Gov george wallace biography books

Stephan Lesher. On a July afternoon inwhen Jesse Jackson stopped in Montgomery, Alabama, to pay his respects to former governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, a profound sense of irony surrounded the event - a sense of history having come full circle. That scene - the civil rights leader sitting down with the former segregationist - is the point of departure for Stephan Lesher's masterful George Wallace: American Populist.

Wallace first captured the national spotlight at the University of Alabama, personally obstructing a federal segregation order. As the governor used his resultant notoriety to argue for "getting the government off the backs of the people", to berate the Washington establishment and the hypocrisy of the "limousine liberals", and to voice the frustrations of the middle class in the face of academic and governmental elites, his critique was obscured by the racist taint, and what would become his true political legacy was overshadowed.

For unbeknownst to his more urbane critics, George Wallace was setting the national political agenda for the remainder of this century. In electing Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and even Clinton, Lesher argues, the American people have voted for Wallace's ideas in gentrified form in every election since Open Library American Libraries. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.

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Representative Carl Elliott. Wallace defended his wife's proxy candidacy. He felt somewhat vindicated when Republicans in Idaho denied renomination in to Governor Robert E. In his memoirs, Wallace recounts his wife's ability to "charm crowds" and cast-off invective: "I was immensely proud of her, and it didn't hurt a bit to take a back seat to her in vote-getting ability.

Margaret Smith loves being senator. During the campaign, George Wallace signed state legislation to nullify desegregation guidelines between Alabama cities and counties and the former United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Wallace claimed that the law would thwart the national government from intervening in schools. Critics denounced Wallace's "political trickery" and expressed alarm at the potential forfeiture of federal funds.

Republican gubernatorial candidate James D. Martin accused the Democrats of "playing politics with your children" and "neglecting academic excellence". Martin also opposed the desegregation guidelines and had sponsored a U. House amendment to forbid the placement of students and teachers on the basis of racial quotas. He predicted that Wallace's legislation would propel the issuance of a court order compelling immediate and total desegregation in all public schools.

He also compared the new Alabama law to "another two-and-a-half-minute stand in the schoolhouse door". Lurleen Wallace defeated Martin in the general election on November 8, She was inaugurated in Januarybut on May 7,she died in office of cancer at the age of 41, amid her husband's ongoing second presidential campaign.

Gov george wallace biography books: Initially conceived as a

George Wallace's influence in state government thus subsided until his next bid for election in his own right in He was "first gentleman" for less than a year and a half. Planning for Wallace's presidential campaign began with a strategy session on the evening of the March inauguration of Lurleen Wallace. Wallace ran for president in the election as the American Independent Party candidate, with Curtis LeMay as his candidate for vice president.

Wallace hoped to force the House of Representatives to decide the election with one vote per state if he could obtain sufficient electoral votes to make him a power broker. Wallace hoped that Southern states could use their clout to end federal efforts at desegregation. His platform contained generous increases for beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare.

Wallace's foreign policy positions set him apart from the other candidates in the field. Wallace described foreign aid as money 'poured down a rat hole' and demanded that European and Asian allies pay more for their defense. Humphreyto prevail. However, some Democrats feared Wallace's appeal to organized blue-collar workers would damage Humphrey in Northern states such as Ohio, New Jersey and Michigan.

Wallace ran a " law and order " campaign similar to Nixon's, further worrying Republicans. In Wallace's obituary, The Huntsville Times political editor John Anderson summarized the impact from the campaign: "His startling appeal to millions of alienated white voters was not lost on Richard Nixon and other Republican strategists. First Nixon, then Ronald Reaganand finally George Herbert Walker Bush successfully adopted toned-down versions of Wallace's anti-busing, anti-federal government platform to pry low- and middle-income whites from the Democratic New Deal coalition.

He was the master teacher, and Richard Nixon and the Republican leadership that followed were his students. Wallace considered Happy Chandlerthe former baseball commissionertwo-term former governor of Kentucky and former Senator from Kentuckyas his running mate in his campaign as a third-party candidate; as one of Wallace's aides put it, "We have all the nuts in the country; we could get some decent people—-you working one side of the street and he working the other side.

LeMay was considered instrumental in the establishment in of the United States Air Force and an expert in military affairs. His four-star military rank, experience at Strategic Air Command and presence advising President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis were considered foreign-policy assets to the Wallace campaign. ByLeMay had retired and was serving as chairman of the board of an electronics company, but the company threatened to dismiss him if he took a leave of absence to run for vice president.

Hunt set up a million-dollar fund to reimburse LeMay for any income lost in the campaign. However, he alarmed the audience by further commenting, "we [Americans] have a phobia about nuclear weapons. I think there may be times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. InWallace pledged 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" and asserted that the only four letter words that hippies did not know were "w-o-r-k" and "s-o-a-p.

This type of rhetoric became famous. He accused Humphrey and Nixon of wanting to radically desegregate the South. Wallace said, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats", a campaign slogan that he had first perfected when Lurleen Wallace defeated James D. Major media outlets observed the support Wallace received from extremist groups such as White Citizens' Councils.

It has been noted that members of such groups had permeated the Wallace campaign by and, while Wallace did not openly seek their support, he also never refused it. He mostly criticized hippies and "pointy-headed intellectuals". He denied he was racist, saying once, "I've never made a racist speech in my life. While Wallace carried five Southern states, won almost ten million popular votes and 36 electoral votes, Nixon received electoral votes, more than required to win the election.

Wallace remains the last non-Democratic, non-Republican candidate to win any pledged electoral gov georges wallace biography books. Wallace also received the vote of one North Carolina elector who had been pledged to Nixon. Many found Wallace an entertaining campaigner. Holmes County Board of Educationwhich ordered immediate desegregation of Southern schools — he said the new Burger court was "no better than the Warren court" and called the justices "limousine hypocrites".

InWallace sought the Democratic nomination against incumbent governor Albert Brewerwho was the first gubernatorial candidate since Reconstruction to seek African American voter support. Brewer unveiled a progressive platform and worked to build an alliance between blacks and the white working class. Of Wallace's out-of-state trips, Brewer said, "Alabama needs a full-time governor!

In the primary, Brewer received the most votes but failed to win a majority, which triggered a runoff election. In what later U. President Jimmy Carter called "one of the most racist campaigns in modern southern political history", [ 60 ] Wallace aired television advertising with slogans such as "Do you want the black bloc electing your governor?

Blacks vow to take over Alabama. Though Wallace had promised not to run for president a third time, [ 59 ] [ 60 ] the day after the election, he flew to Wisconsin to campaign for the upcoming United States presidential election. On January 13,Wallace declared himself a Democratic candidate. Wallace announced that he no longer supported segregation and had always been a "moderate" on racial matters.

However, Wallace similarly to Nixon [ 63 ] expressed continued opposition to desegregation busing. On May 15,Wallace was shot four times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning at the Laurel Shopping Center in Laurel, Marylandat a time when he was receiving high ratings in national opinion polls. Wallace was hit in the abdomen and chest, and one of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal columnleaving 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 units of blood to survive. Three others who were wounded in the shooting also survived. The shooting and Wallace's subsequent injuries put an effective end to his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Gov george wallace biography books: George Wallace: American Populist · George

Bremer's diary, An Assassin's Diarypublished after his arrest, shows he was motivated in the assassination attempt by a desire for fame, not by political ideology. On August 4,Bremer was sentenced to 63 years in prison, [ 71 ] later reduced to 53 years. Following the assassination attempt, Wallace was visited at the hospital by Democratic Representative and presidential primary rival Shirley Chisholm[ 75 ] a representative from Bedford—Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

At the time, she was the nation's only African-American gov george wallace biography books 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 his near assassination effectively ended his campaign.

Inwhen asked to comment on the 20th anniversary of his attempted assassination, Wallace replied, "I've had 20 years of pain. In NovemberWallace announced his fourth bid for the presidency, again participating in the Democratic presidential primaries. Wallace's campaign was plagued by voter concern about his health [ 78 ] as well as the media use of images that portrayed him as nearly helpless.

Roosevelt 's paralysis, before television became commercially available. In the Southern primaries and caucuses, Wallace carried only Mississippi, South Carolina and his home state of Alabama. If the popular vote in all primaries and caucuses were combined, Wallace would have placed third behind former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter and California governor Jerry Brown.

After the primaries were completed, and he had lost several Southern primaries to Carter, Wallace left the race in June He eventually endorsed Carter, who defeated Republican incumbent Gerald Ford. In the late s, 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. Those days are over, and they ought to be over. In the primary, McCorquodale was eliminated, and the vote went to a runoff, with Wallace holding a slight edge over McMillan. Wallace won the Democratic nomination by a margin of 51 to 49 percent.

Polling experts at first thought the election was the best chance since Reconstruction for a Republican to be elected as governor of Alabama. During Wallace's final term as governor — he appointed a record number of black Americans to state positions, [ 82 ] including, for the first time, two as members in the cabinet. On April 2,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 Wallace married Lurleen Brigham Burns on May 22, Lurleen Wallace was the first woman to be elected governor of Alabama, which she did as a stand-in for her husband, who was barred from serving another term.

Inin keeping with the practice of many at the time to shield patients from discussion of cancer, which was greatly feared, Wallace had withheld information from her that a uterine biopsy had found possibly precancerous cells. When she saw a gynecologist for abnormal bleeding inher diagnosis of uterine cancer came as a complete shock. Lurleen was outraged to learn from one of her husband's aides that the staffers had known of her cancer since Wallace's campaign three years earlier.

Their son, commonly called George Wallace Jr. He was twice elected state treasurer as a Democrat, and twice elected to the Alabama Public Service Commission. He lost a race in for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. InWallace Jr. A few months after that divorce, Cornelia told Parade magazine, "I don't believe George needs a family.

He just needs an audience. The family as audience wasn't enough for his ego. On September 9,Wallace married Lisa Taylor, a country music singer; they divorced on February 2,weeks after Wallace had left office for the fourth and final time. Peggy was 12 years old when her father ran successfully for governor. She has shared that she was not treated nicely out in public due to her father's segregationist views.

Some people would not shake her hand because of her last name. She would go to school wanting to befriend the black students, but she assumed that they would not like her because of what her father had done. In a interview, Wallace said that he planned to vote for Republican Bob Dole in the presidential electioncommenting. He's a good man. His wife is a born-again Christian woman and I believe he is, too.

He also revealed that he had voted for George H. Bushanother Republican, in His son, George Wallace Jr. Wallace himself declined to identify as either a Republican or a Democrat. But he added, "The state is slowly going Republican because of Clinton being so liberal. In his later years, Wallace grew deaf and developed Parkinson's disease. Wallace eventually apologized and met with Vivian Malone Jones and James Hoodthe black students who he had attempted to block from integrating the University of Alabama via the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.

Wallace Award of Courage in Octoberand Wallace himself presented the award to her. The night before the presentation, Malone and Wallace met privately where he apologized for his conduct, and she told him she had long-since forgiven him. Wallace praised her during the award presentation the next day, saying "Vivian Malone Jones was at the center of the fight over states' rights and conducted herself with grace, strength and, above all, courage.

When Hood returned to the University of Alabama to earn a Ph. At a restaurant a few blocks from the State Capitol, Wallace became something of a fixture. In constant pain, he was surrounded by an entourage of old friends and visiting well-wishers and continued this ritual until a few weeks before his death. Wallace died of septic shock from a bacterial infection in Jackson Hospital in Montgomery on September 13, His grave is located at Greenwood Cemeteryin Montgomery.

Wallace was an unusual candidate who refused to condemn political violence. Ziblatt and Levitsky describe Wallace as an autocratic figure who exhibited a casual disregard for the constitution. With four failed runs for president, Wallace was unsuccessful in national politics. Wallace Community College is named for his wife. Inamidst a change in public opinion, many Alabama universities were pushed to rename "gov george wallace biography books" buildings that were originally named after Wallace.

This included, but was not limited to, the University of Montevallo and Auburn University. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. American politician — This article is about the governor of Alabama.

For other people named George Wallace, see George Wallace disambiguation. Lurleen Burns. Cornelia Ellis Snively. Lisa Taylor. Early life [ edit ]. Racial attitude [ edit ]. Early career [ edit ]. Governor of Alabama [ edit ]. Segregation [ edit ]. Economics and education [ edit ]. This section needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. October Learn how and when to remove this message. Main article: Democratic Party presidential primaries. First Gentleman of Alabama [ edit ]. Main article: George Wallace presidential campaign. Further information: Southern strategy.

Second term as governor [ edit ]. Attempted assassination [ edit ]. Rest of the campaign [ edit ]. Final term as governor [ edit ]. Marriages and children [ edit ].

Gov george wallace biography books: A full-scale biography of the complex

Final years and death [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Bush George W. Duke Power Co. Higher ed. Think tanks. Other organizations. See also [ edit ]. Footnotes [ edit ]. Shannon commented, "He Clarke notes, "Bremer had never been interested in politics Notes [ edit ]. Archived from the original on December 10, Retrieved May 25, The exact wording is a matter of historical dispute.

Some sources quote Wallace as using the word "outsegged".