Presidents and Populism: George Wallace
George Corley Wallace Jr. was a famous segregationist Governor of Alabama who ran for President for the American Independent Party on a populist platform. Wallace served four terms as Alabama's Governor as a Democrat, from 1963–1967, 1971–1975, 1975-1979 and 1983–1987. He was a Presidential candidate for four consecutive elections, in which he sought the Democratic Party nomination in 1964, 1972, and 1976, and was the American Independent Party candidate in the 1968 presidential election. He is the last third-party candidate to win electoral college votes in an election.
Wallace was a dixiecrat who espoused "Jim Crow" positions during the period of the Civil Rights Movement. He famously declared in his 1963 Inaugural Address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Wallace famously stood in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop the enrollment of black students. Later in life he renounced segregationism but remained a social conservative.
Born on August 25, 1919 in Clio, Alabama, George Wallace was the oldest of four children of George Corley Wallace Sr. and his wife, the former Mozelle Smith. His father died in 1937 and his mother had to sell their farmland to pay existing mortgages. Wallace became a boxer in high school, then went directly to law school in 1937 at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa. After receiving an LL.B. degree in 1942, he entered pilot cadet training in the United States Army Air Corps. Though he failed to complete the course, as a staff sergeant he flew B-29 combat missions over Japan in 1945, serving with the XX Bomber Command under General Curtis LeMay, who would be his running mate in the 1968 presidential race. Wallace contracted spinal meningitis while serving in the Army, which left him with apartial hearing loss and permanent nerve damage.
In 1945, after leaving the Air Force, Wallace was appointed as one of the assistant attorneys general of Alabama, and in May 1946, he won his first election as a member to the Alabama House of Representatives. As a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, he did not join the Dixiecrat walkout at the convention, despite his opposition to U.S. President Harry S. Truman's proposed civil rights program. In 1952, Wallace became the Circuit Judge of the Third Judicial Circuit in Alabama. In 1958, Wallace ran in the Democratic primary for governor. In the race Wallace was endorsed by the NAACP, something that probably cost him the election. He told his aide Seymore Trammell, "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."
Following this defeat, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist stance. In the 1962 Democratic primary, Wallace finished first with 35 percent of the vote and won the nomination in a runoff election. No Republican filed to run and Wallace won in the November general election, taking 96 percent of the vote. Wallace took the oath of office on January 14, 1963, standing on the gold star marking the spot where, over a century earlier, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America. In his inaugural speech, Wallace said: "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 now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy's administration ordered the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division from Ft. Benning, Georgia to be prepared to enforce the racial integration of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Wallace tried to prevent the enrollment of black students Vivian Malone and James Hood by standing in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door". In September 1963, Wallace attempted to stop four black students from enrolling in four separate elementary schools in Huntsville. 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.
In November of 1963, in Dallas, Texas, Wallace announced his intention to oppose the incumbent President, John F. Kennedy, for the 1964 Democratic presidential nomination. Days later Kennedy was assassinated, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded him as president. Wallace sought the Democratic nomination for President and campaigned on a platform opposing integration and a tough approach on crime. In Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland, Wallace received at least a third of the vote.
Term limits in the Alabama Constitution prevented Wallace from seeking a second term in 1966. His wife, Lurleen Wallace, ran as a surrogate candidate for governor. In the Democratic primary, she defeated two former governors, and was elected as the de facto Governor in the general election on November 8, 1966. She was inaugurated in January 1967, but on May 7, 1968, she died in office of cancer at the age of forty-one, at a time when her husband was running for President of the United States,. She was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Albert Brewe and George Wallace's influence in state government subsided for the time being.
Wallace ran for President in the 1968 election as the American Independent Party candidate. He selected General Curtis LeMay as running mate. Wallace hoped to force the House of Representatives to decide the election, and he wanted to become a power broker. Wallace hoped that southern states could use their clout to end federal efforts at desegregation. At the time, the Vietnam War was being fought. Wallace said that if the Vietnam War was not winnable within 90 days of his taking office, he pledged an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. He called foreign aid money 'poured down a rat hole' and demanded that European and Asian allies pay more for their defense. Wallace's candidacy concerned both of the two major parties. Republican candidate Richard Nixon feared that Wallace might split the conservative vote and allow the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, to prevail. Wallace ran a "law and order" campaign similar to Nixon's, further worrying Republicans. Democrats feared Wallace's appeal to organized blue-collar workers would damage Humphrey in northern states such as Ohio, New Jersey, and Michigan.
Wallace's selection of LeMay at first looked like a good choice, as LeMay had impressive and respected military credentials and service. Wallace's campaign aides tried to persuade LeMay to avoid questions relating to the use of nuclear weapons, but when LeMay was asked if he thought their use was necessary to win the Vietnam War, he first said that America can win in Vietnam without them. But then he added, "we have a phobia about nuclear weapons. I think there may be times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons." LeMay became a drag on Wallace's candidacy for the remainder of the campaign.
In 1968, Wallace told an audience that "If some anarchist lies down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile he will ever lie down in front of." He also said that "the only four letter words which hippies did not know were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p". Wallace received support from extremist groups such as White Citizens' Councils.
In the election, Wallace carried five Southern states, and received almost ten million popular votes and 46 electoral votes, Nixon received 301 electoral votes, more than required to win the election. Wallace remains the last non-Democratic, non-Republican candidate to win any electoral votes by vote of the people. Wallace also received the vote of one North Carolina elector who had been pledged to Nixon.
In 1970, Wallace ran for Governor of Alabama again. The campaign was later described by President Jimmy as "one of the most racist campaigns in modern southern political history". Wallace ran an ad showing a white girl surrounded by seven African-American boys, with the slogan "Wake Up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama." Wallace referred to his opponent Albert Brewer as "Sissy Britches". Wallace narrowly won the Democratic nomination narrowly in a runoff election, and won the general election in a landslide.
Wallace had promised not to run for president a third time during the 1970 gubernatorial campaign, a promise he broke early on. The day after the election, Wallace flew to Wisconsin to campaign for the upcoming 1972 U.S. presidential election. On January 13, 1972, Wallace declared himself a Democratic candidate for President. In Florida's primary, Wallace carried every county to win 42 percent of the vote. In the 1972 campaign, Wallace announced that he no longer supported segregation and had always been a "moderate" on racial matters. For the next four months, Wallace campaigned vigorously. But his campaign came to an abrupt halt on May 15, 1972, when he was shot five times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning at the Laurel Shopping Center in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace was shot in the abdomen and chest, and one of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal column, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. A five-hour operation was needed that evening, and Wallace had to receive several pints of blood in order to survive. Three others who were wounded in the shooting also survived.
Following the assassination attempt, Wallace was visited at the hospital by Democratic Congresswoman and presidential primary rival Shirley Chisholm, a representative from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At the time, she was the nation's only African-American female member of Congress. Despite their ideological differences and the opposition of Chisholm's constituents, Chisholm felt visiting Wallace was the humane thing to do.
After the shooting, Wallace won primaries in Maryland and Michigan, but the attempted assassination effectively ended his campaign. From his wheelchair, Wallace spoke on July 11, 1972, at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida.
Wallace later resumed his gubernatorial duties and easily won the 1974 primary and general election.
In November 1975, Wallace announced his fourth bid for the presidency. Wallace's campaign was hampered by concerned about his health. In the southern primaries and caucuses, Wallace carried only Mississippi, South Carolina and his home state of Alabama. He lost several southern state primaries to former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Wallace left the race in June 1976. He eventually endorsed Carter.
In the late 1970s, Wallace announced that he was a born-again Christian and apologized to black civil rights leaders for his past actions as a segregationist. He said that while he had once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness. In 1979, Wallace said of his stand in the schoolhouse door: "I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over." He ran for Governor of Alabama again in 1982 and won the Democratic nomination by a margin of 51 to 49 percent and later won the general election, defeating Montgomery Republican Mayor Emory Folmar. During Wallace's final term as governor (1983–1987) he made a record number of appointments of African-Americans to state positions, including, two as members in his cabinet. On April 2, 1986, Wallace announced at a press conference in Montgomery that he would not run for a fifth term as Governor of Alabama, and would retire from public life after leaving the governor's mansion in January 1987.
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 couple had a bitter divorce in 1978. On September 9, 1981, Wallace married Lisa Taylor, a country music singer, but they divorced in 1987.
Wallace died of septic shock from a bacterial infection in Jackson Hospital in Montgomery on September 13, 1998. He suffered from respiratory problems in addition to complications from his gunshot spinal injury.
Wallace was a dixiecrat who espoused "Jim Crow" positions during the period of the Civil Rights Movement. He famously declared in his 1963 Inaugural Address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Wallace famously stood in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop the enrollment of black students. Later in life he renounced segregationism but remained a social conservative.
Born on August 25, 1919 in Clio, Alabama, George Wallace was the oldest of four children of George Corley Wallace Sr. and his wife, the former Mozelle Smith. His father died in 1937 and his mother had to sell their farmland to pay existing mortgages. Wallace became a boxer in high school, then went directly to law school in 1937 at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa. After receiving an LL.B. degree in 1942, he entered pilot cadet training in the United States Army Air Corps. Though he failed to complete the course, as a staff sergeant he flew B-29 combat missions over Japan in 1945, serving with the XX Bomber Command under General Curtis LeMay, who would be his running mate in the 1968 presidential race. Wallace contracted spinal meningitis while serving in the Army, which left him with apartial hearing loss and permanent nerve damage.
In 1945, after leaving the Air Force, Wallace was appointed as one of the assistant attorneys general of Alabama, and in May 1946, he won his first election as a member to the Alabama House of Representatives. As a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, he did not join the Dixiecrat walkout at the convention, despite his opposition to U.S. President Harry S. Truman's proposed civil rights program. In 1952, Wallace became the Circuit Judge of the Third Judicial Circuit in Alabama. In 1958, Wallace ran in the Democratic primary for governor. In the race Wallace was endorsed by the NAACP, something that probably cost him the election. He told his aide Seymore Trammell, "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."
Following this defeat, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist stance. In the 1962 Democratic primary, Wallace finished first with 35 percent of the vote and won the nomination in a runoff election. No Republican filed to run and Wallace won in the November general election, taking 96 percent of the vote. Wallace took the oath of office on January 14, 1963, standing on the gold star marking the spot where, over a century earlier, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America. In his inaugural speech, Wallace said: "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 now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy's administration ordered the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division from Ft. Benning, Georgia to be prepared to enforce the racial integration of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Wallace tried to prevent the enrollment of black students Vivian Malone and James Hood by standing in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door". In September 1963, Wallace attempted to stop four black students from enrolling in four separate elementary schools in Huntsville. 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.
In November of 1963, in Dallas, Texas, Wallace announced his intention to oppose the incumbent President, John F. Kennedy, for the 1964 Democratic presidential nomination. Days later Kennedy was assassinated, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded him as president. Wallace sought the Democratic nomination for President and campaigned on a platform opposing integration and a tough approach on crime. In Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland, Wallace received at least a third of the vote.
Term limits in the Alabama Constitution prevented Wallace from seeking a second term in 1966. His wife, Lurleen Wallace, ran as a surrogate candidate for governor. In the Democratic primary, she defeated two former governors, and was elected as the de facto Governor in the general election on November 8, 1966. She was inaugurated in January 1967, but on May 7, 1968, she died in office of cancer at the age of forty-one, at a time when her husband was running for President of the United States,. She was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Albert Brewe and George Wallace's influence in state government subsided for the time being.
Wallace ran for President in the 1968 election as the American Independent Party candidate. He selected General Curtis LeMay as running mate. Wallace hoped to force the House of Representatives to decide the election, and he wanted to become a power broker. Wallace hoped that southern states could use their clout to end federal efforts at desegregation. At the time, the Vietnam War was being fought. Wallace said that if the Vietnam War was not winnable within 90 days of his taking office, he pledged an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. He called foreign aid money 'poured down a rat hole' and demanded that European and Asian allies pay more for their defense. Wallace's candidacy concerned both of the two major parties. Republican candidate Richard Nixon feared that Wallace might split the conservative vote and allow the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, to prevail. Wallace ran a "law and order" campaign similar to Nixon's, further worrying Republicans. Democrats feared Wallace's appeal to organized blue-collar workers would damage Humphrey in northern states such as Ohio, New Jersey, and Michigan.
Wallace's selection of LeMay at first looked like a good choice, as LeMay had impressive and respected military credentials and service. Wallace's campaign aides tried to persuade LeMay to avoid questions relating to the use of nuclear weapons, but when LeMay was asked if he thought their use was necessary to win the Vietnam War, he first said that America can win in Vietnam without them. But then he added, "we have a phobia about nuclear weapons. I think there may be times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons." LeMay became a drag on Wallace's candidacy for the remainder of the campaign.
In 1968, Wallace told an audience that "If some anarchist lies down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile he will ever lie down in front of." He also said that "the only four letter words which hippies did not know were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p". Wallace received support from extremist groups such as White Citizens' Councils.
In the election, Wallace carried five Southern states, and received almost ten million popular votes and 46 electoral votes, Nixon received 301 electoral votes, more than required to win the election. Wallace remains the last non-Democratic, non-Republican candidate to win any electoral votes by vote of the people. Wallace also received the vote of one North Carolina elector who had been pledged to Nixon.
In 1970, Wallace ran for Governor of Alabama again. The campaign was later described by President Jimmy as "one of the most racist campaigns in modern southern political history". Wallace ran an ad showing a white girl surrounded by seven African-American boys, with the slogan "Wake Up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama." Wallace referred to his opponent Albert Brewer as "Sissy Britches". Wallace narrowly won the Democratic nomination narrowly in a runoff election, and won the general election in a landslide.
Wallace had promised not to run for president a third time during the 1970 gubernatorial campaign, a promise he broke early on. The day after the election, Wallace flew to Wisconsin to campaign for the upcoming 1972 U.S. presidential election. On January 13, 1972, Wallace declared himself a Democratic candidate for President. In Florida's primary, Wallace carried every county to win 42 percent of the vote. In the 1972 campaign, Wallace announced that he no longer supported segregation and had always been a "moderate" on racial matters. For the next four months, Wallace campaigned vigorously. But his campaign came to an abrupt halt on May 15, 1972, when he was shot five times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning at the Laurel Shopping Center in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace was shot in the abdomen and chest, and one of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal column, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. A five-hour operation was needed that evening, and Wallace had to receive several pints of blood in order to survive. Three others who were wounded in the shooting also survived.
Following the assassination attempt, Wallace was visited at the hospital by Democratic Congresswoman and presidential primary rival Shirley Chisholm, a representative from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At the time, she was the nation's only African-American female member of Congress. Despite their ideological differences and the opposition of Chisholm's constituents, Chisholm felt visiting Wallace was the humane thing to do.
After the shooting, Wallace won primaries in Maryland and Michigan, but the attempted assassination effectively ended his campaign. From his wheelchair, Wallace spoke on July 11, 1972, at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida.
Wallace later resumed his gubernatorial duties and easily won the 1974 primary and general election.
In November 1975, Wallace announced his fourth bid for the presidency. Wallace's campaign was hampered by concerned about his health. In the southern primaries and caucuses, Wallace carried only Mississippi, South Carolina and his home state of Alabama. He lost several southern state primaries to former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Wallace left the race in June 1976. He eventually endorsed Carter.
In the late 1970s, Wallace announced that he was a born-again Christian and apologized to black civil rights leaders for his past actions as a segregationist. He said that while he had once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness. In 1979, Wallace said of his stand in the schoolhouse door: "I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over." He ran for Governor of Alabama again in 1982 and won the Democratic nomination by a margin of 51 to 49 percent and later won the general election, defeating Montgomery Republican Mayor Emory Folmar. During Wallace's final term as governor (1983–1987) he made a record number of appointments of African-Americans to state positions, including, two as members in his cabinet. On April 2, 1986, Wallace announced at a press conference in Montgomery that he would not run for a fifth term as Governor of Alabama, and would retire from public life after leaving the governor's mansion in January 1987.
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 couple had a bitter divorce in 1978. On September 9, 1981, Wallace married Lisa Taylor, a country music singer, but they divorced in 1987.
Wallace died of septic shock from a bacterial infection in Jackson Hospital in Montgomery on September 13, 1998. He suffered from respiratory problems in addition to complications from his gunshot spinal injury.