George Wallace Segregationist Comic from the 1960s

Back on Martin Luther King Day, scans of the civil rights comic "The Montgomery Story" were doing the rounds. The comic was to spread information about using civil disobedience to fight segregation, and is generally a heartwarming story about the power of comics.

The medium, however, is only as good or bad as what people do with it, and so it has inevitably been used not only to inform and empower, but also to spread disinformation and express loathsome sentiments. No, I'm not talking about "Trouble." I'm talking about the 1960s campaign comic for George Wallace, the former Alabama governor best known for the line "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."The comic -- which naturally fails to include a single black person -- paints Wallace as a populist, willing to stand up for the (white) people of Alabama again the big bad know-it-all government that kept telling them how to run their state, e.g. treat all of their citizens as actual people.

It makes a lot of references to defending the Alabama "way of life" (racism), and and features an incredulous Alabamian who can't fathom why Washington would get upset with Wallace for refusing to obey the laws of the federal government.

Oh, and we also get to see Wallace sitting around in some kind of corner store talking with the common man, when he's not personally chopping stove wood, plowing corn, and yes, picking cotton, because he's a blue collar guy, just like you. Assuming you're white, and full of hate!

[via Tim Leong]