George Corley Wallace, Jr.
(August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998), was a Governor of Alabama for four terms; 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics according to biographers Dan T. Carter [1] and Stephan Lesher, [2] he ran for President four times, running officially as a Democrat three times and in the American Independent Party once. He is best known for his Southern populist [3] pro-segregation attitudes during the American desegregation period, convictions that he abandoned later in life.
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GEORGE WALLACE TICKETS
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Early life
The first of four children, Wallace was a native of
Barbour County, Alabama. He was born in the town of
Clio, in rural southeast Alabama, to George Corley Wallace and Mozell Smith Wallace. He was the third of four generations to use the name George Wallace, but as neither parent liked the name "Junior", he was called George C. to distinguish him from his father, George, and his grandfather, Dr. Wallace.
[4] Wallace's father had dropped out of
Southern University to pursue a life of farming when prices were high during
World War I, but Mozell had to sell their farmland just to pay existing
mortgages when George Sr. died in 1937.
[5] Despite his impoverished background, Wallace was fascinated with politics from the age of ten, winning a contest to serve as a page for the
Alabama Senate in 1935 and confidently predicting that he would one day be governor.
[6]
Wallace became a regionally successful
boxer in his high school days, then went directly to
law school at the
University of Alabama in
Tuscaloosa in 1937.
[7] He was a member of the
Delta Chi Fraternity. After receiving a law degree in 1942, he enlisted in the
US Army Air Corps, flying
combat missions over
Japan during
World War II. Wallace attained the rank of
staff sergeant in the 58th Bomb Wing of the
20th Air Force. He served under General
Curtis LeMay, who would be his running mate in the
1968 presidential race. While in the service, Wallace nearly died of
spinal meningitis, but prompt medical attention saved him. He was left with partial
hearing loss and
nerve damage, and was medically discharged with a disability pension.
Entry into politics
In 1938, at age nineteen, Wallace contributed to his grandfather's successful campaign for probate judge. Late in 1945, he was appointed
Assistant Attorney General of
Alabama, and during 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
Southern walkout at the convention, despite his opposition to President
Harry S. Truman's proposed
civil rights program, which he considered an infringement on
states' rights. The dissenting Democrats, known as
Dixiecrats, supported then-Governor
Strom Thurmond of
South Carolina for the presidency. In his 1963 inauguration as governor, Wallace excused this action on political grounds.
In 1953, he was elected Circuit Judge in the
Third Judicial Circuit of Alabama. Here he became known as "the little fightin' judge," a reference to his boxing days.
He gained a reputation for fairness regardless of the race of the plaintiff, and a black lawyer recalled, "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."
[8]
Failed run for governor
He was defeated by
John Patterson in Alabama's Democratic gubernatorial
primary election in 1958, which at the time was the decisive election, the general election still almost always being a mere formality. This was a political crossroads for Wallace. Patterson ran with the support of the
Ku Klux Klan, an organization Wallace had spoken against, while Wallace was endorsed by the
NAACP.
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."
[9] [10] In the wake of his defeat, Wallace adopted hard-line
segregationism, and used this stand to court the white vote in the next gubernatorial election. 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."
Governor of Alabama
Segregation
George Wallace was elected governor in a landslide victory in November 1962. He took the oath of office on January 14, 1963, standing on the gold star marking the spot where, 102 years prior, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America. In his George Wallace's 1963 Inaugural Address|inaugural speech, he used the line for which he is best known:
The lines
[13] were written by Wallace's new speechwriter,
Asa Earl Carter, who was of Cherokee descent.
To stop
desegregation by the enrollment of black students
Vivian Malone and
James Hood, he stood in front of
Foster Auditorium at the
University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This became known as the "
Stand in the Schoolhouse Door." After being confronted by
federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General
Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Alabama
National Guard, he stood aside.
Wallace again attempted to stop four black students from enrolling in four separate elementary schools in
Huntsville in September 1963. After intervention by a federal court in
Birmingham, the four children were allowed to enter on September 9, becoming the first to integrate a primary or secondary school in Alabama.
[14] [15]
Wallace disapproved vehemently of the desegregation of the state of Alabama and wanted desperately for his state to remain segregated. In his own words: "The President (
John F. Kennedy) wants us to surrender this state to
Martin Luther King and his group of pro-
Communists who have instituted these demonstrations."
[16]
Economics and education
The principal achievement of Gov. Wallace's first term was an innovation in Alabama development several other states later adopted: he was the first
Southern governor to travel to corporate headquarters in
Northern and
Northeastern states to offer tax abatements and other incentives to companies willing to locate plants in Alabama.
Wallace initiated a
junior college system that is now spread throughout the state, preparing many students to complete four-year degrees at
Auburn University,
UAB, or the
University of Alabama.
The
University of South Alabama, a new state university in Mobile, was chartered in 1963 during Wallace's first year in office as governor.
Democratic presidential primaries of 1964
In November 15-20 of 1963, in the City of Dallas, Texas, George C. Wallace announced that he had intended to challenge the then 35th U.S. President,
John F. Kennedy, for the
Democratic Party's nomination as candidate for
U.S. President for the November
1964 general election.
Building upon his newfound fame following the University of Alabama controversy, Wallace entered the
Democratic primaries on the advice of a public relations expert from
Wisconsin.
[17] He ran on an "outsider" image, campaigning on his opposition to the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, support of
states' rights, and a "law and order" platform. In Democratic
primaries in
Wisconsin,
Maryland and
Indiana, he won a third of the vote in each state.
[18]
First Gentleman of Alabama
Term limits in the
Alabama Constitution prevented Wallace from seeking a second term in 1966. Therefore, Wallace had his wife,
Lurleen Wallace, run for the office as a
surrogate candidate, similar to the 1924 run of
Miriam Ferguson for the governorship of
Texas on behalf of her husband
James Ferguson, who had been
impeached and was barred from running. Largely due to the work of Wallace's supporters, the Alabama restriction was later repealed.
Mrs. Wallace won the election in the fall of 1966, and was inaugurated in January 1967. However, she died in office on
May 7,
1968, of cancer, during her husband's second presidential campaign.
[19] She was succeeded by
Lieutenant Governor Albert Brewer, reducing Wallace's influence until his new bid for election in his own right in November
1970.
1968 third party presidential run
Wallace ran for
President in the
1968 election as the
American Independent Party candidate. He hoped to force the
House of Representatives to decide the election by receiving enough
electoral votes, presumably giving him the role of a
power broker. Wallace hoped that southern states could use their clout to end
federal efforts at
desegregation. His platform contained generous increases for beneficiaries of
Social Security and
Medicare.
Richard Nixon worried Wallace might steal enough votes to give the election to the Democratic candidate,
Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Some Democrats feared Wallace's appeal to
blue-collar workers and union members would hurt Humphrey in Northern states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Michigan. Wallace ran a "
law and order" campaign similar to Nixon's.
Wallace considered
Happy Chandler, the former
baseball commissioner and Governor of Kentucky, as his running mate in his 1968 campaign for the Presidency as a third party candidate; as one of Wallace's aides put it, "We have all the nuts in the country, we could get some decent people – you working one side of the street and he working the other side." Wallace invited Chandler, but when the press published the prospect, Wallace's supporters objected: Chandler had supported the hiring of
Jackie Robinson by the
Brooklyn Dodgers.
Wallace retracted the invitation, and chose Air Force General
Curtis LeMay instead. LeMay, now retired, was chairman of the board of an electronics company, and the company would dismiss him if he spent his time running for Vice-President; Hunt set up a million-dollar fund to reimburse him for any losses. LeMay was an enthusiast for the use of nuclear weapons; Wallace's aides spent until 4:20 before his first press conference attempting to explain to him that the American people did not agree, and to avoid such questions. He was asked about, and attempted to dispel, the American "phobia about nuclear weapons", discussing the radioactive landcrabs at
Bikini atoll; this issue became a drag on Wallace's candidacy for the rest of the campaign.
[20]
In 1968, when Wallace pledged to
run over any demonstrators who got in front of his
limousine and asserted that the only
four letter words hippies did not know were
w-o-r-k and
s-o-a-p, his rhetoric became famous. He accused Humphrey and Nixon of wanting to radically desegregate the South. Wallace said, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties."
Major
media outlets observed the support Wallace received from extremist groups such as
White Citizens' Councils and the
John Birch Society. It has been noted that members of such groups had permeated the Wallace campaign by 1968 and, while Wallace did not openly seek their support, nor did he refute it.
[21] Indeed, at least one case has been documented of the unsavory
Liberty Lobby distributing a pro-Wallace pamphlet entitled "Stand up for America" despite the campaign's denial of such a connection.
[22]
While Wallace carried five Southern states and won almost ten million popular votes, Nixon received 301 electoral votes, more than needed to win the election. Wallace remains the last non-Democratic, non-Republican candidate to win any electoral votes. He was the first person to accomplish this since
Harry F. Byrd, an independent
segregationist candidate in the
1960 presidential election. (
John Hospers in 1972,
Ronald Reagan in 1976,
Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 and
John Edwards in 2004 all received one electoral vote from
faithless electors, but none "won" these votes.) Wallace also received the vote of one
North Carolina elector who was pledged to Nixon.
Many found Wallace an entertaining campaigner. To
hippies who called him a
Nazi, he replied, "I was killing
fascists when you punks were in diapers." Another quote: "They're building a bridge over the
Potomac for all the white
liberals fleeing to
Virginia."
Wallace decried the Supreme Court opinion in
Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, which ordered immediate desegregation of Southern schools - he said the new Burger court was "no better than the Warren court" and called the justices "limousine hypocrites."
[23]
Second term as governor
In 1970, Wallace faced incumbent Governor
Albert Brewer, who was the first gubernatorial candidate since
Reconstruction to openly court black voters.
[24]
Brewer unveiled a progressive platform and worked to build an alliance between blacks and the white working class. He said of Wallace's out of state trips, "Alabama needs a full-time governor."
[25]
To weaken the prospects of a Wallace presidential campaign in 1972, President Nixon backed Brewer and arranged an
Internal Revenue Service investigation in the Wallace campaign. In the primary, Brewer got the most votes but failed to win an outright majority, triggering a run-off election.
[26]
In what Carter calls "one of the most racist campaigns in modern southern political history,"
Wallace campaign aired TV ads with slogans such as "Do you want the black block electing your governor?" and circulated an ad showing a white girl surrounded by seven black boys, with the slogan "Wake Up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama."
[27] Wallace called Brewer "
Sissy Britches"
[28] and promised not to run for president a third time.
Wallace defeated Brewer in the runoff. The day after the election, he flew to Wisconsin to campaign for the White House.[ Wallace, whose presidential ambitions would have been destroyed by a defeat, has been said to have run "one of the nastiest campaigns in state history," using racist rhetoric while proposing few ideas of his own.]
Democratic presidential primaries of 1972 and assassination attempt
On 13 January 1972, Wallace declared himself a candidate, entering the field with George McGovern, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, and nine other Democratic opponents. In Florida's primary, Wallace carried every county to win 42 percent of the vote. When running, Wallace claimed he was no longer for segregation, and had always been a moderate. Though no longer in favor of segregation, Wallace was opposed to desegregation busing during his campaign, a position Nixon would adopt early on as President. [29]
For the next four months, Wallace's campaign went extremely well. However, Wallace was shot four times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland, on May 15, 1972, at a time when he was receiving high ratings in the opinion polls. Bremer was seen at a Wallace rally in Wheaton, Maryland, earlier that day and two days earlier at a rally in Dearborn, Michigan. As one of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal column, Wallace was left paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. The three others who were wounded in the shooting also survived. Bremer's diary, An Assassin's Diary
, published after his arrest shows the assassination attempt was motivated by a desire for fame, not by politics and that President Nixon had been an earlier target. Bremer was sentenced to sixty-three years in prison on 4 August 1972, later to be reduced to fifty-three years at the end of September 1972. Bremer served thirty-five years and was released on parole on November 9, 2007. Wallace forgave Bremer in August 1995, and wrote to him, but Bremer never replied. Bremer's diary inspired the 1976 movie Taxi Driver
which in turn inspired the assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. in 1981.
Following the shooting, Wallace won primaries in Maryland, Michigan, Tennessee, and North Carolina. From his wheelchair, Wallace spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Miami on July 11, 1972. The Democratic nominee, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, was later defeated by President Nixon who carried 49 of the 50 states; McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Since Wallace was out of Alabama for more than twenty days when he was recovering in Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, the state constitution required Lieutenant Governor Jere Beasley to serve as acting governor from June 5 until Wallace's return to Alabama on July 7. Wallace never returned to Maryland again in his life. However, he continued being governor, and easily won the gubernatorial primary election of November 1974.
Democratic presidential primaries of 1976
Wallace announced his third bid for the presidency in November 1975. The campaign was plagued by voters' concerns with his health, as well as the media's constant use of images of his apparent "helplessness." His supporters complained such coverage was motivated by bias, citing the discretion used in coverage three decades earlier, or lack of coverage, of Franklin D. Roosevelt's paralysis before television became commercially available. Jimmy Carter won the nomination. Calculating all the southern primaries and caucuses, Wallace carried only Mississippi, South Carolina and his home state of Alabama. Calculating the popular votes in all primaries and caucuses, Wallace placed third behind Jimmy Carter and California Governor Jerry Brown. After all the primaries ended losing several Southern primaries to former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, Wallace dropped out in June 1976. He eventually endorsed Carter, later claiming he facilitated a Southerner's nomination.
Final term as governor
Change of views
Wallace became a born-again Christian in the late 1970s and apologized to black civil rights leaders for his earlier segregationist views. He said while he once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness. [30] His term as Governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of black appointments to government positions. [31]
In the 1982 Alabama gubernatorial Democratic primary, Wallace's main opponents were Lieutenant Governor George McMillan and Alabama House Speaker Joe McCorquodale. In the primary, McCorquodale was eliminated, and the vote went to a runoff with Wallace holding a slight edge over McMillan. Wallace won the Democratic nomination by a margin of 51 to 49 percent.
In the general election, his opponent was Montgomery Republican mayor Emory Folmar. Most polling experts [who?] said this was the best chance since Reconstruction for a Republican to be elected Alabama governor.
George Wallace achieved four gubernatorial terms across three decades, totaling 16 years in office.
Final years
At a Montgomery restaurant a few blocks from the State Capitol, Wallace became something of a fixture. In constant pain, he was surrounded by an entourage of old friends and visiting well-wishers and continued this ritual until a few weeks before his death. He is interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Montgomery.
Wallace was the subject of a documentary, George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire
, shown by PBS on the American Experience in 2000. [32] [33]
The TNT cable network also produced a movie George Wallace
in 1997, which was a John Frankenheimer film starring Gary Sinise.
On one occasion, when asked by a reporter which contemporary American political figure he most admired, he paused thoughtfully for a moment, smiled, and said: "Myself."
Wallace died of septic shock from a bacterial infection in Jackson Hospital in Montgomery on September 13, 1998. He suffered from Parkinson's disease and respiratory problems in addition to complications from his gun-shot spinal injury.
The George Wallace Tunnel on Interstate 10 which traverses the Mobile Bay is named in his honor.
Marriages and children
Wallace's first wife, Lurleen Brigham Wallace, was the first (and, as of 2009, only) woman to be elected as governor of Alabama. They had four children together: Bobbi Jo (1944) Parsons, Peggy Sue (1950) Kennedy, George III, known as George Junior (1951), and Lee (1961) Dye, who was named after Robert E. Lee. After her death the couple's younger children, aged 18, 16, and 6, were sent to live with family members and friends for care (their eldest daughter had already married and left home). Their son, commonly called George Wallace Jr., is a Republican active in Alabama politics. He was twice elected State Treasurer. He was an elected member of the Public Service Commission until he sought the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor. He lost in a runoff in July 2006.
On January 4, 1971, Wallace wed the former Cornelia Ellis Snively (1939-2009), a niece of former Alabama Governor Jim Folsom, known as "Big Jim". The attractive "C'nelia" had been a performer and was nick-named "the Jackie Kennedy of the Rednecks." Her mother, the colorful and notorious Ruby Folsom, commented when told of the marriage: "Why, George ain't Titty high." The couple were divorced in 1978. The second Mrs. Wallace died on January 8, 2009, at the age of 69. [34]
In 1981, Wallace married Lisa Taylor, a country music singer; they divorced in 1987.
Notes
- The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics
- George Wallace: American Populist
- Title Unavailable
- Carter (1995), p. 21.
- Carter (1995), p. 41.
- Carter (1995), pp. 30-31.
- Alabama Governor George Wallace, gubernatorial history
- At the time, it was common practice for judges in the area to refer to black lawyers by their first names, while their white colleagues were addressed formally as "Mister".
- Carter (1996, p. 2) notes that Wallace would later deny a similar quote that appeared in a 1968 biography by Marshall Frady: "'Well boys,' he said tightly as he snuffed out his cigar, 'no other son-of-a-bitch will ever out-nigger me again.'" In exploring the authenticity of the quote, Carter writes, "Moreover, Wallace made the same statement to Seymore Trammell the day after the election, and he was still repeating it four years later.
- Racism to Redemption: The Path of George Wallace
- George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire: Wallace Quotes
- ''Brown v. Board'': 50 Years Later
- ''Cf.'' Hebrews 13:8: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, forever" (KJV).
- My Walk Into History
- A brief history of race and schools, The Huntsville Times
- Alabama Governor George Wallace, public statement of May 8, 1963 in the New York Times. May 9, 1963).
- Carter (1995), p. 205.
- Carter (1995), pp. 198-225.
- Carter (1995), pp. 310-312, 317-320.
- Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
- Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States
- Carter (1995), pp. 296-297.
- Woodward, Bob; Scott Armstrong (September 1979). The Brethren. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-24110-9. Page 56.
- Alabama: The History of a Deep South State
- http://www.steveflowers.us/columns/101205.htm Flowers, Steve, "Steve Flowerss Inside the Statehouse"
- From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994
- Mudslingers: The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time Countdown from No. 25 to No. 1
- Season Openers - Printout - TIME
- Carter (1996), pp. 17-32.
- According to Carter (1995, pp. 236-37), "But no one who knew Wallace well ever took seriously his earnest profession - uttered a thousand times after 1963 - that he been a segregationist, not a racist. ... Wallace, like most white southerners of his generation, [1] genuinely believed blacks to be a separate, inferior race."
- The Reader's Companion to American History
- [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240534/ George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire]
- George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire (web site)
- Former Alabama first lady Cornelia Wallace dies WZTV FOX17/Nashville
References
- The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics
- George Wallace: American Populist
- Title Unavailable
- Carter (1995), p. 21.
- Carter (1995), p. 41.
- Carter (1995), pp. 30-31.
- Alabama Governor George Wallace, gubernatorial history
- At the time, it was common practice for judges in the area to refer to black lawyers by their first names, while their white colleagues were addressed formally as "Mister".
- Carter (1996, p. 2) notes that Wallace would later deny a similar quote that appeared in a 1968 biography by Marshall Frady: "'Well boys,' he said tightly as he snuffed out his cigar, 'no other son-of-a-bitch will ever out-nigger me again.'" In exploring the authenticity of the quote, Carter writes, "Moreover, Wallace made the same statement to Seymore Trammell the day after the election, and he was still repeating it four years later.
- Racism to Redemption: The Path of George Wallace
- George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire: Wallace Quotes
- ''Brown v. Board'': 50 Years Later
- ''Cf.'' Hebrews 13:8: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, forever" (KJV).
- My Walk Into History
- A brief history of race and schools, The Huntsville Times
- Alabama Governor George Wallace, public statement of May 8, 1963 in the New York Times. May 9, 1963).
- Carter (1995), p. 205.
- Carter (1995), pp. 198-225.
- Carter (1995), pp. 310-312, 317-320.
- Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
- Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States
- Carter (1995), pp. 296-297.
- Woodward, Bob; Scott Armstrong (September 1979). The Brethren. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-24110-9. Page 56.
- Alabama: The History of a Deep South State
- http://www.steveflowers.us/columns/101205.htm Flowers, Steve, "Steve Flowerss Inside the Statehouse"
- From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994
- Mudslingers: The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time Countdown from No. 25 to No. 1
- Season Openers - Printout - TIME
- Carter (1996), pp. 17-32.
- According to Carter (1995, pp. 236-37), "But no one who knew Wallace well ever took seriously his earnest profession - uttered a thousand times after 1963 - that he been a segregationist, not a racist. ... Wallace, like most white southerners of his generation, [1] genuinely believed blacks to be a separate, inferior race."
- The Reader's Companion to American History
- [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240534/ George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire]
- George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire (web site)
- Former Alabama first lady Cornelia Wallace dies WZTV FOX17/Nashville