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Stand Up for Alabama: Governor George Wallace. By Jeff Frederick. The Modern South. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, c. 2007. Pp. xiv, 489. $47.50, ISBN 978-0-8173-1574-0.)
Stand Up for Alabama: Governor George Wallace is the fourth major study of George C. Wallace's career. Although Jeff Frederick exaggerates when he says that most works on the civil rights movement reduce Wallace to a "static villain," he rightly notes that previous Wallace biographers Marshall Frady, Stephan Lesher, and Dan T. Carter paid slight attention to Wallace's impact on Alabama beyond the notorious violations of the rights of African Americans (p. viii). Frederick fills this gap by looking closely at Wallace's four terms as governor as well as the two years served by his first wife, Lurleen, before her death in 1968. Deals and battles about roads, reapportionment, schools, textbooks, state salaries, utility rates, mental health facilities, and industrial development are recounted at length. Given the historical profession's current slight interest in government operations, Frederick's approach deserves our admiration. He places these issues in the context of Alabama history, pays due attention to corruption, and judiciously evaluates the gains and losses. Alabamians had little faith in their...