After pledging “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” in his 1963 inaugural address, Alabama Governor George Wallace gained national notoriety by symbolically standing at the entrance of the University of Alabama to denounce the enrollment of two African American students. His stature as an ardent segregationist was further heightened when he mobilized the Alabama National Guard to block school desegregation in Birmingham in 1963 and when he condoned the use of violence during the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. Martin Luther King, Jr. described Wallace as “perhaps the most dangerous racist in America.” King said in 1963, “I am not sure that he believes all the poison he preaches, but he is artful enough to convince others that he does.”
George Corley Wallace was born on 25 August 1919 in Clio, Alabama. The son of a farmer, he worked his way through the University of Alabama Law School and graduated in 1942. After a brief stint in the United States Air Force, Wallace returned to Alabama to work as the state’s assistant attorney general. He was elected to the state legislature in 1947 and served as a district judge from 1953 to 1959. In his early political career, he maintained a moderate stance on integration; but after losing his first gubernatorial campaign to a candidate who was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, Wallace became an outspoken defender of segregation. He soon established a reputation as the “fighting judge” for his defiance of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and four years later, he won the governorship on a segregationist platform. Between 1963 and 1987, Wallace served four terms as governor.
Wallace’s position on civil rights and his anti-Washington rhetoric appealed not only to southern segregationists, but also to voters in other parts of the country. In 1964, he entered the Democratic presidential primaries in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland and made a strong showing all three states, drawing up to 43 percent of the vote. In 1968, he launched a full-fledged national campaign for the presidency. Running as a third-party candidate, he won five southern states and ten million votes, half of them from outside the South.
During Wallace’s third attempt for the presidency in 1972, an assassination attempt left him paralyzed below the waist and ended his campaign. He was eventually able to return to his duties as governor and was re-elected to a third term in 1974. As the black vote became more influential in Alabama, Wallace began to shift his stance on racial issues. After renouncing his former views on segregation and seeking reconciliation with civil rights leaders, he won a fourth term as governor in 1982 with substantial support from African Americans.
Wallace died in Montgomery on 13 September 1998 at the age of 79.