George Corley Wallace was born on August 25, 1919 in a four-room "shotgun"
house just off Main Street in Clio, Alabama. In all, the Wallaces had four
children: George, Gerald, Jack, and Marianne. The family, like many others
in the rural South and elsewhere in the United States, suffered hardships
with the collapse of the economy during the Depression.
George's political leanings were, no doubt, shaped by the rural poverty
he experienced and his father's open bitterness regarding the economic conditions
in the South. George Sr. often expressed to his son that "Southerners
couldn't be elected to national office because (Northerners) looked down
upon us." Little did his father realize the impact his opinions would
have on the political platforms of the future Alabama governor.
