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George Wallace
1919–1998 · 79 years Tier II
A Senate page at 16 who told people he would be governor
His father died in 1937 and his mother sold the farmland to cover the mortgages. He had been fixed on politics since he was ten. In 1935 he won a contest to page in the Alabama Senate and told people there he would be governor one day. He boxed well enough in high school to be known for it regionally, entered the University of Alabama law school in 1937, and took his degree in 1942. Accepted for pilot training early in 1943, he caught spinal meningitis. Sulfa drugs saved him and left partial hearing loss and permanent nerve damage. He flew as a B-29 flight engineer over Japan in 1945, made staff sergeant, and was discharged early for severe anxiety with a 10 percent pension for psychoneurosis.
He ran for governor in 1958 with an NAACP endorsement against a Klan-backed candidate, and lost by more than 34,400 votes. His biographer records him saying afterward that good roads and good schools got him nothing, and that when he talked about race the floor shook. He won the 1962 runoff with 55 percent and the general election with 96. Sworn in on January 14, 1963 on the gold star where Jefferson Davis took the Confederate oath, he read a line written by his new speechwriter, the former Klan leader Asa Earl Carter: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. On June 11 he stood in the schoolhouse door. He ran for president four times. In 1968, on the American Independent ticket, he took nearly ten million votes and 45 electoral votes. No third-party candidate has won a pledged elector since.
In 1961 a biopsy on his wife found possibly precancerous cells. Her doctor told Wallace. Wallace did not tell her, and got her no follow-up care. Lurleen learned she had uterine cancer in 1965, after abnormal bleeding, and heard from an aide that his staff had known since 1962. Term limits blocked him in 1966, so he ran her instead. She won, took office in January 1967, and died there on May 7, 1968, at 41, while he campaigned for president, having assured reporters in April that she had beaten it. Their three younger children went to relatives and friends. Four years later Arthur Bremer shot him four times at a shopping center in Laurel, Maryland, and a bullet in the spine left him paralyzed. Asked about it 20 years on, he said he had had 20 years of pain.
In 1979 he said of the schoolhouse door that he had been wrong, that those days were over, and asked Black Americans for forgiveness. He won a fourth term in 1982 with Black votes and put a record number of Black Alabamians in state jobs, two in his cabinet. He apologized privately to Vivian Malone Jones in October 1996, the night before handing her an award. James Hood, the other student he blocked, interviewed him at his bedside and came to the funeral. Deaf, in pain and with Parkinson's, he died of septic shock on September 13, 1998. His biographers call him the most influential loser in American politics. Alabama campuses began stripping his name from buildings in 2020.
Lifespan
George Wallace's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
1963 inaugural address
speech
The segregation forever passage was written by the former Klan leader Asa Earl Carter 1963 -
Stand in the Schoolhouse Door
other
Staged at Foster Auditorium on June 11 and over the same day 1963 -
Alabama's community college system
company
Begun in his first term. Several of the colleges carry the family name. 1963 -
American Independent Party presidential campaign
other
Five Southern states, 45 electoral votes, and Curtis LeMay on the ticket 1968 -
Fourth-term appointments
other
A record number of Black Alabamians in state posts, two of them in the cabinet 1983
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1935 aged ~16 Wins a contest to serve as a page in the Alabama Senate He told people there he would be governor.
- May 22, 1943 aged 23 Marries Lurleen Burns
- 1958 aged ~39 Loses the Democratic primary for governor to John Patterson Wallace had the NAACP endorsement. Patterson had the Klan's.
- January 14, 1963 aged 43 Reads the segregation forever line at his inauguration He stood on the gold star marking where Jefferson Davis was sworn in for the Confederacy.
- June 11, 1963 aged 43 Blocks the door at Foster Auditorium, University of Alabama Vivian Malone and James Hood enrolled the same day.
- May 7, 1968 aged 48 Lurleen Wallace dies in office of uterine cancer at 41 He had known of a suspicious biopsy since 1961 and had not told her.
- May 15, 1972 aged 52 Arthur Bremer shoots him four times in Laurel, Maryland A bullet in the spinal column left him paralyzed from the waist down.
- 1982 aged ~63 Elected governor a fourth time, with Black support
- September 13, 1998 aged 79 Dies of septic shock in Montgomery
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