Former governor, civil rights foe dies

Wallace was born Aug. 25, 1919, in Clio, in the rural, row-crop country of southeastern Alabama.

The short, dark-eyed farm boy became a scrappy Golden Gloves boxer. He earned his law degree from the University of Alabama, and served in World War II as a flight engineer on B-29 bombing missions over the Pacific.

After the war, he became an assistant state attorney general, then ran successfully for the Alabama House of Representatives in 1946.

In his first race for governor in 1958, he lost the Democratic primary to John Patterson, who had taken a harder line than Wallace in support of racial segregation. Wallace reportedly vowed that he would never be "out-segged" again.

AP PHOTO Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who died yesterday at age 79, is greeted by a National Guard general on the University of Alabama's campus in Tuscaloosa in 1963. Wallace, who vowed to prevent integration of campus, gave way to troops.

He was successful on his next try in 1962. On Jan. 14, 1963, as bands decked in Rebel uniforms played "Dixie," Wallace took the oath of office beneath the white-domed capitol where Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as president of the Confederacy a century before.

"In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say ... segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

In a matter of months he made his celebrated "stand in the schoolhouse door," an unsuccessful bid to block the entrance of two blacks to the University of Alabama.

Wallace ran in a few Democratic primaries in 1964, pulling significant protest votes but hardly stopping President Johnson's steamroller.

Blocked by Alabama law from succeeding himself in the 1966 election, he got his wife, Lurleen, to run in his place. It was a daring move, and she won overwhelmingly, establishing a new mandate for Wallace's politics and a springboard toward the White House race of 1968.

Lurleen Wallace died of cancer in the spring of 1968. Wallace already was campaigning, and after a period of seclusion following her death he emerged as a third-party candidate with retired Gen. Curtis LeMay as his running mate.

Wallace carried five Southern states in the 1968 presidential election. But he didn't get enough votes to throw it into the U.S. House of Representatives.

09-14-98