Q:How did Jack Wallace found you and recruited you?
A:
Well, in 1966 and '67, I was working as the director of the South Carolina Independent School Association, which was really a group of private segregated academies. We didn't call them that, but of course, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal did, and that's what they were. And it so happened that Jack Wallace, the younger brother of Governor Wallace in Alabama, who was a judge over there, had been the president of a Dixie Academy. It was the name of it down in Barbour County, which is the county that the Wallaces were from, and we invited him over to make the commencement address at one of our schools, either Wade Hampton Academy or Jefferson Davis Academy. We named them all for Confederate generals and stuff. And we had organized about 40 schools by then in two and a half years, so Jack Wallace said, "Tom, gosh, you're a pretty good organizer, getting people to do things. Would you like to come over and help get organized for the 1968 Presidential campaign? We have to qualify presidential electors as a new party, a third party in all of the states." And so that's what I did.
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