I lived in Gadsden, Alabama for a while as a child in the 1970s. Almost every adult I met after we moved there from Ohio referred to Black people as the n-word —casually, routinely, sometimes even when Black people were standing right there.

Every white adult I knew practically worshiped Wallace as a god. His strong racism was expressly why they revered him.

Whether or not he ever renounced his racist views is probably unimportant. As far as the white people of Alabama were concerned, or at least the white people I knew, Wallace represented segregation, which they highly valued and desperately wanted to keep in place, if not by law then by social custom.

It's sobering to realize that while most of it those adults are now dead of old age, their children, who soaked up racism with mother's milk, are my age and at the height of political power and influence.

Perhaps they are moderately less racist than their parents, but I can attest that if so, it's not by much.