Assassination, Alabama Style

WI George Wallace was assassinated by a black radical or anyone else before 1968? Besides Nixon sweeping the Confederacy 157-0 against any Democrat that year.
 
It actually might've been a closer election and Nixon may even lose. Wallace pulled away a lot of blue collar Democrats from voting for Humphrey.

OTH if it's a Black nationalist doing the shooting, it might seem like the start of a race war in some people's eyes, a retaliation for MLK's murder. You might see a small number of people on both ends of the spectrum willing to take down the other side's leaders violently. Jesse Jackson and the leaders of the Panthers fear for their lives even more, as do Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddox.
 

Ibn Warraq

Banned
It actually might've been a closer election and Nixon may even lose. Wallace pulled away a lot of blue collar Democrats from voting for Humphrey.

OTH if it's a Black nationalist doing the shooting, it might seem like the start of a race war in some people's eyes, a retaliation for MLK's murder. You might see a small number of people on both ends of the spectrum willing to take down the other side's leaders violently. Jesse Jackson and the leaders of the Panthers fear for their lives even more, as do Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddox.

For starters, it was a really close election to begin with. Nixon won the popular vote by less than 1%.

Second, while many Dems like to believe that Wallace cost Humphrey the election just as Republics like to blame Bush the elders loss on Perot, that just not true.

Third, the norther blue collar democrats you're referring to probably would have voted for Nixon over Humphrey or they would have simply stayed home. Nixon was hitting all the right cords with them, particularly crime and unrest. You can't underestimate how badly the Dees, Dems and Does Democrats were turned off by the protestors at the Chicago convention.

Fourth, without Wallace, Nixon wins Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.

All that being said. If Wallace is murdered by a black radical, something I find unlikely considering his security, than the Civil Rights movement gets set back, and blacks in the South wind up facing severe retaliation. Remember that was a time when black man who went into the wrong restaurant in Birmingham was taking a real risk and a black man seen holding hands with a white woman in Atlanta was signing his death warrant.
 
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