On January 16, 1967 – 59 years ago today – Lurleen B. Wallace was inaugurated as Alabama’s first female governor and only the third female in U.S. history to be elected chief executive of any state.
Lurleen’s inaugural ceremony is believed to have been the largest in Alabama history with an estimated crowd of 150,000 onlookers and a parade that lasted five hours because of the number of bands, floats, and other participants it included.
Gov. Lurleen chose not to hold the traditional inaugural ball in 1967 out of respect for the Alabama soldiers serving in Vietnam.
When I meet Alabamians who are in their late 60s or older and they find out I was Gov. George Wallace’s last spokesman and personal aide, two things invariably happen.
First, they feel compelled to describe in painstaking detail all of the times they met Gov. Wallace, and, second, they tell me that they either attended or marched in Gov. Lurleen’s inaugural parade.
Shown here from our collection are a rare ticket to sit on the main Inaugural platform and a button that was sold to attendees at Lurleen Wallace’s inauguration.
This story originally appeared in The Art of Alabama Politics, an outlet dedicated to the the wild, weird, and wonderful history of Alabama politics.
