Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the 69-year-old daughter of the infamously segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, sees parallels between her father’s politics and that of President Donald Trump.
At an event last week at the Birmingham Public Library, Wallace Kennedy told attendees that she “saw daddy a lot in 2016,” according to AL.com writer John Archibald’s column published on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately it does look like the ‘60s now,” she said.
Wallace Kennedy also said the “two greatest motivators” at her late father’s rallies were “fear and hate.”
“There was no policy solution,” she continued. “Just white middle-class anger.”
Besides his racist tweets, Trump frequently incenses his supporters over his political enemies (who are often people of color) to the point where one crowd at a rally chanted “send her back” in response to his rant about naturalized citizen Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) earlier this month. Trump first claimed he wasn’t “particularly happy” with the chants (despite allowing the chants to continue for more than 10 seconds until they died out), then later backtracked and praised the chanters as “patriotic.”
Wallace, whom civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. once called “perhaps the most dangerous racist in America,” touted his staunchly pro-segregation stances in fiery campaign rally speeches when he ran for president three times in the 1960s and ’70s. And as governor of Alabama, he ordered state troopers to “use whatever measures are necessary” to halt civil rights activists’ march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, leading to a violent conflict known today as “Bloody Sunday.”
“I hope we don’t go back,” his daughter said at the event, according to AL.com. “But it looks like where we are slipping — that seems to be where the top is taking us.”
