[1] He and his family were known for fairer dealings with African American farm employees and tenants than was typical of the area during the segregation era.

[citation needed] This fact served him very well upon entering into elective politics at about the time that Tennessee blacks in rural areas were first being allowed their constitutional rights to participate in political decisions which had been guaranteed under the Tennessee and federal constitutions but previously unenforced.

He represented Senate District 26, which currently included Chester, Crockett, Fayette, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, McNairy, and Wayne counties.

Prior to this time, the General Assembly had never had its own independent staff, or even its own offices, frequently working out of hotel rooms.

The dissident faction coalesced around the leadership of State Senate Majority Leader Riley Darnell from Clarksville in Middle Tennessee.

This was not out of character for Wilder; in 1979 he had acquiesced in the ouster of Governor Ray Blanton three days before his term was supposed to end after a series of controversial pardons.

After this, Wilder, until 2005, continued to be reelected "unanimously" and to award chairmanships to his supporters in both parties, making the Tennessee Senate one of the few legislative bodies in the world to be elected on a partisan basis, but organized on a more-or-less nonpartisan one.

However, Republicans who had supported Wilder in the past, particularly Williams, found themselves under severe pressure to adhere to party discipline, with even the threat of officially-endorsed primary opponents, unprecedented for Tennessee Republicans, for those who failed to comply with the party line, according to a series of columns by Tennessean columnist Larry Daughtrey.

Wilder was challenged within the Democratic caucus for nomination as speaker by State Senator Joe Haynes of Nashville.

[7] On March 8, 2007, the Tennessee news media reported that Wilder had been seriously injured in a fall and was in intensive care in a hospital in Memphis.

[9] Wilder died early on the morning of January 1, 2010 at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis following a stroke on December 28, 2009.