Edwin Walker - Political Career

Political Career

As a civilian in December 1961, Walker embarked on a career of right-wing political speeches, along with segregationist evangelist Billy James Hargis. Walker enjoyed enthusiastic crowds all over the United States, who frequently gave him a dozen standing ovations at every speech. His message of anti-Communism was popular, but because he also pressed the McCarthyist belief that Communists were inside the United States government, he mainly attracted the extremists among the American right-wing. Yet his home base was Dallas, Texas, then considered a conservative city. Walker received considerable support from the citizens of Dallas, in particular from oil billionaire and right-wing publisher, H.L. Hunt, who supported Walker's first election campaign for governor of Texas.

In February 1962, Walker entered the race but finished last among six candidates in a Democratic primary election that was won in a runoff election by John B. Connally, Jr., the choice of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Other contenders were the sitting Governor Price Daniel, highway commissioner Marshall Formby of Plainview, Attorney General Will Wilson, and Houston lawyer Don Yarborough, the favorite of liberals and organized labor.

Though he had followed military orders to compel the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Walker organized protests in September 1962 against the use of federal troops to enforce the enrollment of African-American James Meredith at the racially segregated University of Mississippi at Oxford, Mississippi. On 26 September 1962 ex-General Edwin Walker went on several radio stations to broadcast this message:

Mississippi: It is time to move. We have talked, listened and been pushed around far too much by the anti-Christ Supreme Court! Rise...to a stand beside Governor Ross Barnett at Jackson, Mississippi! Now is the time to be heard! Thousands strong from every State in the Union! Rally to the cause of freedom! The Battle Cry of the Republic! Barnett yes! Castro no! Bring your flag, your tent and your skillet. It's now or never! The time is when the President of the United States commits or uses any troops, Federal or State. in Mississippi! The last time in such a situation I was on the wrong side. That was in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957-1958. This time -- out of uniform -- I am on the right side! I will be there!

This is his televised public statement on 29 September 1962:

This is Edwin A. Walker. I am in Mississippi beside Governor Ross Barnett. I call for a national protest against the conspiracy from within. Rally to the cause of freedom in righteous indignation, violent vocal protest, and bitter silence under the flag of Mississippi at the use of Federal troops. This today is a disgrace to the nation in 'dire peril,' a disgrace beyond the capacity of anyone except its enemies. This is the conspiracy of the crucifixion by anti-Christ conspirators of the Supreme Court in their denial of prayer and their betrayal of a nation.

After a violent, 15-hour riot broke out on the campus, on September 30, in which hundreds were wounded, two people were killed and six federal marshals were shot, Walker was arrested on four federal charges, including sedition and insurrection against the United States. He was temporarily held in a mental institution on orders from President Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. RFK demanded that Walker receive a 90-day psychiatric examination.

However, the Attorney General's decision was promptly challenged by famous psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who insisted that psychiatry must never become a tool of political rivalry. The ACLU joined Thomas Szasz in a protest against the Attorney General, completing this coalition of liberal and right-wing leaders. The Attorney General had to back down, and Walker spent only five days in the asylum.

Walker posted bond and returned home to Dallas, where he was greeted by a crowd of some two hundred supporters. After a federal grand jury adjourned in January 1963 without indicting him, the charges were dropped. Because the dismissal of the charges was without prejudice, the charges could have been reinstated within five years.

That same year Bob Jones University invited Walker to speak to its student body.