Louisiana State University Press

The first time I voted in a presidential election was in November 1968, when I drove from Loyola University in New Orleans through a rainstorm to Baton Rouge to cast a ballot in the precinct near my parents’ home. Upon arriving at the fire station at the east end of Government Street, I encountered a long line of white middle-class voters, several of them engaged in a very public debate over the question: Should you vote for George Wallace of Richard Nixon?