William Luther Pierce

Who was William Luther Pierce?

William Luther Pierce III was a prominent American white nationalist and political activist. He was one of the most influential ideologues of the white nationalist movement for some 30 years before his death. A physicist by profession, he was also an author under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald of the novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter. Pierce founded the National Alliance, a major White nationalist organization, which he led for almost thirty years.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, to a Presbyterian family of Scots-Irish and English descent, Pierce was descended from the aristocracy of the Old South, descendant of Thomas H. Watts, the Governor of Alabama and Attorney General of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. As a child, Pierce did well academically, graduating from high school in 1952. He received a baccalaureate in physics from Rice University in 1955, earned a doctorate from University of Colorado at Boulder in 1962, and became an assistant professor of physics at the Oregon State University in 1962, where he joined the anti-communist John Birch Society. In 1965, in order to finance his political ambitions, he left his tenure at Oregon State University and became a senior researcher for the aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1966 Pierce moved to the Washington D.C. area and became an associate of George Lincoln Rockwell, who was assassinated in 1967, after which Pierce became co-leader of the National Youth Alliance, which split in 1974, with Pierce founding the National Alliance.