George Thomas Turnipseed (August 27, 1936 – March 6, 2020) was an attorney and Democratic member of the South Carolina State Senate known for his liberal activism.

A native of Mobile, Alabama, Turnipseed received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he met his wife, Judith ("Judy"), while she was a graduate student at the institution.

[1] In 1966, Turnipseed became the first executive director of the South Carolina Independent School Association, an accrediting agency set up to legitimate segregation academies.

"[3] Turnipseed was the executive director of the 1968 George Wallace presidential campaign, when the former governor of Alabama received 13.5 percent of the vote against Hubert Humphrey and Richard M. Nixon.

Turnipseed soon embraced the party's liberal majority wing and joined Americans for Democratic Action, an interest group founded in 1947 by, among others, Humphrey, Walter Reuther, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In the Spence-Turnipseed race, Republican strategist Lee Atwater planted questions with reporters about Turnipseed's treatment as a teenager for depression, and repeatedly stated that he was "hooked up to jumper cables".

Turnipseed had discussed his electroshock treatments in media interviews prior to the race, but the issue soon received much wider publicity due to Atwater's efforts and ultimately doomed his election bid.

Turnipseed argued that "environmental racism and classism" lead to toxic waste sites being located disproportionately in minority and poorer communities.

His articles and opinion pieces were published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Charlotte Observer, CounterPunch, The State, and other newspapers.