Nation: What You Believe In

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Alabamans last week picked for their next Governor a man whose segregationist ideas would make Orval Faubus seem like an admirer of the N.A.A.C.P. Winner of a Democratic primary runoff: former Circuit Judge George C. Wallace, 42, of Barbour County.

Wallace, a onetime state Golden Gloves featherweight champion ("The Barbour Bantam"), campaigned on a segregationist platform that seemed extreme even by Alabama standards. The federal judiciary, he claimed, is "lousy and irresponsible." U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., who once ordered voting records turned over to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, was an "integrating, scalawagging, carpetbagging liar." Promising that he would refuse to obey "any order to mix races in our schools," Wallace offered to "stand in the schoolhouse door," and, if need be, go to jail before permitting integration. To suggestions that his position might be too strong for the voters to stomach, Wallace retorted: "How can you be too strong on what you believe in? There isn't any middle of the road. You're either for it or against it."

Wallace's opponent, State Senator Ryan deGraffenried, 37, assured the electorate that he was as good a segregationist as the next man. But Wallace's intemperance, he charged, would only stir up violence and chaos. Cried he: "It's been the same pattern in every state where you have a loudmouth, rabble-rousing Governor. They have brought the walls of segregation tumbling down on their heads."

Wallace won, 338,961 to 267,612.