George Wallace

Wallace became a national figure through defiance rather than administration: 'segregation forever' in his 1963 inaugural and his stand in the schoolhouse door against integrating the University of Alabama. His four terms did expand Alabama's community and technical colleges. His 1968 third-party campaign carried five states and showed Republicans and Democrats the potency of white backlash politics. Shot and paralysed in 1972, he later apologised to Black civil rights leaders and won his final term with significant Black support.