George Wallace ran for president in the 1968 election as the American Independent Party candidate. He carried five Southern states, won almost ten million popular votes and 46 electoral votes.
For most of his career, he was a Democratic Party politician who served as the 45th Governor of Alabama for four terms. Indeed, he sought the United States presidency as a Democrat three times, and only once as an American Independent Party candidate, unsuccessfully each time. 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". In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. called Wallace "perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today".
He won election to a fourth and final term as Alabama's governor in 1982!
2020 is mad but 1968 was crazier.
Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Leave your preconceptions about race and US political parties at the door - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy is worth a read.
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