Wallace, Lurleen, 1926-1968

Lurleen Burns Wallace (born Lurleen Brigham Burns; September 19, 1926 – May 7, 1968) was the 46th governor of Alabama for fifteen months from January 1967 until her death in May 1968. She was the first wife of Alabama governor George Wallace, whom she succeeded as governor because the Alabama constitution forbade consecutive terms. She was Alabama's first female governor and was the only female governor to hold the position until Kay Ivey became the second woman to succeed to the office in 2017. As of 2021, she is the only female governor in U.S. history to have died in office. In 1973, she was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.

A native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and a graduate of Tuscaloosa County High School, the 16-year-old Lurleen Burns married George Wallace in 1943. For twenty years, Wallace focused on being a mother and a homemaker. Wallace assumed her duties as First Lady of Alabama in 1963 after her husband was elected governor to the first of his four nonconsecutive terms. She opened the first floor of the governor's mansion to the public seven days a week. She refused to serve alcoholic beverages at official functions.

When George Wallace failed in 1965 to get the constitutional ban on his candidacy lifted, he devised a plan in which Lurleen Wallace would run for governor while he continued to exercise the authority of the office behind the scenes, duplicating the strategy in which Miriam Wallace Ferguson won the 1924 election for governor of Texas, as her husband James E. Ferguson remained the de facto governor. The general election campaign focused on whether Wallace would be governor in her own right or a "caretaker" with her husband as a "dollar-a-year-advisor" making all the major decisions. Ultimately, Wallace would win all but two of the state's counties.

Wallace made her gubernatorial race having been secretly diagnosed with cancer as early as April 1961. Despite her ill health, Wallace maintained an arduous campaign schedule throughout 1966 and gave a 24-minute speech – her longest ever – at her January 1967 inauguration. Early in her term, Wallace's condition began to deteriorate. Her last public appearance as governor was at the December 1967 Blue–Gray Football Classic, followed by a campaign appearance for her husband's presidential bid on the American Party ticket on January 11, 1968. She died in Montgomery, Alabama, on May 7, 1968.