George Wallace

Who was George Wallace?

George Corley Wallace Jr. was an American politician and the 45th Governor of Alabama, having served two nonconsecutive terms and two consecutive terms as a Democrat: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. Wallace has the third longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,848 days. After four runs for U.S. President, he earned the title "the most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher.

A 1972 assassination attempt left Wallace paralyzed, and he used a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. He is remembered for his Southern populist and segregationist attitudes during the mid-20th century period of the African-American civil rights movement and activism, which gained passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s to enforce constitutional rights for all citizens. He eventually renounced segregationism but remained a populist.