Education
University of Mississippi. University of Memphis.
governor of Mississippi lawyer
University of Mississippi. University of Memphis.
A Democrat, Waller served as the Governor of Mississippi from 1972 to 1976. He returned to Jackson, Mississippi to active Army Reserve duty under Colonel Purser Hewitt, and resumed his legal career. As a local prosecutor, he unsuccessfully prosecuted Byron De Louisiana Beckwith in the murder of civil rights advocate Medgar Evers (the first two murder trials of De Louisiana Beckwith both in 1964 ended in hung juries and subsequently because De Louisiana Beckwith was never acquitted in these trials, he was later eligible to be prosecuted again).
In 1994, De Louisiana Beckwith was found guilty of the murder.
In 1971, Waller defeated Lieutenant Governor Charles L. Sullivan in the Democratic primary run-official Waller handily prevailed, 601,222 (77 percent) to Evers" 172,762 (221 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 effectively shut-down 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. On November 30, 2011, Waller died at Saint Dominic Hospital in Jackson of heart failure after being admitted the previous night.
He was 85. Mistress Waller, known as "Carroll Waller", died at the Manhattan Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Jackson, Mississippi from Alzheimer"s disease.