George Wallace

American politician who was the Democratic Governor of Alabama, beginning in 1963, for three terms. As a segregationalist, he ran for president in 1968, 1972 and 1976 unsuccessfully. In spite of building his career on segregation, he insisted that, in his heart, he was not a racist. A long-time champion of state's rights, he dominated his own state for almost a generation. He avowed that his theme of middle-class empowerment was borrowed by Richard Nixon in 1968 and then by Ronald Reagan.

After being elected to his first term as governor in 1962, Wallace became the foil for the huge protests that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to destroy segregation in public accommodations in 1963 and to secure voting rights for blacks in 1965.

Wallace was the product of a Southern cotton town where mule-drawn wagons were as common as cars, and blacks were kept "in their place." His dad was the wastrel son of a beloved local doctor, and his mother had survived abandonment as a child and had been raised in an orphanage. Like his dad, young George was quick with his fists, a Golden Gloves winner while still in high school. Drawn to politics, he had his moment of truth at 15, as a legislative page in the Capitol at Montgomery, when he set his sights on the political process.

At the University of Alabama, he began to shape his own political future. With frenetic energy and tireless pugnacity, he worked his way through school in menial jobs, cramming for tests with borrowed books.

In 1943, he married 16-year-old Lureen Burns; their daughter Bobbi Joe was born the following year. Entering the Army for World War II service, Wallace was a flight engineer on bombing missions over Japan. By the time the war ended, he had been through nine combat missions and was discharged with ten percent disability from combat fatigue.

Post-war, Wallace began a rapid climb up the political ladder.