George Wallace

He was married to Lurleen Brigham Burns, who passed away in 1968. They had four children together. After Lurleen’s death, his children were sent to live with relatives.

On January 4, 1971, he married Cornelia Ellis Snively. However, this marriage ended in divorce in 1978.

He then married country music singer, Lisa Taylor on September 9, 1981 and divorced her six years later.

George Corley Wallace, Jr. was born to George Corley Wallace, Sr. and Mozell Smith, in Clio, Barbour County, Southeast Alabama. He was raised a Methodist, just like his parents.

He involved himself in boxing when he was in high school and soon became a professional boxer, earning money from the sport. He then worked in a number of odd jobs and used the money that he collected, to study at the University Of Alabama Of Law. He graduated with an LL.B. degree, in 1942.

He joined the United States Army Air Corps, and although he failed to complete his course, he flew over Japan in 1945, as a staff sergeant.

During his tenure with the army, he had a near-death experience when he was diagnosed with spinal meningitis. However, sulfa drugs saved his life. Nevertheless, he was released from the army with nerve damage and partial hearing loss.

In 1945, he was appointed as the assistant attorney general of Alabama and the next year, he was elected as a member to the Alabama House of Representatives.

In 1952, he was elected as the Circuit Judge of the Third Judicial Circuit, in Alabama and at the time, he was known for his liberal ways even with African-American members.

He was defeated by John Malcolm Patterson, in the primary election, in 1958. Patterson was an advocate of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that Wallace was against. He, however, supported the NAACP, an organization that worked to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.

After he lost the 1958 elections, Wallace shed his liberal image and became a staunch racist. In the 1962 elections for the governor of Alabama, he decided to make use of a racist campaign against the African-Americans; he won a landslide victory, and was elected as the governor.

He took the oath of office on January 14, 1963. His most infamous lines, ‘Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever’ were one of his first lines in his speech as the governor of Alabama.

During his first term as governor, he initiated a revolution in Alabama industrial progress and was the first to propose tax abetments and other spurs to whole firms or industries to relocate to Alabama.