Stu Levitan welcomes historian Ben Hubing, author of the new book George Wallace in Wisconsin: The Divisive Campaigns that Shaped a Civil Rights Legacy.
Only one person ran for president in every election from 1964 to 1976. That was Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, the man who in his 1963 inaugural address vowed “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and six months later literally stood in the schoolhouse door of the University of Alabama to block the entrance of two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood.
The following February, he stood on stage at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union as a featured speaker in its Discourses on Dissent symposium. A month later, he stood on stages throughout the state, as a candidate for president in the Democratic primary. And on April 7, he shocked the state, and dismayed a good part of it, by getting 34% of the party primary, and about 25% of the total Democratic and Republican vote.
He would run again in the following three elections, twice as a Democrat, once as an independent. In 1976, he did well enough to actually get ten Wisconsin delegates to the national convention.
Why Wallace ran, and what his campaigns meant for Wisconsin, is the business that occupies Ben Hubing in his first book, published by the History Press.
George Wallace in Wisconsin is a book Ben Hubing is well-qualified to write, as a graduate of the UW Madison with a masters in teaching from Cardinal Stritch university and masters in history from UW-M, with a focus on the intersection of civil rights, politics and constitutional history. He is the recipient of a number of awards, including a James Madison Foundation Fellowship and a Herb Kohl Teaching Fellowship. A high school educator and educational consultant, he lives in Shorewood with his wife Nickie and their three children. It is a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat Ben Hubing.
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