Wallace, George C. (1919–98)

ONE OFTHE most controversial political figures in the United States during the second half of the 20th century, George Corley Wallace controlled the state of Alabama for decades and ran unsuccessfully for president before being seriously wounded in an attempted assassination.

Wallace was born in Clio, Alabama. He attended local public schools and, in 1942, received a law degree from the University of Alabama. Wallace served briefly in the U.S. Air Force before immersing himself in Alabama politics. He was elected to the state legislature in 1947, and as a judge in the Third Judicial District six years later. Wallace ran for governor in 1958, and the election marked a turning point in his political career. He suffered a major defeat in the Democratic primary to John Patterson, a candidate who ran on racial issues and publicly accepted the endorsement of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.

Previously known as a moderate on racial issues, Wallace afterward became a staunch segregationist and eventually the south's most prominent political demagogue of the Civil Rights era. Using highly charged, racially divisive rhetoric designed to appeal to Alabama whites, Wallace won the governorship in 1962. The campaign set the tone for Wallace's first administration, which was marked by rising social tensions that Wallace helped generate. In 1963, following a federal court order that called for the integration of Alabama's public schools, he ordered the state police to Birmingham, Huntsville, and Mobile to keep the schools closed.

On June 11, 1963, Wallace gained national attention as he kept a campaign promise by personally “standing in the schoolhouse door” to stop two African-American students from entering the University of Alabama. Forbidden at the time by the state constitution to run for a second consecutive term, Wallace engineered the election of his wife Lurleen to the state's highest office in 1966.

Wallace had national political aspirations that culminated in his 1968 presidential campaign as the candidate of his own American Independent Party. Running a somewhat more sophisticated version of his racially divisive gubernatorial campaign, he exploited the racial concerns of some whites, spoke out against the Civil Rights movement and its leaders, attacked the federal judiciary, and chastised Vietnam War protestors. Republican Richard Nixon won the election, but Wallace carried five southern states and won 46 electoral votes and 13.5 percent of the popular vote.

Wallace was re-elected governor of Alabama in 1970 and began another ill-fated run for the presidency two years later. On May 15, 1972, while campaigning in a Laurel, Maryland shopping center, he was shot five times by a would-be assassin and permanently paralyzed. The incident effectively ended Wallace's hopes of becoming [Page 856]president. Still popular in his home state, he returned to Alabama and was elected governor again in 1974, and for a final time in 1982. By his last campaign, Wallace had apparently undergone a remarkable transformation with regard to his political philosophy. Claiming to have been “born again” he publicly, and sometimes tearfully, sought forgiveness from African-American Alabamans for his past behavior.

Alabama Governor George C. Wallace (seated) applauds as President Gerald Ford (center) greets supporters during a stop in the South during the 1976 presidential campaign. Wallace by this time had undergone a remarkable political transformation.

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