heroic intentions. These days Travis Bickle feels more plausible than ever. So, later that night, I Googled what inspired this character.
A cultural icon made me curious and thus begins the rabbit hole.
From Fiction to Flesh – George Wallace Inspires Murder
Travis Bickle, I learned, was partly inspired by a real person: Arthur Bremer.
Bremer kept journals in the years leading up to his attempted assassination of presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. The screenwriter, Paul Schrader, drew inspiration from those diaries, his own isolation, and even a 1962 film by Satyajit Ray called Abhijaan.
Which meant that this fictional character I’d been thinking about was stitched together from loneliness, obsession, depression, political rage, and cinematic imagination.
Already, the rabbit hole had texture. But it wasn’t done with me.
George Wallace – The Name That Wouldn’t Go Away
Bremer had tried to kill George Wallace. I mulled that fact awhile… made some microwave popcorn, munched, and mumbled it to myself. Suddenly I knew why that name felt so familiar.
George Wallace. The governor who stood in the doorway to block Black students from entering the University of Alabama in 1963. The man who declared, “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever,” in his inaugural address. I remembered this virulent voice before I remembered his face.
After this recognition, I read about how George Wallace shifted his views in time with the country’s take on him. His behavior had consequences and thus he came to represent a key villain of the Civil Rights movement.
As a populist, a political strategy which aims to speak mostly to voters who feel disenfranchised by powerful elites, George Wallace was a powerful man literally blocking progress among the disenfranchised. It read as hypocrisy to me.
So, of course he shifted his views on segregation. This news aroused my usual reaction to opinion shifts among politicians: skepticism. Here we go, I thought. Another powerful man who softened his language when the culture shifted and called it growth. I’ve seen that move before.
Still, I kept reading when I noticed pictures of the students he blocked as grown adults further down in the article.
The Part I Didn’t Expect from George Wallace
And then I found out more about how this story ends. George Wallace didn’t just moderate his view on segregation. He apologized personally to Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, the students he’d tried to block in 1963. He met with each of them privately. George Wallace acknowledged the wrong he’d done and apologized. Then he honored Malone Jones publicly.
Hood later spent hours interviewing him and said George Wallace was haunted by the harm he’d caused. Not defensive. Not excusing. Not spinning for political gain. He was done with politics and just wanted to make amends. Haunted. That word stopped me. This is what we speak of when our conscience cries out to us.
Why This Mattered to Me
I work as a mediator. In this process I see a lot of almost-change between people. Many of those who have wronged others talk about wanting to make things right and the regret they feel. But they also often don’t act on these feelings. Many don’t change.
Maybe they regret being caught or the consequences of their actions and the discomfort of facing them. That’s not repentance. It’s more like reporting.
What I read about Wallace was different. It looked like moral reckoning. Like grief. This was a man who had to live inside what he’d done. And what moved me even more was this:
Malone forgave him.
Hood believed him.
Not because they were naïve.
Because they were discerning and they recognized sincerity when they saw it. They also attended that University he attempted to stop them from entering. His blockage had only been symbolic. Their registration on that day highlighted their bravery and the power of the Civil Rights movement.
Today we see their forgiveness as the righteous act and his apology as simply justice playing out its natural course. Of course he apologized. It was the right thing to do. Their forgiveness and faith was the powerful move. Just as their college entry was.
What the George Wallace Rabbit Hole Revealed
This whole journey down the George Wallace rabbit hole started with a movie poster. A bored moment. A passing curiosity. But it led me to a striking and clear example of genuine human change. It reminded me of facts I forget sometimes:
People are not static. History is not flat. Students really do become teachers.
Why Curiosity Matters
Sometimes, if you follow curiosity instead of outrage, like James Hood did with George Wallace, you find complexity.
You may find proof that:
Regret can matter
Repair can happen.
People can grow past who they were and make a difference in our lives.
In this case, George Wallace made a historical difference in 1963. He called attention to the harm racism does in the hands of powerful people. Millions of us watched the video of him blocking James Hood and Vivian Malone Jones. I was disgusted that a representative of our government could act like this. It showed me how naive I was. We all were.
All but Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood. They knew exactly who they were dealing with. That’s why this George Wallace rabbit hole matters to me. These two students keep teaching me what quiet courage looks like.
