This is an IHeart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Up next, the story of segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace

and his redemption story too. And it's told by Jeff Bloodworth, who was a professor of American

history at Gannon University, and he is also a Jack Miller Center Fellow. Let's take a listen.

In January 1963, Wallace earned national infamy for an inaugural speech in which he declared,

segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

Six months later, the governor captured headlines by standing in a university doorway to stop integration at the University of Alabama.

These acts transformed an otherwise obscure Southern politician to a household name. This was exactly his hope. Catapulted to fame he ran for the presidency.

In 1964 and in 1968. By 1972, he was a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Opposing him in the Democratic primaries was Shirley Chisholm.

An African American congresswoman from Brooklyn, Chisholm was Wallace's political opposite.

Chisholm's Brooklyn Congressional District was comprised largely of working class and poor African Americans.

Elected in 1968, she became the nation's first ever black female congresswoman.

In 1972, she broke yet another barrier as the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination

for president. Backed by the Black Panthers and leading feminists, Shirley Chisholm was everything.

George Wallace was not. In 1972, Chisholm and everything. George Wallace was not.

In 1972, Chisholm and Wallace found their political face intertwined by an assassin's bullet.

Fresh from victory in the Florida primary, the governor led all Democrats in several polls.

An assassin shot the governor in the abdomen and chest.

One bullet lodged in Wallace's spinal column.

This wound paralyzed the governor for life and ended his national political aspirations.

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