Race remains a minor issue in a 1962 senatorial contest
LeMaistre examines the role of race in Senator Lister Hill's 1962 reelection campaign. Despite the fact that Alabama had been troubled by a number of violent, racially motivated incidents, such as the murder of Emmett Till, LeMaistre does not remember race playing a significant role in the race.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with George A. LeMaistre, April 29, 1985. Interview A-0358. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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But in the November election prior to that, race was not really the issue
between Martin and Hill; Martin, I guess, appealed to basic
business-conservative interest.
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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Except that he wasn't really running, as I recall it, on the issues of
what is good for business or what is not. He was running against Lister
Hill as not representing the people of Alabama. He [Hill] had gone to
Washington and become inoculated with the left-wing ideas, and that this
was foreign to what the people in this section wanted. That was the
theme of Martin's campaign.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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Of course, Clement was gone by this time.
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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Yes, he had been dead since September of '61. So it was about a year and
a half. The campaign really didn't stir the racial problems. As i recall
it, we didn't have any racial problems at the polls; we didn't have any
racial disturbances during the campaign. It may be that's because
everybody looked the other way, or it may be that the people who stirred
those disturbance up didn't think that was a good time to do it.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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But in November of sixty-two concern began to grow about integrating the
University because of the Mississippi—that was in September
of 1962.
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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Well, there was always the feeling of apprehension in Alabama that the
same thing might happen over here. I remember hearing Judge Reuben
Wright on a number of occasions talking about the activities of the
agitators—always called "outside
agitators"—that were going to get a number of those
blacks killed over in Mississippi. There were a number of incidents over
there other than the integration of the University. You remember the
black boy who was evidently thrown into the river.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
-
Till was his name]
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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Yes, Emmet Till, and he was weighted down with chains. The big joke that
was being spread around by the Ku Klux Klan was that was just like a
dumb nigger; he would steal so many chains that he couldn't swim across
the river with them. And they made a lot of that sort of thing. And I
think there were several instances in Birmingham. A black man was seized
on the side of the road and castrated by a group of Klansmen. I've
forgotten his name, but that made a big front-page story. So the general
attitude was that we really can't let this sort of thing happen around
here if we can prevent it. And I think a lot of people who would have
spoken in answer to some of the things that were said just held their
tongues rather than get into a controversy about it. If I'm not
mistaken, in the campaign, while there was an undercurrent of race
agitation, you might say, there wasn't anything
on top of the table. There weren't any platform planks or anything of
that sort that would say, "Look here, here's how I think about
this racial situation." They more or less avoided it.