Mourners praise George Wallace at vigil

Body lies in state; burial today

MONTGOMERY, Alabama (CNN) -- The body of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a leader whose career traced the South's anguished struggle with race, was lying in state on Wednesday in advance of his funeral.

Wallace, who died Sunday night of cardiac arrest at 79, was to be buried Wednesday alongside his first wife, former Gov. Lurleen Wallace.

Solemn mourners, both black and white, filed past the casket in the rotunda of Alabama's Capitol during a 24-hour open casket vigil that began Tuesday.

While the number was in the hundreds for the first few hours, the total was expected to be in the thousands by the time the vigil ended and Wallace's body is taken to First United Methodist Church for a funeral service conducted by the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham.

Burial at Montgomery's Greenwood Cemetery was to follow.

Wallace was elected governor four times -- in 1962, 1970, 1974 and 1982 -- and made rousing runs for the White House as a champion of middle America.

Mrs. Wallace succeeded her husband in office when state law barred him from running for re-election in 1966.

Wallace was shot in 1972 by a would-be assassin as he campaigned for the presidency for a third time. The gunman, Arthur Bremer, remains in prison in Maryland.

Bremer argued in a letter written last year and released Tuesday that he should be freed because shooting "segregationist dinosaurs" was not as bad as hurting mainstream politicians.


Wallace saluted farewell when he announced his political career was over in 1986

'People had a misconception about him'

The turnout Tuesday was nowhere near as emotional as the crowd that gathered at the Capitol to pray for Wallace's survival after he was shot. The lines also were not as long as those that filed past Mrs. Wallace's casket after she died of cancer in 1968.

But Wallace, who had been out of office for a dozen years and in failing health, was remembered by his faithful as a caring man, a politician who kept his word and an inspiration in his battle against physical torment.

• "He was a straight man," said Joe Rudolph, a black who was hired to work in the governor's office mail room in 1967. "He had respect for me as a black person. A lot of people had a misconception about him."

• "He was a politician first," said Everlena Roanoke, a black woman who was in elementary school in the 1960s when Wallace's defiant segregationist rhetoric put civil rights demonstrators in peril. But Roanoke spoke respectfully of the governor, who later recanted his racial stand.

• "It's a real sad day. I think it's the end of an era," said Malia Ragan, one of many state workers who filed through the rotunda. "He would stop and talk to everybody. Politicians today aren't like that -- the one-on-one with the people."

• Virginia Shearin, a white woman who first saw Wallace in 1964 as he campaigned on a flatbed truck, was among the first in line to walk past the casket. "I thought he was a courageous man," she said. "If he had been president, he would have been one of the greatest presidents, because he was for the common man, the working man, the underprivileged, the underdog."

• John Dotson, a black from Birmingham who paid his last respects, said he didn't approve of all that Wallace had done, but felt he was a good, forthright politician. "He didn't throw a rock and then hide his hand," he said.

• As the massive doors to the Capitol opened to mourners, Dorothy Riggins, the mother of a black aide to Alabama Gov. Fob James, sang "Amazing Grace," bringing tears to the eyes of those entering the white-domed building.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.