As a four-time governor of Alabama, Wallace has become known as the embodiment of resistance to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Wallace worked his way through the University of Alabama Law School by boxing professionally, waiting tables, and driving a taxi. Wallace opposed advancement rights for blacks as well as increased power for the national government. In 1963 Wallace gained national prominence when he kept his campaign pledge to stand “in the schoolhouse door’ to block the integration of Alabama’s schools. He personally blocked the path of two black students attempting to register at the University of Alabama. During all his years in office, Alabama ranked near the bottom of the states in per capital income, education spending, and welfare. In 1972 wallace was hit by the bullet of a would-be assassin, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. He died in 1998.