George Wallace
45th Governor of Alabama (1919–1998)
George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician and lawyer who was the 45th and longest-serving governor of Alabama (1963–1967; 1971–1979; 1983–1987), and the longest-serving governor from the Democratic Party. Wallace unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination as a Democrat three times, and once with the American Independent Party, in which he carried five states in the 1968 presidential election, resulting in a rare moment not seen since the 1948 presidential election where a third party managed to secure electoral seats independent of the de-facto 'two-party system' of the United States.
Born in Clio, Alabama, Wallace was fascinated with politics from age ten. In 1935, he won a contest to serve as a page in the Alabama Senate, and confidently predicted that he would one day be governor. After earning a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Alabama School of Law, he served in the United States Army Air Force during World War II. After the war, he won election to the Alabama House of Representatives, and served as a state judge. Wallace first sought the Democratic nomination in the 1958 Alabama gubernatorial election. Initially a moderate on racial issues, Wallace adopted a hard-line segregationist stance after losing the 1958 nomination. Wallace ran for governor again in 1962, and won the race.
In his first term, seeking to stop the racial integration of the University of Alabama, Wallace earned national notoriety by standing in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama, blocking the path of black students.
The public source identifies “George Wallace” as 45th Governor of Alabama (1919–1998). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around George, Wallace and 45th.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q313776. VIAF identifies the subject as 65418751. The Library of Congress control number is n82048664. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1998, 1963 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Wallace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.