calm
Wallace had been a rabid segregationist while Governor of Alabama. He was elected governor in a landslide victory in November 1962 and took the oath of office on January 14, 1963, standing on the spot where, 102 years earlier, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America. In his inaugural speech, he used the line for which he is best known: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Wallace butted heads with President John F. Kennedy over desegregation. To stop the enrollment of African-American students Vivian Malone and James Hood, in the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, Wallace stood in front of Foster Auditorium. 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. Wallace vehemently opposed 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."
Wallace had run unsuccessfully as an independent party candidate for president in 1968. In 1972, Wallace declared himself a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President, 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. This time, Wallace claimed he was no longer for segregation, and had always been a moderate. Wallace's campaign went extremely well among conservatives.
Wallace was shot five 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. One of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal column, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Three others were wounded in the shooting.
Bremer's diary was published after his arrest under the title "An Assassin's Diary." In the book, Bremer claimed that 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 August 4, 1972, later reduced to fifty-three years two months later. Bremer served thirty-five years and was released on parole on November 9, 2007. Wallace said that he forgave Bremer 23 years later, in August 1995, and wrote to him, but Bremer never replied.
Following the assassination attempt, Wallace was visited at the hospital by Democratic Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, a representative from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn who at the time was the nation's only African American female member of Congress. Despite their ideological differences and the opposition of Chisholm's constituents, Chisholm visited Wallace as she felt it was the humane thing to do. Following the shooting, Wallace won primaries in Maryland and Michigan, but his near assassination effectively ended his campaign. He spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Miami on July 11, 1972 from his wheelchair.