56 Facts About Bill Waller

Bill Waller attempted to reform the position and provoked the ire of local law enforcement for aggressively prosecuting several cases.

Bill Waller ran for governor again in 1971, denouncing state establishment leaders and winning in the primary and in the general election.

Bill Waller's tenure was marked by his significant disagreement with the Mississippi State Legislature.

Bill Waller ran for a US Senate seat in 1978 and for governor again in 1987, losing both races.

Bill Waller released his memoirs in 2007 and died four years later.

Bill Waller's father was involved in local politics and a friend of politician Ross Barnett, who later became governor of the state.

Bill Waller attended public schools in the Black Jack community of Panola County before graduating from University High School in Oxford in 1944.

Bill Waller earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Memphis State University and a bachelor of laws from the University of Mississippi School of Law.

In 1950, Bill Waller established a legal practice in Jackson, Mississippi.

Bill Waller served in the United States Army as an intelligence officer during the Korean War, attaining the rank of sergeant.

Bill Waller was offered a commission in the intelligence corps, but he declined, being discharged on November 30,1953.

Bill Waller returned to Jackson to active Army Reserve duty and resumed his legal career.

Bill Waller married Carroll Waller on November 11,1950 and had four sons and a daughter with her.

Bill Waller was elected District Attorney of the Seventh Judicial District of Mississippi in 1959 and was reelected in 1963.

Bill Waller attempted to reform the position, and provoked the ire of local law enforcement for aggressively prosecuting several cases, including a white man who had murdered a black man and a wealthy woman who had murdered her husband.

Bill Waller did not approve of Evers' activism and did not view the trials as a means to denounce Jim Crow racial segregation, but saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate that laws would be upheld in the state.

Fears among white Mississippians that Bill Waller was a "liberal" for trying De Le Beckwith led his firm to lose clients.

Bill Waller attempted to straddle both sides of the issue, becoming the first Mississippian gubernatorial candidate to ever publicly condemn the Ku Klux Klan while criticizing civil rights activists and praising the work of Citizens' Councils.

In 1971, Waller mounted another campaign for gubernatorial office, facing Lieutenant Governor Charles L Sullivan, Jimmy Swan, and four others in the Democratic primary.

Bill Waller stated that he was running against the "Capitol Street Gang", establishment industry leaders and lawyers in Jackson he said had acted as a political machine and captured control of state government, preventing Mississippi from economically developing.

Bill Waller declared his support for raising teacher salaries and investing more funds in state highways.

Bill Waller hired Deloss Walker of Memphis, Tennessee, as a campaign consultant, beginning a trend of gubernatorial candidates using out-of-state advertising agencies which lasted into the 1980s.

Bill Waller attacked Sullivan as an "establishment" figure and won the runoff with 54 percent of the vote, taking 389,952 votes to Sullivan's 329,236.

Bill Waller won with 601,222 votes to Evers' 172,762 and Brady's 6,653.

Bill Waller was inaugurated as Governor of Mississippi on January 18,1972.

Bill Waller was ex officio a member of Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and responsible for appointing several other of its members.

The sovereignty commission was responsible for upholding segregation in the state, though by the time Bill Waller took office it had little business to conduct.

Bill Waller delayed in naming his appointees to the body and sent a representative to its meetings in lieu of his attendance.

Bill Waller undertook several trips to Europe, Asia, and South America to secure business deals for the state.

Bill Waller appointed several blacks to positions in state government and his staff, the first time this had been done since the Reconstruction era, but most had no history of political activity.

Bill Waller appointed the first black woman to a state board in Mississippi's history and integrated the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

Bill Waller created a Minority Advisory Committee and an Office of Minority Business Enterprise.

Bill Waller's wife led a campaign to restore the house, and the family eventually occupied it in May 1975.

Unlike his predecessors and successors, Bill Waller refused to use convicts as servants in the mansion.

Bill Waller had served as legal counsel for the convicted murderer prior to his election, and his action drew scrutiny from blacks.

Bill Waller rarely informed Winter when he was leaving the state, meaning the latter often discovered that he was to be acting governor from newspaper stories.

Bill Waller proposed several reform measures which were opposed by older and more rural legislators.

Bill Waller supported efforts to create public kindergartens and reenact a compulsory education law, but these measures all died in the Senate.

Bill Waller appointed a blue ribbon committee to make recommendations on higher education, but the board of trustees of the University of Mississippi refused to cooperate with it or accept its criticisms of the university system.

Bill Waller supported the legislature's creation of new schools at Mississippi State University.

Bill Waller backed an unsuccessful bill to set limits on campaign spending.

Bill Waller endorsed the funding of a $600 million highway program, but the proposal had been devised during his predecessor's tenure and declining government revenues led it to be later suspended.

Bill Waller initially backed a reform of the state's tax structure and the raising of the oil and gas severance tax, but later backed away from these efforts due to opposition from legislators and lobbyists.

Bill Waller successfully secured funding for a new Mississippi Highway Patrol headquarters and enhancements to the state crime laboratory.

Bill Waller convinced the legislature to remove tax collection responsibilities from the duties of county sheriffs.

Bill Waller associated himself with the New South governors, his moderate contemporaries in other Southern states, and distanced himself from Alabama's staunchly segregationist governor, George Wallace.

Bill Waller supported former mayor and district attorney Maurice Dantin in the 1975 Mississippi gubernatorial election.

Bill Waller was succeeded by Cliff Finch on January 20,1976.

Dantin won the primary while Bill Waller, viewed by many Democrats as ungrateful of Eastland's support for him in 1971, placed fourth.

Bill Waller sought the Democratic nomination for governor again in 1987, running on a platform of increased highway construction, program budgeting for state agencies, and the revival of referendums.

Bill Waller supported Republican Kirk Fordice's gubernatorial reelection campaign in 1995 and Haley Barbour's reelection in 2007.

Bill Waller was opposed to removing the Confederate battle flag canton from the flag of Mississippi.

In 2007, Bill Waller released an autobiography, Straight Ahead: Memoirs of a Mississippi Governor.

On November 29,2011, Bill Waller was admitted to the St Dominic Hospital in Jackson.

Bill Waller died there the following day at the age of 85 and was buried in Jessamine Cemetery in Ridgeland.

Bill Waller came along at a moment when, because of intensive black voter registration, the politics of his convictions were plausible.