This cartoon depicts Alabama Governor George Wallace as a high school “dropout.” He is leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette, while Black and White students attend integrated classes at a southern school. The previous spring Wallace had dramatically confronted federal officials attempting to integrate the University of Alabama. He “stood in the schoolhouse door,” as he put it, to defy a federal court order. Although Wallace is depicted here as politically irrelevant, he in fact became an influential symbol of opposition to federal power and civil rights protests in the 1960s. In 1968 and 1972, Wallace ran for president, first as a third party candidate and then in the Democratic primaries.
Dropout. Greenfield Recorder-Gazette, September 16, 1963. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l08-003/. Accessed on October 16, 2024.
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