- Bill Waller
Infobox Governor
name= Bill Waller
caption=
order=55th
office= Governor of Mississippi
term_start= January 1972
term_end= January 1976
lieutenant= Bill Winter
predecessor=John Bell Williams
successor=Cliff Finch
birth_date= birth date and age|1926|10|21
birth_place=Lafayette County, Mississippi
party= DemocraticWilliam Lowe "Bill" Waller, Sr. (born
October 21 ,1926 ) is an Americanpolitician . A Democrat, he served as Governor ofMississippi from 1972 to 1976. As a local prosecutor, he unsuccessfully prosecutedByron De La Beckwith in the murder ofcivil rights advocateMedgar Evers . Both trials ended in hung juries. 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. Ironically, Waller's main opponent for governor in the 1971general 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 successfully 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. Waller effectively killed the segregationist Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission by vetoing its appropriation while he was governor. He appointed many blacks 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 has practiced law in Jackson for several years.
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