Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the speaker that came today to talk to us during Randolph's MLK community time, had a lot of interesting and important points to make on what it was like in Alabama during a time of segregation and racism. Though she may have had used the old style of giving a scripted speech, which made it very hard for this generation of students to stay engaged through the whole thing, she spoke on many subjects that she was able to experience firsthand - as opposed to only being able to hear about it through older people like our generation.
One of the most interesting facts that stuck in my brain was the fact that her father, Governor George Wallace, ran first as a "racial moderate" candidate and lost. I thought that was understandable seeing as Alabama is one of the states more well-known for its inclination towards racism during that time. What surprised me about her statement was that her father had run as a racial moderate in the first place. Last week, they informed us that the daughter of Governor George Wallace was coming to speak to us on what it was like to have a racist government official for a father. This made me expect to hear all about how she felt having a racist father in the government. I did not expect her to talk about how he used to invite some of his African-American coworkers to lunch in his office so they didn't have to deal with the segregated cafes around their workplace. After she told us about his losing the election where he ran as a racial moderate, she told us that he later ran again as a racist and won. She was disappointed in him for giving up on who he was just to gain power.
Another thing that surprised me was when Mrs. Kennedy told us that she knew Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter. Not only that, but stood arm-in-arm with her! She told us that the two of them represented the "little black girl and little white girl" that Martin Luther King Jr. had spoken of in his "I Have a Dream" speech.
