Evansville was profiled — in a highly unflattering way — in a 2022 Washington Post article about former segregationist George Wallace’s 1972 run for president.
The piece linked Wallace’s inflamed rhetoric to President Donald Trump’s brand of conservatism. Post writer Peter Jamison profiled Evansville and two other cities where Wallace campaigned 50 years earlier, and he described the River City as still struggling with deep-seated racial strife.
Elaine Mittleman, a prior Washington, D.C., metro area resident and longtime Post reader, felt appalled by the publication’s depiction of her hometown.
“It was shockingly unfair and incorrect,” Mittleman says. “As an attorney and as a citizen, I thought it was very important that something be done.”
Mittleman sent the Post a line-by- line rebuttal of Jamison’s article. After months of repeatedly contacting the Post, she submitted a two-paragraph letter to the editor written in the context of Stephanie Terry’s historic November 2023 mayoral election vic- tory. To her surprise, the letter was published in January.
“I’d still like the original story to be corrected, but I was thrilled to have a letter to the editor (published),” Mittleman says. “It was very important to me.
