George A. LeMaistre (September 8, 1911–September 26, 1994), was a lawyer, banker, professor, and chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. A white Alabamian, he publicly challenged Governor-elect George C. Wallace in November 1962 on the issue of segregation.
He was born in Lockhart, Alabama, a Gulf Coast company town created seven years before his birth by the Jackson Lumber Company, which operated a mill there that was involved in a peonage scandal. His father, John Wesley LeMaistre, was a surveyor for the lumber company, his mother, Edith (McLeod) LeMaistre, was a former school teacher. Through investments, company stock, and John Wesley LeMaistre's rising to directorship of the First National Bank, the family had become wealthy by the time of the father's death in 1929. [1]
George LeMaistre graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1933. [2]
In 1939, he began teaching law at the school, which he would continue until his death. He left his law practice in 1960 to become chairman and president of the City National Bank of Tuscaloosa. In 1970, he became president of the Alabama Bankers Association and vice chairman of the government relations council of the American Bankers Association. [2]
As an active Democrat, he supported the presidential candidacies of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, appointed LeMaistre to the governing board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He was elected chairman of the F.D.I.C. in June 1977, resigning in August 1978. [2]
Historian Dan T. Carter has characterized LeMaistre as among the "real heroes among white businessmen" who in the early 1960s urged a defiant Alabama to accept integration and the rule of law.
In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that separate public facilities were inherently unequal and, thus, unconstitutional, LeMaistre had privately argued to fellow businessmen that the decline of Arkansas that followed resistance to the integration of Little Rock schools proved that Alabama should abandon segregation. But the 1962 riot at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, coupled with Gov. Wallace's pledge to stand in the schoolhouse door to stop integration convinced LeMaistre to confront the issue publicly.
Although known to be a colorless and dry public speaker, "he spoke with passion and conviction" in November 1962 before the Tuscaloosa Civitan Club to pronounce the time had come for white Alabamians to take a moral stand. Integration was not only an economic issue, he said, but a legal and moral issue. Said LeMaistre: "For too long now, rabble-rousing hate groups and loud-mouthed politicians have undertaken to state the Southern viewpoint on matters which affect our lives." Like it or not, the law professor said, the Supreme Court was the "final interpreter of the Constitution" and no state official "has the right to put himself above the law." Pausing for effect and letting his eyes pass around the room, LeMaistre added, "And that includes a governor or a governor-elect." [3]
"There was an audible gasp of shock," wrote historian Carter, "and then an astonishing response: almost everyone in the crowded room stood and applauded." [3]
Subsequently, LeMaistre was part of a delegation of four who met with the newly inaugurated Wallace in the governor's office. LeMaistre made the argument for the rule of law as defined by the Supreme Court, which Wallace dismissed as little more than the opinion of nine men, adding heatedly that he considered "law and order" to be a "communist term" used in the service of oppression. At this, LeMaistre "lost it," leaning within inches into the very face of Southern defiance, he screamed, "George, that's bullshit! That's bullshit!" [3]
He died in Birmingham, Alabama, of complications after heart surgery. [2]
George Corley Wallace Jr. was an American politician and judge who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. He is remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views. During Wallace's tenure as governor of Alabama, he promoted "industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools." Wallace unsuccessfully sought the United States presidency as a Democratic Party candidate three times, and once as an American Independent Party candidate, carrying five states in the 1968 election. Wallace opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
James Alexander Hood was one of the first African Americans to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963, and was made famous when Alabama Governor George Wallace attempted to block him and fellow student Vivian Malone from enrolling at the then all-white university, an incident which became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door".
Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor was an American politician who served as Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, for more than two decades. A member of the Democratic Party, he strongly opposed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Under the city commission government, Connor had responsibility for administrative oversight of the Birmingham Fire Department and the Birmingham Police Department, which also had their own chiefs.
Lurleen Burns Wallace was an American politician who served as the 46th governor of Alabama for 16 months from January 16, 1967, until her death on May 7, 1968. She was the first wife of Alabama governor George Wallace, whom she succeeded as governor because at the time the Alabama constitution forbid consecutive terms.
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Thomas LeRoy Collins was an American politician who served as the 33rd governor of Florida from 1955 to 1961. Collins began his governorship after winning a special election in 1954, and was elected to a four-year term in 1956.
Asa Earl Carter was a 1950s segregationist political activist, Ku Klux Klan organizer, and later Western novelist. He co-wrote George Wallace's well-known pro-segregation line of 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", and ran in the Democratic primary for governor of Alabama on a white supremacist ticket. Years later, under the pseudonym of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, he wrote The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972), a Western novel that was adapted into a 1976 film featuring Clint Eastwood that added to the National Film Registry, and The Education of Little Tree (1976), a best-selling, award-winning book which was marketed as a memoir but which turned out to be fiction.
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Frank Minis Johnson Jr. was a United States district judge and United States circuit judge serving 1955 to 1999 on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He made landmark civil rights rulings that helped end segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South. In the words of journalist and historian Bill Moyers, Judge Johnson "altered forever the face of the South."
Fred David Gray is an American civil rights attorney, preacher, activist, and state legislator from Alabama. He handled many prominent civil rights cases, such as Browder v. Gayle, and was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1970, along with Thomas Reed, both from Tuskegee. They were the first black state legislators in Alabama in the 20th century. He served as the president of the National Bar Association in 1985, and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American President of the Alabama State Bar.
Richmond McDavid Flowers Sr. was the attorney general of the U.S. state of Alabama from 1963 to 1967, best known for his opposition to then Governor George C. Wallace's policy of racial segregation. He also served in the Alabama Senate.
Former Governor of Alabama George Wallace ran in the 1968 United States presidential election as the candidate for the American Independent Party against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Wallace's pro-segregation policies during his term as Governor of Alabama were rejected by most. The impact of the Wallace campaign was substantial, winning the electoral votes of several states in the Deep South. Although Wallace did not expect to win the election, his strategy was to prevent either major party candidate from winning a majority in the Electoral College. This would throw the election into the House of Representatives, where Wallace would have bargaining power sufficient to determine, or at least strongly influence, the selection of a winner.
Following his election as governor of Alabama, George Wallace delivered an inaugural address on January 14, 1963 at the state capitol in Montgomery. At this time in his career, Wallace was an ardent segregationist, and as governor he challenged the attempts of the federal government to enforce laws prohibiting racial segregation in Alabama's public schools and other institutions. The speech is most infamous for the phrase "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", which became a rallying cry for those opposed to integration and the civil rights movement.
Henry Vance Graham was an American Army National Guard general who protected black activists during the civil rights movement. He is most famous for asking Alabama governor George Wallace to step aside and permit black students to register for classes at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1963 during the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" incident.
Cornelia Wallace was the First Lady of Alabama from 1971–1978 and the second wife of Democratic Governor George C. Wallace.
The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door took place at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. In a symbolic attempt to keep his inaugural promise of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" and stop the desegregation of schools, George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, stood at the door of the auditorium as if to block the way of the two African American students attempting to enter: Vivian Malone and James Hood.
Harold Wayne Greenhaw was an American writer and journalist. The author of 22 books who chronicled changes in the American South from the civil rights movement to the rise of a competitive Republican Party, he is known for his works on the Ku Klux Klan and the exposition of the My Lai Massacre of 1968. Greenhaw wrote for various Alabamian newspapers and magazines, worked as the state's tourism director, and was considered "a strong voice for his native state".
The Alabama Academy of Honor recognizes one hundred living Alabamians for outstanding accomplishments and services to Alabama and the United States. By act of the Alabama Legislature, only one hundred living people may be members at any time. Up to ten additional members per year are elected by current members when honorees pass away, by majority vote in order of highest vote total. Any Alabama citizen or Academy member may nominate people for election. Living present and past governors of Alabama are automatically members of the Academy and do not count against the 100-person maximum. At any time, no more than twenty-five percent of the Academy's members may be politicians.