Getting Along With Wallace
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union GETTING ALONG WITH WALLACE BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS The other day I telephoned my friend John Huelett, the remarkable black sheriff of Lowndes County, Alabama, and asked him if...
...It abolished literacy tests, prohibited racist gerrymandering and extended to frightened blacks throughout the South the reassuring shelter of Federal registrars and poll-watchers...
...Huelett said he had more trouble with blacks than with whites...
...You bet," said John...
...Overcoming the dangers of a split black vote and a solid white vote, Huelett collected 900 more ballots than did his three opponents combined...
...Huelett is an indefatigable lecturer at black churches and before various black youth groups in the area...
...No, he had never endorsed Wallace...
...the story had chafed my Northern-liberal sensibilities...
...state laboratory workers analyzed fingerprints and other clues...
...Moreover, he carried all eight precincts, at least two of which have white majorities...
...John smiled and took it...
...Accordingly, although Huelett was a founder of Alabama's New Democratic party (NDPA)????A black alternative to Alabaman white Democracy And ran four years ago under the NDPA banner, he ran this time as a traditional Democrat...
...Now, as I dialed John's number in Haynesville, I wondered if the bird had inadvertently flown into a nest of vipers...
...Was Wallace friend or foe...
...Such reversals are unsettling but hardly mysterious...
...Especially with the kids...
...Even Charles Evers, the courageous black mayor of Fayetteville...
...I've tried hard to get a white deputy, but the ones who apply either drink too much or they have a record...
...I confess to having felt a certain pique...
...Well," I pressed, "does that mean that you're for Wallace...
...He works at it 14-18 hours a day...
...There was this one boy I picked up Sunday night-he was too drunk to drive...
...They are staying out of trouble...
...They reflect what Max Weber has called a "normalization" of bureaucracy that follows every successful crusade: after the deluge, accommodation...
...Now we get the best responses from the white community...
...John picked us up at the airport and we all piled into the front seat...
...It's good for the kids...
...And some of them are inclined to think I owe them a favor...
...Only at elections...
...Well, his mother comes to take him home and she complains that I shouldn't have locked him up...
...Take him home and teach him.' " Of the 13 homicides that have occurred thus far during Huelett's stint, all the victims and all the arrestees have been black...
...he said...
...John won the election becoming the first black sheriff in the history of "bloody Lowndes" by only 210 votes, 2,078 to 1,868...
...Sometimes they all play ball together in the yard...
...Here was this brave man, a veteran of countless civil rights wars and a walking metaphor for the "New South," allegedly singing the praises of that confounded, durable demagogue, the politician who had stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama in 1963 and said to Deputy Attorney General Nicholas DeB. Katzenbach and two black students, You shall not pass...
...As we talked I realized that in writing about Huelett's electoral triumph four years ago ("Sheriffs North and South," NL, November 30, 1970) I had overlooked one small matter: What he had won was not a trophy but a job...
...That means he can't go to Washington and get Federal grants unless someone in the state capital gives him the green light...
...Montgomery transported prisoners...
...But he enjoys a good deal of political support from the white community...
...At first the white kids might kick up a fuss if I stopped them for speeding or something...
...about 1,200 blacks now hold elected office, from county commissioner to congressman...
...On the morning I called she had just arrested a man on a charge of attempted homicide...
...I stressed doctrinal trends: Had he endorsed Wallace...
...No white group has yet invited Huelett to speak...
...No, Most people, when they see the badge, they respect it...
...Last month, running again for sheriff, Huelett easily won a Democratic primary against three challengers, two of whom were also black...
...It's not always easy to keep law and order here," Huelett said...
...Now the black people, they're not trained to respect the law...
...But we keep working at it...
...famous victims are lunching with their quondam victimizers...
...You can't get a thing done without him...
...It was the second time that happened with him...
...You can't blame the blacks," says John Lewis, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and now head of the Voter Education Project in Atlanta...
...Still, Huelett has managed to strike a blow for another kind of integration: One of his deputies is a woman...
...Did he agree with Wallace...
...Do you always carry a gun...
...The first thing John told me turned out to be important: He had never heard of Tom Wicker...
...States of the Union GETTING ALONG WITH WALLACE BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS The other day I telephoned my friend John Huelett, the remarkable black sheriff of Lowndes County, Alabama, and asked him if what Tom Wicker had written in the New York Times was true namely, that Huelett had publicly endorsed the candidacy of George Wallace for governor...
...seven days a week...
...John, meanwhile, was thinking about his day-to-day duties...
...They get to know the juveniles who are locked up...
...Thus the stars over Alabama, and over most other Southern states, are forming strange new configurations...
...But I think things are getting better," John told me...
...Do you know, in most Southern states, a local politician can't even get travel money to leave the county without permission from the state...
...The caged bird has been released...
...My questions and his answers highlighted the differences...
...Just to make sure he won't miss anything, Huelett has moved himself and his family (he and his wife have eight children, ranging in age from 6-23) into a three-bedroom apartment behind the jail...
...The next morning a friend of his said to me, "It's a new day in Lowndes County...
...Mississippi, whose brother Medgar was murdered by white supremicists...
...I seem to be sitting on something very strange," Diane said, fishing for the offending object...
...On the other hand, as sheriff he had gotten "a lot of good cooperation from the state...
...If you give them a ticket, they'll thank you for it...
...That act, which expires next year, inaugurated a period of mini-Reconstruction...
...Nonetheless, progress has been made...
...In sum, many white people may feel about Huelett's candidacy the way Huelett feels about Wallace's: He's not the man one would choose in a world of one's own making, but he's there, and he seems to be getting the job done...
...They are beginning to stop themselves...
...His message never varies: Study hard, work hard and don't break the law...
...Every black official has to depend on white good will...
...Clearly, we were reading different publications And taking different readings...
...I remembered Huelett's nervy campaign for sheriff in 1970, the dark and lonely roads, the threatening phone calls...
...it is a black hand closing firmly on a voting-machine lever...
...His mother's a school teacher...
...It has been nine years since Congress passed the landmark Voting Rights Act, seeking to guarantee protection at the ballot box to all citizens and especially to eligible black voters in the South, then 6 million strong, whose rights had been systematically suppressed ever since Hayes beat out Tilden in 1876...
...The result has been a flesh-and-blood political transformation, beyond what generally gets recorded in the dead pages of high school civics texts: More than 2.5 million Southern blacks are now registered...
...Huelett has two deputies, both black...
...Diane asked...
...It seems he had shot his former mistress in the leg...
...I had to take him to jail...
...The symbol of black power in the South is no longer a clenched fist (which, after all, is empty...
...Lambs are consorting with lions...
...Did he give your deputy any trouble...
...She found it And discovered that for the first time in her life she was holding a gun...
...He's never had a vacation and he's forever on call...
...As it was coming down to the wire my wife, Diane, and I flew to Montgomery...
...Is that loaded...
...It is also John Huelett's children playing baseball with white and black "juveniles" in the prison yard...
...has publicly suggested that Wallace would make a fine vice-presidential candidate...
...He's in charge," John said...
...I told her he had to learn to behave better...
...I asked...
...The kids are nice and humble...
...You're a teacher.' I said...
...So the new politics of Wallace's Alabama resembles the old politics of pragmatism, with its alliances between blacks and whites...
Vol. 57 • July 1974 • No. 14
