George C. Wallace Biography Quotes 11 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
George Corley Wallace was born on August 25, 1919, in the small town of Clio in southeastern Alabama. Raised in a modest rural setting during the Great Depression, he developed a plainspoken style and a deep familiarity with the economic anxieties of working people that would shape his political persona. After high school he attended the University of Alabama, where he studied law and graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1942. His early interests in debate and politics, combined with an assertive personality honed by competitive boxing as a young man, signaled an ambition to seek public office. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces, experience that broadened his outlook while anchoring his later claims to disciplined, patriotic leadership.

Entry into Public Life
Returning to Alabama after the war, Wallace worked in the legal profession and in 1946 won a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. He cultivated a populist image, emphasizing roads, schools, and pension programs, and he built a local political network that traded on accessibility and patronage. In the early 1950s he became a state circuit judge, a position that enhanced his public profile and reputation for combative courtroom demeanor. Eager to run statewide, he entered the 1958 governor's race but lost to John Patterson, who drew decisive support from segregationist organizations. The defeat proved pivotal. Wallace, who had run as a moderate on race by the standards of the day, concluded that no statewide victory was possible without appealing directly to white resistance to federal civil rights mandates. The lesson hardened his approach and reshaped his message.

Governor and the Politics of Segregation
Wallace won the governorship in 1962 and took office in 1963. In his inaugural address he proclaimed "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", a line crafted by the segregationist speechwriter Asa Earl Carter. The phrase became one of the defining markers of his career. Wallace cast himself as a defender of "states' rights" and local control, arguing that federal courts and presidents were overreaching. He simultaneously pursued bread-and-butter projects favored by rural and working-class white voters, including road building and education spending, while opposing school desegregation and voting rights enforcement.

Confrontations over Civil Rights
Wallace's defiance of federal authority reached its most visible moment on June 11, 1963, in the episode known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door". When the University of Alabama complied with federal orders to enroll two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach confronted Wallace at the campus entrance on behalf of President John F. Kennedy. After the Alabama National Guard was federalized and General Henry V. Graham ordered him to step aside, Wallace yielded. The event, televised nationwide, cemented his image as the face of resistance to desegregation.

The broader civil rights crisis in Alabama continued to escalate. In 1965, the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights campaign led by Martin Luther King Jr. dramatized disenfranchisement. On "Bloody Sunday", state troopers commanded by Colonel Al Lingo and local law enforcement under Sheriff Jim Clark attacked peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. later authorized the march, and President Lyndon B. Johnson sent federal protection. Wallace's opposition to the movement and his public rhetoric placed him on the opposite side of national civil rights leaders and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, even as he retained strong backing among many white voters in his state.

National Ambitions
Wallace sought the presidency multiple times, positioning himself as a voice for white working-class frustration, law and order, and hostility to federal power. In 1964 he ran in several Democratic primaries outside the South and demonstrated surprising appeal in the North and Midwest, signaling a broader constituency for his populist and culturally conservative message. In 1968 he ran as the American Independent Party candidate, carrying several Southern states and a significant share of the national popular vote. Although he did not win, his campaign helped realign American politics by highlighting divisions over race, crime, and federal authority, themes that national figures across the political spectrum could not ignore.

Lurleen Wallace and the Continuity of Power
Barred by Alabama's one-term limit from immediate reelection, Wallace engineered a continuity plan by promoting his wife, Lurleen Wallace, to run for governor in 1966. She won convincingly and took office in 1967, widely perceived as her husband's political surrogate. The arrangement kept the "Wallace machine" intact, but tragedy struck when Lurleen died of cancer in 1968 while in office. Lieutenant Governor Albert Brewer succeeded her. In 1970, Wallace returned to the political stage to defeat Brewer in a bitter Democratic primary, using hard-edged appeals that combined economic populism with racially charged themes. The victory restored him to the governor's office and confirmed his dominance of Alabama politics.

Assassination Attempt and Its Aftermath
Wallace's 1972 presidential campaign ended abruptly when Arthur Bremer shot him at a campaign stop in Laurel, Maryland. The attack left Wallace paralyzed from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. He continued his campaign briefly and later underwent numerous medical procedures, enduring chronic pain and complications that shadowed his subsequent terms as governor. The assassination attempt changed both the public's view of him and, by his own account, his view of the world, softening some of the rhetorical edges of his politics even as he remained a potent force in Alabama.

Later Campaigns and Evolving Views
Wallace remained a figure of national interest, running again in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1976. While he retained support in parts of the South, his strength had waned outside Alabama as the national parties shifted. By the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, Wallace began to distance himself from his earlier segregationist stance. Seeking a final term as governor in 1982, he appealed for reconciliation, met with Black community leaders, and asked African American voters for support. He appointed more African Americans to state positions than in his earlier administrations and spoke publicly of regret for the pain caused by his earlier positions. The outreach helped him win, and his last term, from 1983 to 1987, emphasized inclusion, schools, and economic development rather than defiance of federal civil rights laws.

Personal Life
Wallace's personal life was intertwined with his political career. He married Lurleen Burns in 1943; they had children, including George Wallace Jr. and Peggy Wallace Kennedy, both of whom would engage with public life in different ways. After Lurleen's death, Wallace married Cornelia Wallace in 1971, and later Lisa Taylor in 1981. His decades-long health challenges after 1972 exacted a personal toll. In his later years he expressed religious and moral introspection and sought out civil rights activists and clergy to convey remorse for past positions. Those gestures were received in varied ways, with some granting forgiveness and others remaining skeptical.

Legacy
George C. Wallace remains one of the most consequential and polarizing figures in twentieth-century American politics. In Alabama, he built a durable political organization and left a record of public works and education initiatives that many constituents valued. Nationally, he helped crystallize issues of race, crime, and cultural anxiety that redefined party coalitions and influenced presidential campaigns long after his own bids ended. His defiance at the University of Alabama, the confrontations with Nicholas Katzenbach under President John F. Kennedy, the violent suppression of civil rights marchers later adjudicated by Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., and his 1968 third-party run remain hallmarks of an era.

Wallace's late-life repudiation of segregation and his appeals for forgiveness complicate his legacy. To supporters, his evolution reflected courage and humility; to critics, it could not undo the harm wrought by policies and rhetoric that helped entrench resistance to civil rights. He died on September 13, 1998, in Montgomery, Alabama, after years of ill health tied to the injuries sustained in the 1972 shooting. His life story encapsulates the tensions of the American South in the civil rights era and the enduring national debates over equality, identity, and the reach of government power.

Our collection contains 11 quotes who is written by George, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Sarcastic - Equality - Human Rights - Kindness.

Other people realated to George: Lyndon B. Johnson (President), Jimmy Carter (President), John Frankenheimer (Director), George McGovern (Politician), Arthur Bremer (Criminal), Gary Sinise (Actor)