George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician and judge who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. He is remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views.[2][3][4] During Wallace's tenure as governor of Alabama, he promoted "industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools."[5] Wallace unsuccessfully sought the United States presidency as a Democratic Party candidate three times, and once as an American Independent Party candidate, carrying five states in the 1968 election. Wallace opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".[6]
Born in Clio, Alabama, Wallace attended the University of Alabama School of Law, and served in United States Army Air Force during World War II. After the war, he won election to the Alabama House of Representatives, and served as a state judge. Wallace first sought the Democratic nomination in the 1958 Alabama gubernatorial election. Initially a moderate on racial issues, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist stance after losing the 1958 nomination. Wallace ran for governor again in 1962, and won the race. Seeking to stop the racial integration of the University of Alabama, Wallace earned national notoriety by standing in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama, blocking the path of black students.[6] Wallace left office when his first term expired in 1967 due to term limits. His wife, Lurleen, won the next election and succeeded him, with him as the de facto governor.[5] Lurleen died of cancer in May 1968, ending Wallace's period of influence; her doctor had informed him of the cancer's diagnosis in 1961, but Wallace had not told his wife.
Wallace challenged sitting president Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 Democratic presidential primaries, but Johnson prevailed in the race. In the 1968 presidential election, Wallace ran a third-party campaign in an attempt to force a contingent election in the United States House of Representatives, thereby enhancing the political clout of segregationist Southern leaders. Wallace won five Southern states but failed to force a contingent election. As of the 2020 election,[update] he remains the most recent third-party candidate to receive pledged electoral college votes from any state.
Wallace won election to the governorship again in 1970, and ran in the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, having moderated his stance on segregation. His campaign effectively ended when he was shot in Maryland by Arthur Bremer, and Wallace remained paralyzed below the waist for the rest of his life. Wallace won re-election as governor in 1974, and he once again unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1976 Democratic presidential primaries. In the late 1970s, Wallace announced that he became a born-again Christian, and moderated his views on race, renouncing his past support for segregation. Wallace left office in 1979, but re-entered politics and won election to a fourth, and final, term as governor in 1982. Wallace is the third[7] longest-serving governor in U.S. history, having served 5,848 days in office.[8]
George Corley Wallace Jr. was born in Clio, Alabama, to George Corley Wallace Sr. and Mozelle Smith. Since his parents disliked the designation "Junior", he was called "George C.", to distinguish him from his father, George Corley Sr., and paternal grandfather, the physician George Oscar Wallace, who was called "Doc Wallace". He had two younger brothers, Gerald and Jack, and a younger sister named Marianne.[9] During World War I, Wallace's father left college to pursue a life of farming when food prices were high. When his father died in 1937, his mother had to sell their farmland to pay existing mortgages.[10] Wallace was raised as a Methodist.[11]
From age ten, Wallace was fascinated with politics. In 1935, he won a contest to serve as a page in the Alabama Senate, and confidently predicted that he would one day be governor.[12] Wallace became a regionally successful boxer in high school, then went directly to law school in 1937 at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa.[13] He was a member of the Delta Chi fraternity. It was at the University of Alabama that he crossed paths with future political adversary Frank Minis Johnson Jr., who would go on to become a prominent liberal federal judge.[14] Wallace also knew Chauncey Sparks, who became a conservative governor. These men had an effect on his personal politics reflecting the ideologies of both leaders later during his time in office.[citation needed] He received a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1942.[15]
Early in 1943, Wallace was accepted for pilot training by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF).[16] Soon afterwards Wallace contracted life-threatening spinal meningitis, but prompt medical attention with sulfa drugs saved his life. Left with partial hearing loss and permanent nerve damage, he was instead trained as a flight engineer. During 1945, as a member of a B-29 crew with 468th Bombardment Group, stationed in the Mariana Islands as part of the Twentieth Air Force, Wallace took part in air raids on Japan and reached the rank of staff sergeant.[17] In mid-1945, Wallace received an early discharge on medical grounds, due to "severe anxiety", and a 10% disability pension for "psychoneurosis".[18] (The Twentieth Air Force was commanded by General Curtis LeMay, who was his running mate in the 1968 presidential race.)
While some may argue that Wallace did not espouse racist views, most sources support the conclusion that he was motivated by racist ideology.
For instance, one source on Wallace's career as a judge reports: "every black attorney who argued a case in Wallace's ... courtroom was struck by his fairness .... But no one who knew Wallace well ever took seriously his earnest profession – uttered a thousand times after 1963 – that he was a segregationist, not a racist."[19]
A reporter covering state politics in 1961 observed that, while other Alabama politicians conversed primarily about women and Alabama football, for Wallace "it was race – race, race, race – and every time that I was closeted alone with him, that's all we talked about."[20]
Wallace's preoccupation with race was based on his belief that black Americans comprised a separate and inferior race. In a 1963 letter to a social studies teacher, Wallace stated they were inclined to criminality – especially "atrocious acts ... such as rape, assault and murder" – because of a high incidence of venereal disease. Desegregation, he wrote, would lead to "intermarriage ... and eventually our race will be deteriated (sic) to that of the mongrel complexity."[21]
In 1938, at age 19, Wallace contributed to his grandfather's successful campaign for probate judge. Late in 1945, he was appointed as one of the assistant attorneys general of Alabama, and, in May 1946, he won his first election as a member to the Alabama House of Representatives. At the time, he was considered a moderate on racial issues. As a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, he did not join the Dixiecrat walkout at the convention, despite his opposition to U.S. President Harry S. Truman's proposed civil rights program. Wallace considered it an infringement on states' rights. The Dixiecrats carried Alabama in the 1948 general election, having rallied behind Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In his 1963 inaugural speech as governor, Wallace excused his failure to walk out of the 1948 convention on political grounds.
In 1952, he became the Circuit Judge of the Third Judicial Circuit in Alabama. Here he became known as "the fighting little judge", a nod to his past boxing association.[22] He gained a reputation for fairness regardless of the race of the plaintiff. It was common practice at the time for judges in the area to refer to black lawyers by their first names, while their white colleagues were addressed formally as "Mister"; black lawyer J. L. Chestnut later said that "Judge George Wallace was the most liberal judge that I had ever practiced law in front of. He was the first judge in Alabama to call me 'Mister' in a courtroom."[22]
On the other hand, Wallace issued injunctions to prevent the removal of segregation signs in rail terminals, becoming the first Southern judge to do so.[23] Similarly, during efforts by civil rights organizations to expand voter registration of blacks, Wallace blocked federal efforts to review Barbour County voting lists. He was cited for criminal contempt of court in 1959.[23]
As judge, Wallace granted probation to some blacks, which may have cost him the 1958 gubernatorial election.[24]
In 1958, Wallace ran in the Democratic primary for governor. Since the 1901 constitution's effective disfranchisement of Black Alabamians, the Democratic Party had been virtually the only party in Alabama. For all intents and purposes, the Democratic primary, which was a political crossroads for Wallace, was the only real contest at the state level. State Representative George C. Hawkins of Gadsden ran, but Wallace's main opponent was Attorney General of Alabama John M. Patterson, who ran with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization Wallace had spoken out against. Despite being endorsed by the NAACP, Wallace lost the nomination by over 34,400 votes.[22]
After the election, aide Seymore Trammell recalled Wallace saying, "Seymore, you know why I lost that governor's race? ... I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again."[note 1] In the wake of his defeat, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist stance and used this stance to court the white vote in the next gubernatorial election in 1962. When a supporter asked why he started using racist messages, Wallace replied, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."[25]
In the 1962 Democratic primary, Wallace finished first, ahead of State Senator Ryan DeGraffenried Sr., and taking 35 percent of the vote. In the runoff, Wallace won the nomination with 55 percent of the vote. As no Republican filed to run, this all but assured Wallace of becoming the next governor. He won a crushing victory in the November general election, taking 96 percent of the vote. As noted above, Democratic dominance had been achieved by disenfranchising most blacks and many poor whites in the state for decades, which lasted until years after federal civil rights legislation was passed in 1964 and 1965.[how?]
Wallace took the oath of office on January 14, 1963, standing on the gold star marking the spot where, nearly 102 years earlier, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as provisional president of the Confederate States of America. In his inaugural speech, Wallace said:[25][26]