Bill Waller, Governor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Waller

William Lowe Waller Sr. (October 21, 1926 – November 30, 2011) was an American politician. A Democrat, Waller served as the Governor of Mississippi from 1972 to 1976.

Early life

He served in the United States Army's Counterintelligence Corps during the Korean War in 1951, attaining the rank of sergeant. He was offered a commission in the Corps, but he declined, being discharged on November 30, 1953. He returned to Jackson, Mississippi to active Army Reserve duty under Colonel Purser Hewitt, and resumed his legal career. He served as District Attorney of Hinds County, Mississippi, from 1959 to 1967.

Political career

As a local prosecutor, he unsuccessfully prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith in the murder of civil rights advocate Medgar Evers (the first two murder trials of De La Beckwith both in 1964 ended in hung juries and subsequently because De La Beckwith was never acquitted in these trials, he was later eligible to be prosecuted again). In 1994, De La Beckwith was found guilty of the murder. In 1971, Waller defeated Lieutenant Governor Charles L. Sullivan in the Democratic primary run-off. His main opponent in the general election was Evers' brother, James Charles Evers, then the mayor of Fayette, who ran as an independent. Waller handily prevailed, 601,222 (77 percent) to Evers' 172,762 (22.1 percent).

Waller is credited with winning elections without using racially charged or racially offensive rhetoric. He organized working class white voters and African American voters separately and usually did not merge their election efforts until it was too late in the election cycle for internal conflicts to disrupt the campaign. Litigation in the Southern Mississippi federal court and in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans stripped the Regular Democrats of Mississippi of their official status and their 25 seats in the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Prior to a national party policy conference in December 1974, the Loyalist and Regular Democratic Party factions united when the subject and Aaron Henry were elected as co-chairmen of the Mississippi delegation to the Kansas City conference.

Waller controversially pardoned one of the men convicted of murdering Vernon Dahmer. This pardon was especially controversial because Waller had served as legal counsel for the convicted murderer prior to the pardon.

Waller effectively closed the segregationist Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission by vetoing its appropriation while he was governor. He appointed numerous non-whites to positions in state government. After leaving office, Waller lost the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 1978 and for governor again in 1987. He practiced law in Jackson for several years.

Death

On November 30, 2011, Waller died at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson of heart failure after being admitted the previous night. He was 85.

Governor Waller was survived by his wife, former Mississippi First Lady Ava Carroll Overton Waller (died October 28, 2014), and their son, Bill Waller Jr., Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court (from 2009 to 2019). Mrs. Waller, known as "Carroll Waller", died at the Manhattan Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Jackson, Mississippi from Alzheimer's disease.

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In the early 1970s, after the civil rights movement had brought enormous changes to the South, a group of young and progressive southern governors attracted national attention. Among them were Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Reubin Askew of Florida, Jimmy Carter of Georgia, and William Waller of Mississippi. Waller was elected at a crucial time in the state’s history, and his constructive leadership helped chart a new direction for Mississippi.

Waller, who was born in Lafayette County, Mississippi, on 21 October 1926, attended the public schools in the Black Jack community of Panola County and graduated from Oxford High School. After earning his bachelor of arts at Memphis State University and his law degree from the University of Mississippi, Waller established a law practice in Jackson. After serving as an intelligence officer during the Korean War, Waller was elected district attorney for the 7th Judicial District in 1959 and reelected in 1963. His most famous case was the Medgar Evers assassination, in which his vigorous prosecution earned commendations and was often cited as an indication of the changing attitudes of Mississippi’s public officials (although two all-white juries deadlocked and refused to convict Byron De La Beckwith at the time).

After an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1967, Waller was elected to the state’s highest office four years later. In the Democratic primary, Waller offered himself as a critic of the “Capitol Street Gang”—the lawyers, banks, and corporations that held most of the influence and power in the state. In the general election Waller defeated independent Charles Evers, the brother of Medgar Evers and the first black Mississippian to run for governor.

One of the most important accomplishments of Waller’s administration was the removal of tax-collecting responsibilities from the county sheriff’s duties. The creation of a separate office to collect taxes, combined with a provision that allowed sheriffs to succeed themselves, improved the quality of law enforcement in Mississippi and professionalized the office of sheriff. Waller also integrated the highway patrol and appointed blacks to boards, commissions, and other state agencies. For the first time in almost a century African Americans participated in affairs of state.

Under the leadership of Mississippi’s First Lady, Carroll Overton Waller, the state’s historic Governor’s Mansion was saved from near collapse. Carroll Waller, who referred to the 130-year-old building as the Home of Our Heritage, presided over the mansion’s restoration to its original 1842 design. In 1975, after completion of the three-and-a-half-year restoration, the Governor’s Mansion was designated a National Historic Landmark.

After leaving office, Waller resumed his law practice in Jackson. He lost elections for US Senate in 1978 and the governorship in 1987. Waller published a memoir, Straight Ahead, in 2007 and died on 30 November 2011.