I thought the same thing later that year, when Wallace, paraplegic and contrite, was returned to Alabama's governorship with a significant wedge of black support. Over time, I gathered pieces of an explanation. First, I learned that class is as deep a divide in the South as race, and that alliances have continually shifted among blacks, poor whites, and the wealthy. In the early '80s, Wallace was again on the little person's side, black and white, as he had been at the beginning of his career, as a county judge in the '50s. Later still, I'd also come to appreciate that, while Southerners are good at grudges, they're equally good at forgiveness.
Much Southern humor comes from accepting people as they are, complex, wayward, divided.
No, not exactly, I said. Senator Sam Ervin whupping Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter making peace in the Middle East, Atlanta with its black mayor and shining new buildings, and country music and country biscuits taking over everywhere. I wasn't sure what was going on in this New South, but it seemed full of energy, paradox, and good humor. And a new generation of Southern writers was capturing those same qualities, as Faulkner and O'Connor had captured the darker tensions of the '30s and '40s. I was drawn to so vigorously verbal a culture.