Wallace first sought the Democratic nomination in the 1958 Alabama gubernatorial election. Initially a moderate on racial issues, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist stance after losing the 1958 nomination. Wallace ran for governor again in 1962, and won the race.
Wallace won election to another term as Governor of Alabama in 1970 and ran in the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, once again campaigning for segregation. His campaign effectively ended when he was shot in Maryland by Arthur Bremer, and Wallace would remain paralyzed below the waist for the rest of his life.
During the 1966 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.
Politics in the Southern tradition came naturally to Wallace. Even when he was in the Marianas, he began sending Christmas cards to voters—people he had never met. A series of elected offices finally brought him to the Governor’s mansion in Montgomery in 1962.
Wallace won election to Governor of Alabama in 1970, and ran in the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, once again campaigning for segregation. His campaign effectively ended when he was shot in Maryland by Arthur Bremer, and Wallace remained paralyzed below the waist for the rest of his life.
Wallace ran a campaign supporting law and order and states' rights on racial segregation. This strongly appealed to rural white Southerners and blue-collar union workers in the North. Wallace was leading the three-way race in the Old Confederacy with 45% of the vote in mid-September.
Stand in the Schoolhouse DoorAttempting to block integration at the University of Alabama, Governor of Alabama George Wallace stands at the door of Foster Auditorium while being confronted by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach.DateJune 11, 1963LocationUniversity of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama5 more rows
Known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door," Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, to stop the enrollment of African-American students Vivan Malone and James Hood.
George C. Wallace (1919 - 1998) was a pro-segregation Democrat elected governor of Alabama in 1962, 1970, 1974, and 1982. He also ran for president of the United States as a Democratic candidate in 1964, 1972, and 1976, and as an American Independent Party candidate in 1968.
On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy federalized National Guard troops and deployed them to the University of Alabama to force its desegregation. The next day, Governor Wallace yielded to the federal pressure, and two African American students—Vivian Malone and James A. Hood—successfully enrolled.
Background: On May 16, 1963, a federal district court in Alabama ordered the University of Alabama to admit African American students Vivien Malone and James Hood during its summer session.
On August 31, 1966, in an ongoing battle with federal agencies and the U.S. Supreme Court, the Alabama Senate passed a law that made it illegal for public schools in the state to enter into desegregation plans with federal officials.
Autherine Lucy FosterAutherine Lucy Foster, the first Black student to enroll at the University of Alabama, died Wednesday. She was 92. University officials announced her death in a statement. Her daughter, Angela Foster Dickerson, said her mother died Wednesday morning and said a family statement would be released.
The June 11, 1963, action occurred in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama and was intended to prevent the enrollment of two black students, James Hood and Vivian Malone. The day marks the beginning of school desegregation in the state.
Autherine Lucy FosterAutherine Lucy Foster, center, was the first Black person to attend University of Alabama in 1956. (CNN) The first Black student to attend the University of Alabama has died, days after a building on campus was dedicated in her honor, the university announced in a statement.
He worked his way through college and law school. He was a sergeant in the Army Air Forces, serving under General LeMay in the Pacific, and flew combat missions on B-29s over Japan until he fell ill with spinal meningitis. Wallace returned home with a medical discharge and a disability pension. Politics in the Southern tradition came naturally ...
And the peril with which he had threatened the two-party system appeared, for the year 1968 and the George Wallace 1968 presidential campaign at least, to have been smothered by the much-maligned electoral system ordained by the United States Constitution.”.
Wallace even had a political party—the American Independent Party —and he declared the George Wallace 1968 presidential campaign. George Wallace sidestepped a head-on campaign about race and used the slogan “Law and Order,” even though everyone knew what he meant.
Nixon was farther ahead in the electoral count, winning thirty-two states against Humphrey’s thirteen states plus the District of Columbia. The George Wallace 1968 presidential campaign carried five states, all in the South: Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and, of course, Alabama, for a total of 46 Electoral votes against ...
However, when the Wallace people came back to LeMay for a second try, the head of the campaign, Seymore Trammel, wisely hit on the one consequential factor that worried LeMay: the possibility of Humphrey winning and continuing the Kennedy-Johnson-McNamara policies in Vietnam and the Cold War.
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was born in Clio, Alabama in 1919. His family was at the bottom of the state’s social ladder. But, like retired Air Force Chief of staff Curtis LeMay, whom he selected in the George Wallace 1968 presidential campaign, he had ambition and drive instilled in him by his mother.
Politics in the Southern tradition came naturally to Wallace. Even when he was in the Marianas, he began sending Christmas cards to voters—people he had never met. A series of elected offices finally brought him to the Governor’s mansion in Montgomery in 1962.
The civil-rights issue was a means for him to enter the national spotlight. Because Wallace was legally ineligible for reelection, his first wife, Lurleen, successfully ran for governor in 1966, but she died in office in 1968.
Wallace won the governorship of Alabama in 1962 on a platform emphasizing segregation and economic issues. Within his first year in office he kept his pledge “to stand in the schoolhouse door” by blocking the enrollment of Black students at the University of Alabama (June 1963).
He was reelected to the governorship in 1974, and he again campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. In the 1980s Wallace renounced his segregationist ideology and sought reconciliation with civil rights leaders.
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Wallace won Alabama’s governorship again in 1970, but in 1972, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was wounded and left permanently paralyzed below the waist in an assassination attempt on May 15, 1972, at Laurel, Maryland.
On Election Day, he drew 10 million votes from across the country. In 1972, Governor Wallace returned to the Democratic Party for his third presidential campaign and, under a slightly more moderate platform, was showing promising returns when Arthur Bremer shot him on May 15, 1972.
Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”. However, the promise lasted only six months. In June 1963, under federal pressure, he was forced to end his blockade of the University of Alabama and allow the enrollment of African American students.
Wallace, one of the most controversial politicians in U.S. history, was elected governor of Alabama in 1962 under an ultra-segregationist platform.
After his recovery, he faded from national prominence and made a poor showing in his fourth and final presidential campaign in 1976. During the 1980s, Wallace’s politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race.
On Election Day, he drew 10 million votes from across the country. In 1972, Governor Wallace returned to the Democratic Party for his third presidential campaign and, under a slightly more moderate platform, was showing promising returns when Arthur Bremer shot him on May 15, 1972.
After his recovery, he faded from national prominence and made a poor showing in his fourth and final presidential campaign in 1979. During the 1980s, Wallace’s politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race.
On January 14, 1963, George Wallace is inaugurated as the governor of Alabama, promising his followers, “ Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” His inauguration speech was written by Ku Klux Klan leader Asa Carter, who later reformed his white supremacist beliefs and wrote The Education of Little Tree under the pseudonym of Forrest Carter. (The book, which gives a fictitious account of Carter’s upbringing by a Scotch-Irish moonshiner and a Cherokee grandmother, poignantly describes the difficulties faced by Native Americans in American society.)
George Wallace’s ideological journey was not unlike Asa Carter’s. In 1958, Wallace made his first bid for Alabama’s gubernatorial seat. The NAACP endorsed him while the KKK endorsed his opponent in the primary. He was defeated by a wide margin.
It would be a tragedy if Wallace died…. If he lives, it would also be a tragedy for him to become a national hero elected to the presidency on sympathy votes.”. [5] As it turned out, George Wallace did survive the attack and he won the Democratic primary in Maryland.
As police and the press investigated the gunman, 21-year-old Arthur Bremer from Milwaukee, it became clear that the assassination attempt had little to do with politics.
By the time he reached Maryland, his national popularity was at its height. Long a controversial figure for his vocal opposition to desegregation, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace had siginificant momentum in the 1972 Presidential campaign when he made the fateful tour stop in Laurel. (Photo source: Wikipedia)
Wallace was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring and immediately went into surgery, which would last five hours.
Gov. George Wallace addresses the crowd at his May 15, 1972 campaign stop in Laurel, Maryland. Moments after this photo was taken he was shot by Arthur Bremer. (Photo by Mabel Hobart)
At a morning rally in Wheaton, Wallace had been heckled with obscene chants and a few flying tomatoes. But the crowd in Laurel was more receptive. He received applause when he stepped away from the podium and made his way down from the stage. Mabel Speigle and her husband, Ross, stood near the front of the crowd.
Alabama Governor George Wallace was running for President of the United States and, with the Maryland Democratic primary a day away, the campaign trail had brought him to Laurel. From atop a stage in the Laurel Shopping Center parking lot, Wallace offered his distinct view of America. Perhaps not surprisingly, given his infamous 1963 speech ...