George Wallace

George Corley Wallace (August 25, 1919 - September 13, 1998), elected Governor of Alabama as a Democrat four times (1962, 1970, 1974 & 1982) and four-time candidate for President (1964, 1968, 1972 & 1976). Though he is best known for his belligerent defense of segregation, going so far as to block the door of the University of Alabama to prevent its desegregation under federal fiat, he mellowed with age and reached out to African Americans during the 1970s.

Wallace's public racism was rooted in his defeat in his first gubernatorial race in 1958, when he was portrayed as the liberal candidate and soft on segregation. Wallace vowed he would "never be out-niggered again" and won in 1962. He proceeded to keep that promise, publicly defying the Kennedy Administration until being knuckled under by fellow southerner Lyndon B. Johnson.

After a stab at the Democratic presidential nomination in 1964 as a protest candidate, in 1968 Wallace ran the most successful Third-Party challenge between Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" campaign of 1912 and Ross Perot's "Reform Party" movement of 1992 when he ran for President as a "law and order" candidate (code word for being tough on African Americans) on the American Independent ticket. He won five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, & Mississippi) and 46 electoral votes, and it was feared at one point during Election Night that his success might throw the election into the House of Representatives.