George Wallace won the Michigan Democratic primary in 1972 because voters there were upset about a federal court ordering busing between Detroit and its surrounding suburbs.
Detroit had become so heavily black due to white flight that forced busing within the city would no longer bring about integrated schools. So a federal judge ordered busing with the suburbs, which upset a lot of the Michigan voters.
This ruling was overturned in a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1974, which stated that busing across district lines could not be ordered if there was no evidence that the lines were drawn to promote segregation.
I guess Michigan is about as far north as you can get, and Wallace won the primary there. He also had support in some quarters in Boston in 1976 during their busing crisis.
Very true. In the 1968 GE Wallace won between 14-16% of the vote in 4 counties: Cass, Berrien (rural; near Indiana), Genesee (heavily working class and southern) and Macomb. South Boston is perhaps the only working class white ethnic enclave in the US that voted for McGovern in '72 and Ford in '76.
