George Wallace

George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician and the 45th Governor of Alabama, having served two nonconsecutive terms and two consecutive terms as a Democrat: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. Wallace has the third longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history, at 16 years and four days. He was a U.S. Presidential candidate for four consecutive elections, in which he sought the Democratic Party nomination in 1964, 1972, and 1976, and was the American Independent Party candidate in the 1968 presidential election. He remains the last third-party candidate to receive pledged electoral college votes from any state. Wallace is remembered for his Southern neo-dixiecrat and pro-segregation "Jim Crow" positions during the mid-20th century period of the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 Inaugural Address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," and standing in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop the enrollment of black students. He eventually renounced segregationism but remained a social conservative. Wallace survived an assassination attempt in Laurel, Maryland in 1972, perpetrated by Arthur Bremer, but remained wheelchair-bound until his death in 1998.