Who was George Wallace?
George Wallace was born in 1919 and became a lawyer, a state legislator and a circuit judge in Alabama. He lost the 1958 race for governor, and afterwards turned to openly segregationist politics. Voters elected him in 1962, and he went on to win four terms. When state law kept him from a consecutive term, his wife Lurleen won the office in 1966, and he stayed the real power behind her. He ran for president several times and won five Southern states in 1968 running outside the two main parties. In 1972 a gunman shot him on the campaign trail in Maryland, leaving him paralyzed. Late in life he apologized for his past and won his last term in 1982.
Political views
- His 1963 inaugural address vowed 'segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever', a line that a onetime Klan leader had written for him.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- In June 1963 he blocked the door of a University of Alabama hall to keep two Black students out, and he stepped aside only after the National Guard was put under federal control.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- Troopers he sent in 1965 stood with the sheriff's men who attacked voting rights marchers at the Selma bridge, the Edmund Pettus Bridge.Source: encyclopediaofalabama.org
- His 1968 presidential run stressed law and order and cast the campaign as a stand against an overreaching federal government.Source: encyclopediaofalabama.org
- The same 1968 campaign offered raised Social Security and Medicare payments, and he branded foreign aid wasteful.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- In Alabama he built up vocational schools and a junior college network across the state, gave out free textbooks and raised what teachers earned.Source: encyclopediaofalabama.org
- By 1972 he had moved his attack to court-ordered school busing.Source: encyclopediaofalabama.org
Legacy
Historians say Wallace's runs in 1968 and 1972 showed that appeals about race, crime and Washington's power could win working-class white voters well outside the South, and that both main parties later borrowed from his style. Some Alabamians still credit him with the junior colleges and trade schools. In his final term he appointed many Black officials, and around 90 percent of Black voters supported him in the general election of 1982. Critics say his defense of segregation slowed change and encouraged violence, pointing to the trooper attack at Selma in 1965. They add that his economic record left a low-wage state with taxes that favored big landowners and companies. In 1979 he said his stand at the schoolhouse door had been wrong.