Merry Christmas from DixieWatchman! 
Just a friendly reminder that right now the poorest region in the country is giving their hearts out to the rest of the country while crews are working round the clock at Arlington National Cemetery to give all us Southerners a national middle finger. 

"Let us rise to the call of the Freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South."
-Governor George C. Wallace, Inaugural Address, January 14, 1963


Few names in Southern political history evoke such powerful emotions as that of Alabama Governor and four-time Presidential candidate, George Corley Wallace, Jr. For decades Wallace's fiery speeches, confrontational style and popularity across his native South-and sectors of the North and Midwest-befuddled and infuriated both establishment politicians and intelligentsia from coast to coast.(A favorite video search of mine is to pull up Governor Wallace stumping the ever-pompous neocon godfather, William F. Buckley, on his show The Firing Line in 1968)

Wallace never achieved his goal of reaching the White House, though performing astonishingly well as an independent in 1968 and in the 1972 Democratic Primaries, when an assassin's bullet ended both his mobility and his Presidential aspirations.

So why does Wallace, dead for nearly 25 years now, still haunt the dark corners of the feeble minds of the the modern day political elites and intelligensia? When President Joe Biden invokes the Alabama Governor's name in order to denounce Republicans as racists(whatever that means nowadays), why does it have such power in the modern day left, many of whom were born after George Wallace left the Governor's Mansion for good in 1987?

There are many reasons why Wallace is still a boogeyman to the political left. But I believe on some level, the left still fears Wallace for a very basic reason. They believed then and now that they are the intellectual superiors of the rest of the nation, Dixie above all. They can never forget that when the campaign to portray every white man south of the Mason-Dixon line as a bestial, uneducated and out of touch relic began in earnest, they kept tripping over a little country judge from Barbour County, Alabama named Wallace.

Wallace grew up in the "Black Belt" of Alabama, near the little town of Clio(kly-oh) Unlike many of his later antagonists, Wallace likely had frequent contact, even played with black children in the little farming community. Later, in the Alabama Legislature he was the protege of notoriously liberal-and corrupt- Governor James E. "Big Jim" Folsom, Sr. In 1948, when the Southern "Dixiecrats" walked out of the Democratic National Convention, Delegate Wallace declined.

Do not misunderstand, his refusal to join the walkout cannot be interpreted as sympathy with desegregation, nor even loyalty to Folsom. This is easily proven by the fact that Wallace, in that same convention, nominated conservative segregationist Georgia Senator Richard B. Russell for Vice-President. Wallace simply believed it unwise for Southerners to abandon their ancestral home in the Democratic Party to the hands of the Marxist wing of the Party. Time would prove him right, as the failure of the State's Rights Party left Southerners with nothing left but to go to the ancestral enemy-the bland, unprincipled and equally corrupt Republican Party.

In 1952, Wallace was elected Circuit Judge of the Third Judicial Circuit in Alabama. Judge Wallace originally was considered something of a liberal-perhaps still with Folsom's residue on him. However, on May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education was issued, and Judge Wallace, a Southerner and State's Rights man at heart, could not fathom such an invasion of State powers by the central government.

Judge Wallace began to respond by ordering injunctions against removal of segregation signs in railroad stations, and denied that the Federal goverment had the authority to march into Barbour County demanding sensitive voting information. This won him the title locally of the "Fightin' Lil' Judge", in part a reference to Wallace's younger days as an Alabama Golden Gloves boxing champion. It also brought him to statewide attention, such that he made his first-and only unsuccessful run for Alabama Governor in 1958.

With Governor John Patterson term limited in 1962, Wallace once more threw his hat in the ring for the top spot in Alabama. However, things had changed in the four years since Wallace made his first bid for Governor. The decision in Brown v. Board of Education had been translated into Federal Court orders to desegregate schools. Moreover, these orders took the form of a United States military infestation of Dixie not seen since Reconstruction. On September 4, 1957, President Eisenhower snatched the Arkansas National Guard out of the hands of Governor Orval Faubus and sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock Central High to enforce desegregation- at the point of a gun to the backs of high school students in Arkansas.

The inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, in 1961 offered little chance for relief. For by now, as George Wallace had feared, the South no longer had the influence in the Democratic Party it held just twelve years earlier. For all the Southern support he received in 1960, the New Englander Kennedy was all too willing to follow in Eisenhower's footsteps.

The reaction of Southern Governors and their constitutents varied.

In Georgia, Governor Ernest Vandiver, whose 1958 Campaign had run with the slogan "No, not one"(school would be integrated in Georgia), meekly accepted desegregation and believed that no presence on his or the State of Georgia's part was necessary at the University of Georgia. Events proved him wrong as a riot nearly occurred between integration supporters and segregationists in January of 1961.

To the east, South Carolina, once the firebrand State of Dixie offered no better. Democratic Governor Ernest "Fritz" Hollings' meek statement could have been uttered by any neoconservative Southern Republican Governor today:
"As we meet, South Carolina is running out of courts...this General Assembly must make clear South Carolina's choice, a government of laws rather than a government of men. This should be done with dignity."

Harvey Gantt was ultimately admitted to Clemson University without incident, but the failure of Hollings and incoming Governor Russell to provide leadership ultimately created a nightmare for their sucessor, Governor Robert McNair who was forced to call out the South Carolina National Guard to deal with violent integrationists in Orangeburg.

The meek acceptance of the Governors of Georgia and South Carolina should have been lessons to other Governors in Dixie-ambivalence toward desegregation-especially after Federal humiliation of the citizens with threats of troops a la Reconstruction- left one with a very angry and confused constituency, seeking leadership but finding none.

In Mississippi there was no doubt where the Governor stood-and what the Feds were willing to do. After Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett responded to the court orders with an address on the importance of State's Rights, the Kennedy White House made threats of force against Ole Miss public knowledge, infuriating an already tense populace in the Magnolia State. Nick Bryant, The Black Man Who Was Crazy Enough to Apply at Ole Miss The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Autumn 2006

On September 30, 1962, the quiet little college town of Oxford, Mississippi was suddenly overwhelmed by 538 Federal Agents, made of few Federal Marshals, but chiefly of prison guards and border patrol. Quickly they seized Baxter Hall at Ole Miss, then seized the Lyceum as command center. For the already agitated crowd of Governor Barnett's supporters, this sight was too much; to the natives of Oxford, it must have seemed like Sherman had returned to finish off the town. Before it was all over, tear gas had been deployed on the crowd at Ole Miss, with cannisters striking a teenage girl and rendering one of the few Mississippi State patrolmen brave enough to stay unconscious. This triggered a riot which has been referred to as "the greatest conflict between federal and State authority since the Civil War" William Doyle, An American Insurrection, 2001

It was into this atmosphere that George Wallace entered the 1962 Alabama Governor's race. While Wallace made the promises he had made throughout his career-better schools, roads and the opening of trade schools in the State-his promise to "Stand Up for Alabama" caught national attention, when he promised to "stand in every schoolhouse door in Alabama" to prevent desegregation. He would soon be put to the test, as the Kennedy administration had determined that Wallace's alma mater, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, was its next target.

President Kennedy, perhaps having learned a little something from the Ole Miss disaster sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy to Montgomery to negotiate with Governor Wallace. The meeting was cordial, but it did contain allusions to "all the force of the Federal Government" being used to desegregate, and agreement that "another Mississippi" was undesirable. In a low point for the Administration, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach(one of the architects of the Ole Miss debacle) tried to blackmail Governor Wallace by threatening to reveal that he was receiving a 10% mental health disability benefit due to meningitis and combat fatigue suffered during World War II-ironically fighting for the government now breathing down his neck. According to Newsday Civil Rights reporter Michael Dorman, Attorney General Robert Kennedy even considered arresting and imprisoning Wallace in the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta-removing him as Alabama Governor- and perhaps hoping that the unusually large Black Muslim population in the prison might take care of the Wallace problem for them.

However, Wallace remained determined to fulfill his promise to "stand in the door way", and on June 11, 1963 did just that. Just prior to leaving for the University of Alabama, Governor Wallace received a telegram from Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach, urging him not to show up at the auditorium where the black students were to be registered as it would only lead to certain violence. The Governor calmly and confidently replied "My presence on campus guarantees peace". When he arrived at the campus that morning, George C. Wallace gave an address that is worthy of any Constitutional law class study. But often overlooked is a restatement of his telegram to Katzenbach:

"I stand before you here today in place of thousands of other Alabamians whose presence would have confronted you had I been derelict and neglected to fulfill the responsibilities of my office. It is the right of every citizen, however humble he may be, through his chosen officials of representative government to stand courageously against whatever he believes to be the exercise of power beyond the Constitutional rights conferred upon our Federal Government. It is this right which I assert for the people of Alabama by my presence here today."

The rest is well known history. Just as Eisenhower snatched the Arkansas National Guard away from Faubus, Kennedy snatched a very unhappy Alabama National Guard away from Wallace and used it against him to integrate the University. But integration at Alabama's flagship University took place with a notable exception: an absence of violence, disorder, confusion and embitterment. No one was hurt. Moreover, none of Wallace's supporters went away feeling as though they had been played, that their Governor had been AWOL or hidden during the final crisis. Alabama's Governor had talked the talk, and he had walked the walk. The Heart of Dixie took notice; so did her sister Southern States. By the late 1960s Wallace was a favorite son candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

George Wallace, by standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama, had made the best of a terrible situation and allowed a change he detested to come to his beloved Alabama peacefully-but maintaining as far as he could the dignity of his State in the face of the Federal Government itself. In the process he became a regional hero on his way to a national sensation who made the establishment shake in their boots and-at least pretend-to moderate their views.

It is for this reason that the late Governor is so reviled and by the political left today. For a brief period, at least until his paralysis from the assassination attempt, it looked like a country boy from Southeast Alabama had outsmarted them, and made the connections with the people they only bragged about. For one other reason the great man from Barbour County is so reviled and denounced-the fear on their part that Dixie might once again be capable of producing such a man. We can only hope.

Postscript: unbeknownst to the author, this blog was begun on June 11, 2023-the 60th anniversary of the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door"

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." -Proverbs 22:6

As worn out a phrase as it is, Spring often does bring with it a sense of renewal. In Dixie Traveller's own little corner of the world, it seems to be a time for birth-when family lines that seemed on the verge of extinction have suddenly begun to blossom once more, bringing hope for Dixie's future-if nurtured properly.

I rarely make it back to my former home, a Southern town that sadly, saw its best days sixty years ago and has been in rapid decline ever since. But the celebration of a milestone birthday of a relative who has been rather sickly lately was enough to draw myself from my rural hideaway for a few hours back into the remains of town for a chance to catch up with old family, meet new spouses and in-laws and be a friendly, if somewhat awkward face at the party.

On entering my cousin's lovely home, once of the first things I noticed was that the wife of another cousin was already showing her pregnancy. Somewhat lacking in tact as I do, I made sure to verify with another relative that the lady was indeed pregnant so I could congratulate her (you never live it down if you congratulate a woman who just put on a few pounds on being pregnant).

As the evening went on I reminded the Father-to-be of a time when we all swore we would never have children. We were young and had better things to do, and besides, the standard baloney about not wanting to bring a child into such a crazy world. He remembered this, but what seemed trivial and inconvenient a decade ago now seemed important, worth making sacrifices for. Both parents are honestly excited and overjoyed at the prospect of being parents.

Still I returned home to another piece of good news. A text informing me that two long-time friends of mine, both Southern Nationalists when Southern Nationalist wasn't cool, were announcing the birth of their first child of this summer. It was impossible to contain the wave of enthusiasm I felt for two couples I cared deeply for; and moreover, it seems that with the renewal of the land and creatures that always comes with Spring, Southern bloodlines in need of replenishing are finally being refreshed with new blood.

Yet as happens with a pessimist, my enthusiasm soon turned to reflection, and reflection to concern.

I cannot speak highly enough of both couples, and doubtless their children will be raised in the most loving and nurturing homes and families the parents can provide. Their offspring will come from fine old Southern families (not to pat the Dixie Traveller family on the back too hard) with long lineages in Dixie. Both will be direct descendants of Confederate soldiers, between them enough to form a full Company. But unfortunately, this is where the similarities somewhat end.

In the case of the first couple, the child will be raised in the South, but in an urban/suburban environment, the least Southern part of the State, if not the South itself. While having the Blessing of two extremely sensible parents, the child will doubtlessly be entrusted, for social and economic reasons, to the godless public school system, and as such, be fed the steady, toxic diet of State Propaganda- Critical Race Theory, Gender Dysphoria, The Patriarchy and likely some other form of bastardized history still being concocted at the time of this writing. If the child's parents do not intervene, it will likely by the age of ten have internalized a powerful hatred of self, one which the little one's foreign and Northern-born classmates and friends will be more than happy to reaffirm is the only identity they are "allowed" to have. Even worse, the child with this complex will inhabit a small part of a State he shares with the second-and inherit the potential for political and social conflict between them.

The child of my Southern Nationalist friends will grow up in a different Dixie-in many ways a more authentic one. Their child (boy or girl) will doubtlessly know how to hunt, fish, build a campground, skin a buck and run a trot line (with apologies to Bocephus).
Moreover, the child will grow up in a rural area, with a sense of place and attachment to the land that the first may lack or may even regard as useless sentimentality. Despite facing the same financial hurdles as the first, the second child will likely be homeschooled with materials that, if not overtly pro-Southern, will at least be objectively written and taught. This child will also have the voices of SCV members, young and old telling them stories of Southern heroes such as George Washington, Davy Crockett, Jim Bridger, Robert E. Lee and Audie Murphy.

But despite growing up in the world that my soon-to-be cousin didn't, this Southern-reared child will have almost as much disadvantage as the urban/Normie reared child-simply delayed. Reaching adolescence the child will develop an interest in dating, only to find extremely limited opportunities due to the plummeting birth rates among us. Whether seeking further education through college or vocational training, the homeschool education and credits received will be considered suspect and the young adult as ill-suited to work in tomorrow's degenerate corporate culture. With virtually all agricultural land now in the hands of foreigners, farming will no longer be an option for the young ruralite. Our young Southerner is basically faced with two options at this point-a lifetime of poverty or barely getting by-or to repudiate his parent's teachings and embrace (or at least regurgitate) the State propaganda his city counterpart was trained from childhood to embrace and has made him such a good citizen in "our democracy". The Southerner will not be the first faced with this choice-this choice is basically the dividing line between the Old South and the New "Sunbelt" South.

In one of my all-time favorite television shows, Sheriff Andy Taylor is talking to a man who's become a bad influence in Opie's life. The man asks Andy why he doesn't just let the boy decide on his own how to live his life. The wise Sheriff replies "it don't work that way. You can't let a young'n decide for himself. He'll grab at the first flashy thing with shiny ribbons on it. Then, when he finds out there's a hook in it, it's too late. Wrong ideas come packaged with so much glitter, it's hard to convince them other things might be better in the long run. All a parent can do is say "wait" and "trust me" and try to keep temptation away."

This is one of the great questions for our generation to answer: Will our children be guided by our steady hand toward what we Southerners know is better in the long run, or will we let the world cast its ribbons at them, and allow them to be hooked? When the first rays of the Sunny South's dawn fall on these precious little Southerners, they deserve an answer-and a plan.

If you grew up in the South in the age of television, especially from the 1960s to the early 90s, chances are if
you flipped on the tube on Saturday afternoon you could catch pro wrestling ("rasslin" South of the Mason-Dixon line).
While the fancy rasslin' like WWE was and is still based in the northeast, wrestling was more territorial back then with big name stars making their way to individual promotions throughout Dixie.

To name just a few, Tri-State, Mid-South, Smokey Mountain, Georgia Championship, Global, and USWA are some of the Southern organizations or territories which made national and local stars available to the average viewer.
 
Paul DeMarco, Nick Bockwinkel, Penny Banner, Johnny Weaver, Wahoo McDaniel, the Mighty Infernos, the Torres Brothers, Doug Gilbert and Bobby Shane were just a few of the names Southerners of that era remember.

In these more innocent days of wrestling, local high school gyms were places where people of the communities could meet, socialize,discuss their favorites, possibly get in fights over matches themselves.
 We even know of a husband and wife who met through writing articles to Ringsider, a wrestling magazine popular in the Carolinas and Georgia at the time, based on their shared love of the Assassins-the tag team terrors of Georgia Championship Wrestling, whose Championship belt featured Confederate Flags beside the promotion's logo. 

Sometimes the wrestlers even adopted gimmicks which affectionately poked fun at the local folks. Alabama Championship Wrestling had the "Scufflin Hillbillies", the overall-clad tag-team whose exploits included tearing apart studios on a trip into Georgia.

Not to be outdone, Memphis-based MidSouth Wrestling featured "Captain Redneck"(Texan and future star Dick Murdock) teaming against the Confederate Flag-waving Fabulous Freebirds.

Even as northeast based WWE started to expand in the 1980s, NWA promoter Sam Muchnick declared Atlanta the "leading wrestling city" for its draws at the Civic Center, and later the Omni. The Omni even put on the first "Hell in a Cell"-style match in the Fall of 1983 when Tommy Rich faced off with Buzz Sawyer in a match billed as "The Last Battle of Atlanta".

Later, around the time TBS became a Superstation, Georgia Championship Wrestling folded. After briefly being a WWE satellite, it was taken over by Jim Crockett promotions which was picked up by Atlanta's Ted Turner and rebranded to the country as World Championship Wrestling (WCW),
introducing a new generation of Southerners to pro wrestling through WCW Saturday Night(though WCW would later engage in the infamous Monday Night Wars with WWE).
The early days of WCW earmarked it as a Southern promotion. While the "Power Plant" trained the next generation in Atlanta, the Fabulous Freebirds came to the ring blaring Lynyrd Skynyrd and the "Wild Eyed Southern Boys" tag team came to the ring wearing Southern Cavalry costumes with Confederate trunks.  The early matches of WCW were even called by a friendly familiar face- Gordon Solie, who gained regional fame as the announcer on Championship Wrestling of Florida.

Sadly, wrestling like NASCAR eventually fell to political correctness. But like NASCAR, its origins in the Southern part of America can't be ignored.

Wrestling in North America first breathed life in the back country of Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and the Carolinas. The Scottish, Scots-Irish and border English settlers to these territories brought with them the feats of strength shows which had been popular in the old country where strength was valued as both manly and necessary to carve a living out of the land-much as they would in the South. The "townball" games of Puritan New England would not become popular in Dixie until the 20th century, when Southern colleges came to dominate College Football.

The Celtic-style games such as hammer throwing, shot putting(sometimes with actual cannonballs!) and running and jumping(track and field) were standard entertainment to the excited and often beery crowds . Before he was ever known as a General or politician, a young Andrew Jackson was impressing his Appalachian North Carolina community with his running and leaping abilities.

But "rasslin" as the back country men called it, stole the show.  It usually began with the two men, after a few drinks, "bragging and boasting" for the crowd-an early version of today's wrestling promos. The two men would be asked if they wanted a "fair fight" or "rough and tumble". When the answer was almost always "rough and tumble", a cheer would go up from the crowd. The two men took hold of each other, as if to grapple, and then quickly turned it into an "Extreme wrestling"event-fingernail slashing, eye gouging, biting of noses and ears and brawling which would make a Celt proud. There were no "pins" like modern wrestling- it was about endurance, continuing until one man either admitted defeat, or was judged too badly hurt to continue.

Thomas Ashe, an early Irish visitor to America recalled a particularly violent match between a Kentuckian and a Virginian which ended only after the Virginian bit the Kentuckian's nose so badly he couldn't continue any longer.

Once the also badly hurt winner had been declared, roaring crowd "chaired him around the grounds", lifting him high above their heads as a local hero.

As early as 1772, attempts were made in  Virginia to outlaw the practice of rough and tumble "wrasslin" that occurred during such events. A Franklin County Tennessee jury in 1800 denounced the practice and demanded that the offenders be brought to justice.  But in the more isolated Southern Appalachians and Piedmont, such "bloodsports" remained as both entertainment and training for a population that had to, as Johnny Cash put it in the immortal "Boy Named Sue"- "get tough or die".