George Corley Wallace (August 25, 1919–September 13, 1998) was an American politician who was elected Governor of Alabama four times (1962, 1970, 1974 and 1982) and ran for U.S. President (in 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976). His first wife, Lurleen Wallace, was the first (and only, as of 2004) woman to ever be elected as Governor of Alabama.
In 1946 he won his first election as a representative to the Alabama state legislature.
In 1958 he was defeated by John Patterson in Alabama's Democratic gubernatorial primary election. Patterson had run with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation Wallace had spoken out against, while Wallace had been endorsed by the NAACP.
In the wake of his defeat, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist style, and used this stand to court the white vote in the next gubernatorial election. In 1962, he was elected governor on a pro-segregation, pro-states' rights platform in a landslide victory. In his inaugural speech he declared "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever."
On June 11, 1963 he stood in front of a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation of that institution by the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Wallace only stood aside after being confronted by federal marshals. Later in life he apologized for his opposition at that time to racial integration. Then, in 1965, he gave orders for Alabama State Troopers to stop the Selma-to-Montgomery march with tear-gas and billy clubs.
In the late 1970s he apologised to black Civil Rights leaders for his earlier segregationist views, calling these views wrong. He said that while once he had sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness. It was perhaps because of the constant pain from his injuries that Wallace realized the harm his racist rhetoric and views had caused African Americans.
While campaigning in Laurel, Maryland in May 1972, Wallace was shot four times by a would-be assassin named Arthur Herman Bremer, but he survived.
In 1974, he made a concerted effort to amend the harm he had sponsored against African-Americans. He once again campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. Admitting defeat in the primaries, he threw his support to fellow-Southerner, Jimmy Carter, telling an ABC newsman, "I had to do things -- say things to get elected in Alabama, that made it impossible for me to ever be President."
His final term as Governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of black Alabamians appointed to government positions.
George C. Wallace is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama.
