"I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness." George Wallace made an unannounced speech at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1979, where Martin Luther King was once pastor.

The Reverend Joseph Lowery, the 'dean' of the civil rights movement, thanked the former separatist "for coming out of your sickness to meet us. You are a different George Wallace today. We both serve a God who can make the desert bloom. We ask God's blessing on you."

??In reflecting upon my journey as the namesake of one of the most controversial political figures of the 20th century, and understanding how the dramatic and traumatic experiences affected my immediate family, I have always believed our experiences were unlike those of any other family in our nation's history. What we endured, we endured under the watchful eye of the public. The writings contained herein will reveal for the first time, from a family perspective, the real George Wallace, not the myth that has grown up around the legend.

• George Wallace Jr.