Andrew Young

Following his graduation from Howard University and Hartford Theological Seminary, Young pastored small Congregational churches in Marion, Alabama and in Thomasville and Beachton, Georgia. Later Young moved to New York City to become Associate Director of the Department of Youth Work for the National Council of Churches. In 1961, Young returned to Atlanta to work as a top aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement. He served as Executive Vice President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and chronicles his experiences in his book An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America.
Andrew Young was elected to three terms in the United States congress where he represented the Fifth Congressional District of Georgia. In 1977, Young resigned his seat in the House of Representatives to become United States Ambassador to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter.

First elected Mayor of Atlanta in 1981, young was re-elected for a second term in 1985. During his administration, over half a million jobs were created, and the metropolitan region attracted more than $70billion dollars in private investment and construction.
Following his terms as mayor, Young joined Law Companies Group, Inc., one of the most respected engineering and environmental consulting companies in the world. Young served as Chairman of its subsidiary, Law International, Inc., until February 1993 when he was appointed Vice Chairman of Law Companies Group.
As a result of Young’s visibility in both the national and international arenas, he played an instrumental role in bringing the 1996 Summer Olympic Games to Atlanta. He served as Co-Chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG).

Recently, President Clinton appointed Young Chairman of the new Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund (SAEDF). This $100 million fund will help establish small and medium size businesses throughout Southern Africa.
Young is a member of numerous boards, including: Delta Airlines, Thomas Nelson Publishing Company, Host Marriott Corporation, the Howard University Board of Trustees, the Georgia Tech Advisory Board, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center Board of Directors, the Global Infrastructure Fund, and the Center for Global Partnership.

George Wallace

George Corley Wallace was born to George C. and Mozell (Smith) Wallace at Clio, Alabama, on August 25, 1919. A farmer's son, Wallace and his brothers Jack and Gerald and his sister Marianne attended local schools and helped out on the farm. In 1936, while attending Barbour County High School, Wallace won the state Golden Gloves bantamweight championship and held the title for the following year. He was also quite active with the high school football team until his graduation in 1937. Wallace enrolled in the University of Alabama Law School in 1937, the same year his father died, leaving the family with limited financial resources. Wallace worked his way through law school by boxing professionally, waiting on tables, serving as a kitchen helper and driving a taxi. Finding time to take part in school activities, he was president of his freshman class, captain of the university boxing team and the freshman baseball team and a member of the highly regarded law school honor court. He received his degree in 1942.

Following a brief period in the U.S. Air Force (Wallace received a medical discharge), he returned to Alabama where he served as an assistant attorney general for the state. In 1947, running as a candidate from Barbour County, George Wallace was elected to the state legislature. His legislative tenure was quite productive. Among the highlights were several Wallace-sponsored bills which greatly enhanced Alabama's industrial environment by attracting more than one hundred industries into the state and the GI and Dependents Scholarships Act which provided college and trade school tuition to children and widows of war casualties. Wallace was elected judge in the Third Judicial Circuit in 1953, a position he held until 1959. During subsequent years he also served the Democratic party in many capacities.

In 1958, Wallace formally entered the governor's race and received more than a quarter-million votes to place second in the primary to John Patterson. Patterson ran strong on the racial issue and accepted the support of the Ku Klux Klan; Wallace refused it. Wallace thereupon received the endorsement of the NAACP. In the run-off, Patterson defeated him by over 64,000 votes. This devastating loss forced Wallace to significantly adapt his political pitch to appeal to the state's voters.

Following his devastating defeat to Patterson, Wallace resumed his legal duties all the while forming a plan to achieve his goal - the governor's office. Wallace's expressed views on race relations and segregation underwent a drastic metamorphosis following the defeat. By the primary of 1962, Wallace defeated his mentor Folsom, among others, and in the run-off he defeated the rising young politician Ryan DeGraffenried. In the general election of November, Wallace polled the largest vote ever given a gubernatorial candidate in Alabama up to that time.

Wallace's first administration was marked by social tension. Among the major incidents of the administration were racial demonstrations in Birmingham and Montgomery, desegregation of schools in Macon County, his dramatic "stand in the school house door" at the University of Alabama, and the nationally publicized fire hose and police dog incidents of Birmingham. Furthermore, during this administration, Wallace made his first sortie into the North. In 1964, he entered the presidential primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and Indiana and showed a surprising strength, receiving as high as forty-three percent of the vote.

In September 1965, Wallace called the legislature back into session, ordering them to draw up an amendment to allow a sitting governor to run for a second term, which had theretofore been constitutionally prohibited; however, opposition to this amendment led by Wallace's political foe, Ryan DeGraffenried, stymied Wallace's attempt. Wallace needed only twenty-one votes to approve the amendment, but to stop filibuster through cloture and vote on the bill, he needed twenty-four senators; he didn't get them. Wallace prevailed on his wife Lurleen to run as his stand-in. The only strong opposition to any Wallace candidate was Ryan DeGraffenried, making his second bid for governorship. But DeGraffenried, while campaigning in mountainous northern Alabama, was killed in the crash of his small private plane. After much contemplation, Lurleen Wallace announced as a gubernatorial candidate.

Following an unsuccessful run for the presidency, Wallace returned to the state political scene. In the first primary election of 1970 Albert Brewer, Lurleen's successor and former Wallace ally, out polled Wallace 421,197 votes to 414,277 votes; however, Wallace out polled Brewer in the second primary. Subsequently, Wallace won the general election of November and was inaugurated in January of the following year.

In 1972, Wallace again entered the presidential primaries, this time within the Democratic party. He led off with a Florida victory in which he carried every county in the state. In May 1972, while campaigning in Maryland, Wallace was felled by would-be assassin, Arthur Bremer. As a result of the assassination attempt, Wallace was paralyzed in both legs. This spelled the end of Wallace's presidential aspirations; however, he did go on to garner subsequent presidential primary victories in Maryland, Michigan, Tennessee and North Carolina. After his hospital stay Wallace returned to his duties as governor. In the Democratic primaries of May 1974, Wallace easily won the gubernatorial nomination for a third term without a run-off election, a move allowed by Alabama Constitutional amendment 282, approved in November 1968. The amendment stated that all previously authorized laws regarding "self-succession" were thereby repealed and allowed gubernatorial officeholders to succeed themselves once, but not more than once.

During these successive administrations, Wallace sponsored the largest highway expansion program in the state's history. Additionally, federal revenue sharing funds were used to set up the Death Trap Elimination Program. In fiscal year 1973-74, Wallace made a record educational appropriation of more than five hundred million dollars. Capital investment in 1973 in Alabama exceeded 1.5 billion dollars, doubling the 1972 rate of investment and resulted in over 1,000 new or expanded businesses and approximately 43,000 new jobs for citizens.

Wallace also made vital improvements in the Alabama Law Enforcement Planning Agency. He doubled expenditures for improved health care, allocating revenue sharing funds to mental health care. The Alabama Office of Consumer Protection was established in 1972. In 1973, farm income exceeded 1.5 million dollars, doubling the previous year's income. Maximum old age pensions were raised to $115.00 per month. By 1974, unemployment compensation and workmen's compensation showed a 130 percent increase for the decade. Essentially, the state enjoyed a reasonably prosperous economic environment during this era without any exorbitant increase in state taxes.

In 1982, following a four-year political hiatus, Wallace returned to the state political scene. In the first primary Wallace won easily taking 425,469 votes to George McMillan's 296,271 and Joe McCorquodale's 250,614. Wallace subsequently defeated George McMillan in the second primary and Montgomery mayor Emory Folmar, the Republican challenger, in the general election.

Wallace's final gubernatorial conquest was characterized by an unprecedented amount of black voter support during the general election. For the former advocate and chief spokesman of the state's segregationists, this spelled a complete turnabout in his political career.

During his final term, Wallace masterminded a constitutional amendment that created an un-spendable oil and gas trust fund. Interest from the Alabama Trust Fund was to be pumped into the General Fund which finances all non-education segments of state government. Furthermore, he sponsored a controversial bill that re-wrote the state's job-injury laws. He also worked quite closely with the legislature in the preparation of a $310 million education bond issue. However, Wallace's attempts to get the legislature to raise property and income taxes in order to provide a stable pool of money for education were unsuccessful.

Tommy Thompson

GOV. TOMMY G. Thompson was born and raised in the small, central Wisconsin town of Elroy. His father ran a gas station and general store in that town of 1,500. Thompson's first job-at age six-was sorting and polishing eggs in his father's store. His mother was a school teacher.

Thompson toppled a long-time incumbent of the state Assembly in 1966 to begin his own career in public service. He knocked on nearly every door in a district that spanned three counties to beat the man who had represented the area for almost 20 years. He was elected assistant Assembly minority leader in 1973 and Assembly minority leader in 1981. He practiced law during the majority of his time in the legislature.

Thompson was first elected governor in 1986, surprising the political experts by defeating the incumbent Democratic governor and receiving 53 percent of the vote. Gov. Thompson was reelected in 1990, garnering 58 percent of the vote. The governor in 1994 became the first in Wisconsin's history elected to a third, four-year term with almost 68 percent of the vote.

Since the day he took office, Gov. Thompson has pursued an ambitious and innovative agenda focused on five main policy areas: the economy, ending welfare, education reform, the environment and crime.

Wisconsin's economy was in poor shape when Gov. Thompson took office over a decade ago. It was so bad that state business leaders placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal warning other businesses to stay out of Wisconsin.

Louis Stokes

Carl B. Stokes

Harold Stassen

Harold Stassen, (1907- ), American political leader. He is known chiefly for his persistent and futile pursuit of the office of PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Stassen was born in West St. Paul, Minn., on April 13, 1907. With a bachelor's and a law degree from the University of Minnesota, he began to practice law in South St. Paul. A leader of the Minnesota Young Republican League, he ran for governor as a reformer in 1938 and became Minnesota's youngest governor. In 1943, during his third term, Stassen resigned to serve as a lieutenant commander in the Navy and as an aide to Adm. William Halsey. In 1945 Stassen was a U.S. delegate at the founding conference of the United Nations, where he fought the inclusion of the veto provision in the Security Council.

Meanwhile, Stassen had begun to seek the presidency. He was "available" while in the Navy in 1944, but his most serious effort was mounted in 1948, when he lost the REPUBLICAN nomination to Thomas E. DEWEY. His claim to be a presidential primary candidate in 1992 marked his ninth unsuccessful attempt to run for president.

Hubert H. Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey,  was the 38th VICE-PRESIDENT of the United States (1965-69) and a leader of the prolabor and civil rights elements in the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. A loquacious, ebullient man who preached a "politics of joy," he was several times a candidate for the PRESIDENCY.

Humphrey began working as a pharmacist in his father's drugstore. He went on to teach political science and held federal administrative posts in Minneapolis. He helped unite Minnesota's Farmer-Labor and Democratic parties, and with their support he was elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1945. At the Democratic National Convention in 1948, he sponsored a civil rights plank that caused the southern Dixiecrats to bolt the party. Humphrey was elected to the SENATE that year and served until 1964, when he was chosen as President Lyndon B. JOHNSON's running mate. After four years as vice-president, Humphrey was nominated for the presidency in 1968. His defense of the Vietnam War cost him the support of the antiwar movement, however, and he was narrowly defeated by Richard M. NIXON.

Orville Freeman

Melvin Carnahan

Thomas Bradley