He was enigmatic. Even during his 'I'll never be out nigguhed again' phase, if you look into his life history you begin to suspect the comment was due in some significant measure to political expedience. Not that that justifies it.
Wallace was a boxer in his later youth 18-20, something like that. One night, before a match he heard some commotion outside his dressing room or area where he was preparing to box, so he went out to investigate, and found these two guys beating up on a younger black kid. Wallace was able to save the black kid from the beating, and took a beating himself in the process. Can't remember if he went on with his own match or not.
But, it seems to me that any person, as reviled as Wallace was for his bigotry, who went to these lengths to save someone from a race he supposedly so despised, wasn't the congenital racist his enemies loved to pretend he was.
Do you have any idea what percentage of the Black vote he got, when he ran for governor? The reason I ask is that for some reason, I'm under the impression that he got a surprising percentage of it, because as a local politician he had been quite adept at getting his State's share of federal dollars to his constituents.