When Peggy Wallace was 13, she, her mother and her siblings sat at their lake house in Alabama watching the news — which showed her father, George Wallace, then governor of Alabama, standing in the doorway at the University of Alabama blocking its first African American students from entering the building.
Years later, Peggy Wallace — now Peggy Kennedy — and her husband Mark Kennedy, a former justice on the Alabama Supreme Court, took their 8-year-old son Burns to Atlanta to visit the Martin Luther King National Historic Site and Museum, where they saw a picture of George Wallace standing in that school house door.
Her son turned to her and asked, ”Why did Paw Paw do those things to other people?”
At that moment, she realized she had her own legacy to leave to her children.
“I knelt down beside Burns and drew him close,” she remembered.
“‘Paw Paw never told me why he did those things to other people,” she told him. “‘But I know he was wrong. It will just have to be up to you and to me to help make things right.'”
Speaking out
Even at 13, Kennedy didn’t agree with her father’s position on segregation, she said as she sat on the sofa in Mississippi University for Women’s Honors Office Thursday afternoon. She was back at the MUW, where she had attended for one year during her father’s presidential campaign nearly 50 years before, as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of integration at the university.
Her remarks were part of the Nell Peel Wolfe lecture series.
In recent years, Kennedy has become an outspoken advocate for civil rights. In 2009, she marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma while holding hands with activist turned Congressman John Lewis, and she’s won the Rosa Parks Legacy Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Woman of Courage Award from the Emmitt Till Legacy Foundation.
But it’s only in the last 10 years or so that Kennedy has begun speaking out publicly. In her remarks to students at Nissan Auditorium Thursday night, she encouraged them to find their voices and speak out against injustice wherever they saw it and wherever they had the chance.
“I’ve lost a lot for speaking up and speaking out,” she said. “But I encourage all of you, if you have not found your voice, you have one … and I encourage you to find it because it’s there. And when you find it, you need to speak up and speak out because you have something to say.”
She reminded them of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words: his dream that “one day right down there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
She and Bernice King fulfilled part of that legacy on the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery to Selma march when they stood and held hands on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol.
“For that moment in time, Bernice and I became the embodiment of the little black girl and the little white girl holding hands in Alabama,” she said. “Dr. King’s dream had come true.”
Race relations today
Still, she said during a question-and-answer session following her lecture, race relations still have a long way to go in the United States. It didn’t take long for one audience member to ask what similarities she saw between her father’s presidential campaign in the 1960s and President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016.
“My father and Donald Trump campaigned on the two greatest motivators, and that was fear and hate,” she said. “They were both very charismatic speakers. They would say things that … those people in the crowds were afraid to say out loud.”
Mark Kennedy, who sat on stage answering questions with his wife, added dryly that he thought George Wallace was probably more qualified than Donald Trump.
“He was a judge, he was a lawyer, he was familiar with the workings of government,” he said.
The Kennedys also talked about other issues like voting rights and social movements like Black Lives Matter and recent women’s marches.
But the most important thing Kennedy wanted the students to know was that the country’s diversity is what makes America great.
Before leaving, Mark told the audience a story about a man their son Burns met recently.
“(The man) looked at Burns and he said, ‘You’re Peggy Wallace Kennedy’s son, aren’t you?'” Mark said. “That moment when that man thought of Peggy first, before the fact that he was the grandson of George Wallace. That, for our family and for her, was the greatest compliment that anyone could give us.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
