Richmond McDavid Flowers Sr. (November 11, 1918 – August 9, 2007) was the attorney general of the U.S. state of Alabama from 1963 to 1967, best known for his opposition to then Governor George C. Wallace's policy of racial segregation.
Flowers was born on November 11, 1918 (World War I Armistice Day) in Dothan in Houston County in southeastern Alabama, to a locally prominent family, the youngest of four brothers.
[12] He was chosen as attorney general in the same election that George Wallace won the first of four non-consecutive terms as governor.
During his tenure as attorney general, Flowers won two landmark voting rights cases, Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, before the United States Supreme Court.
In 1966, Flowers ran in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in an effort to succeed the term-limited George Wallace.
He administered what may have been the death blow to his own campaign when he falsely suggested Lurleen Wallace had not graduated from high school and then said she had done nothing since except marry, work in a dime store, and be a housewife.
[13] Mrs. Wallace easily won the Democratic nomination and then handily defeated the conservative Republican U.S. Representative James D. Martin of Gadsden and in doing so captured a majority of the black vote.
[15] In 1968, Flowers and two others were indicted on federal charges of a conspiracy to extort payments from life insurance companies that sought licenses to conduct business in Alabama.
Flowers maintained that the prosecution was politically motivated by opponents of his anti-segregation stance, but the appeals courts affirmed the conviction.