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The Death of George Corley Wallace: 1919-1998
George Coffey Wallace, the four-term governor, four-time U.S. presidential candidate, and political hero to millions of working-class southerners, died this past September of respiratory and cardiac arrest. He was 79 years old.
A bantamweight boxing champion in high school in rural Clio, Alabama, at the age of 15 Wallace entered politics as a page for the Alabama State Senate. After graduating from the University of Alabama, Wallace entered the Army Air Corps flying missions over Japan at the end of World War II.
Returning home in 1947 Wallace won a seat in the state legislature at the age of 28. There he earned a reputation as a racial moderate. Wallace was elected to judgeship in 1952. In 1958 Wallace, whose political hero was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, made his first attempt to win the governorship of the state of Alabama. He ran a nonracist populist campaign for better roads, better education, and industrial recruitment. In that campaign Wallace was supported by the local chapter of the NAACP. His opponent was State Attorney General John Patterson, a staunch segregationist who had the backing of the Ku Klux Klan. In the election, white voters overwhelmingly supported Patterson and Wallace lost. On election night, Wallace turned to his aides and said: "Well, boys, no other son of a bitch will ever outnigger me again."
In 1962 Wallace made good on his pledge never to be "outniggered" again. His campaign slogan was "Vote right, vote white." He easily won the governor's chair. In his January 1963 inaugural speech written by a member of the Ku Klux Klan,...