George Corley Wallace, Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998), was a governor of Alabama for four terms; 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for US president four times, running officially as a Democrat three times and in the American Independent Party once. A 1972 assassination attempt left him wheel-chair bound. He is best known for his Southern populist pro-segregation attitudes during the American desegregation period, convictions he renounced later in life.

The first of four children, Wallace was a native of Barbour County, Alabama. He was born in the town of Clio, in rural southeast Alabama, to George Corley Wallace and Mozell Smith Wallace. He was the third of four generations to use the name George Wallace, but as neither parent liked the name "Junior", he was called George C. to distinguish him from his father, George, and his grandfather, Dr. Wallace. Wallace's father had dropped out of Southern University to pursue a life of farming when prices were high during World War I, but Mozell had to sell their farmland just to pay existing mortgages when George Sr. died in 1937. Despite his impoverished background, Wallace was fascinated with politics from the age of ten, winning a contest to serve as a page for the Alabama Senate in 1935 and confidently predicting that he would one day be governor.

Wallace became a regionally successful boxer in his high school days, then went directly to law school at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1937. He was a member of the Delta Chi Fraternity. After receiving a law degree in 1942, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, flying combat missions over Japan during World War II. Wallace attained the rank of staff sergeant in the 58th Bomb Wing of the 20th Air Force. He served under General Curtis LeMay, who would be his running mate in the 1968 presidential race. While in the service, Wallace nearly died of spinal meningitis, but prompt medical attention saved him. He was left with partial hearing loss and nerve damage, and was medically discharged with a disability pension.