"Am I in America?"

Virginia received Henry Wallace in sullen silence. State authorities had ducked the segregation issue by decreeing that the Wallace gatherings were "private parties," to which the state segregation law does not apply. No bands turned out, no crowds gathered to watch his progress. Wrote the New York Herald Tribune's John Chabot Smith: "Mr. Wallace's movements in Virginia had something of the eerie quality of an old-fashioned silent movie in a theater without a piano player."

North Carolina made up for it. At the Progressive Party's state convention in Durham, 25 noisy pickets set off a wild scuffle. Eggs were thrown, firecrackers and stink bombs exploded, a National Guardsman fired into the air. Wallace insisted on a police escort, entered the hall behind a Guardsman with drawn pistol. He spoke against a drumfire of heckling from spectators and counter chants of "We Want Wallace" from his supporters. "What do we want for the South?" he cried. "Thurmond," bellowed his hecklers. For those who could hear, Wallace suggested that the Federal Government allot $1 billion a year for loans to develop the South's industry and agriculture.

Next day on Main Street in Burlington, he was pelted with eggs and tomatoes. Turning to a man in the crowd, Wallace asked plaintively: "Am I in America?" Said the man: "Get your hands off me."

In Greensboro, his egg-spattered car was greeted with another shower of eggs and tomatoes. Some struck his head and shoulders, splotched his white shirt. Boos drowned out his attempt to speak. Cried Wallace: "The faces I have seen distorted by hatred are of people for whom I have in my heart profound compassion, because most of them have not had enough to eat." The crowd laughed.

Pushing on into the Deep South, Wallace cried doggedly: "No one can intimidate me."

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