Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey faced criticism in 2017 for supporting accused teen sex predator Roy Moore for U.S. Senate: Google

Editor’s Note: Monday, April 23 was celebrated in Alabama as Confederate Memorial Day, a state holiday that some say should be removed from the official calendar much like the Confederate Battle Flag was removed from state capitol buildings. The controversy over removing Confederate monuments which sparked protests in New Orleans and Charlottesville, Virginia has now flared up in Alabama, potentially roiling the race for governor in 2018.

By Mark Mayfield –

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — By the time I graduated from college in the late 1970s, I was convinced the state of Alabama was moving beyond its past and was ready, in a positive sense, to begin enjoying the rewards that come with fully accepting diversity and treating all — not just some — of its citizens with dignity and respect.

Those rewards, by the way, would include more jobs, more opportunities, better healthcare, higher wages, and overall, a higher standard of living. Because here’s the deal: Positive publicity nationally and internationally translates into more companies that might want to locate here. There was no reason, whatsoever, to continue to fight a lost cause — namely, the tired old “states’ rights issue” that George Wallace and others continued to perpetuate, even as Alabama slipped further behind other states in quality of life.

Wallace mellowed as the years went on — though the damage he did the state in taking up the segregationist mantle in the early 1960s was long lasting. He later apologized for his stance, and tried his best to convince reporters that he was a changed man.

“I want you to see what I’ve done for blacks,” Wallace told me during a 1987 interview for USA Today. “Blacks voted 74 percent (in a statewide survey) that I was the best governor Alabama ever had.”

It is true that as more black Alabamians began to register to vote with the momentum of the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Wallace dropped his segregationist stance, and began appointing African Americans to state offices.

Immediately following my interview with Wallace in 1987, I called up Vivian Malone Jones, who was one of two black students that Wallace had tried to block from enrolling at the University of Alabama during his infamous “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” in 1963.

“I understand that he says he regretted what he did. But I can’t separate his deed from the person,” Jones said then. “What he did was not right.”

Now, 31 years after that interview with Wallace and 40 years since I graduated at the University of Alabama, there is no doubt that this state has made great progress in terms of race relations, and in coming to terms with the stain of inequality in its history.

Yet, that forward momentum continues to wash up against self-inflicted wounds made by a series of elected or appointed leaders in this state. The latest comes from Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who last year made a huge misstep by announcing her support for Roy Moore, possibly the most flawed candidate for U.S. senator in Alabama history.

Now, Ivey has made another blunder. In a new campaign ad, she brags about her support of the horrendous Alabama Memorial Preservation Act, passed by the Legislature and signed by Ivey last year. The governor claims this bill is all about being honest with our history, and not erasing the past. What it’s really about is protecting Confederate monuments, many of which were raised up as defiant answers to the civil rights movement.

Ivey shamelessly doubled down on the ad last week — claiming, according to al.com, that “out- of-state liberals” don’t need to tell us what to do in Alabama. It is the exact same rhetoric used by Wallace and segregationists during the civil rights movement. They claimed everything would be just fine if “outside agitators” would leave Alabama and its institutional racism alone.

I’m not saying Ivey is a segregationist. But her comments, which spread like wildfire nationally, hurt this state in the same way that Wallace’s fiery statements did back in the 1960s. We have seen and heard enough from Alabama politicians who blame the federal government, or, in Ivey’s case, “out-of-state liberals” for their own failure to step up and do the right thing. Instead, we need a true 21st-century governor who, instead of blaming outsiders, will welcome them to help us build a better and more prosperous future for all Alabamians.

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Tuscaloosa resident Mark Mayfield is a former editor-in-chief of House Beautiful and Traditional Home magazines, and was a reporter for USA Today for 10 years. He is now the editorial adviser to the Crimson White student newspaper at the University of Alabama. This editorial column first appeared in the Tuscaloosa News.