Lawrence Douglas Wilder will be 89 on January 17.
Douglas Wilder, the first African American to be elected
governor of an American state, took office as Governor
of Virginia on January 13, 1990.He broke a number of
color barriers in Virginia politics and remains an enduring
and controversial figure in the state’s political scene.
Born in 1931 in Church Hill, a poor and segregated
neighborhood of Richmond, Wilder is the grandson of
slaves and is named for Frederick Douglass. He grew
up in the Jim Crow era, graduating from Richmond’s
Virginia Union University in 1951. Wilder fought in the
Korean War, earning the Bronze Star, before studying
law at Howard University and returning to Richmond to
practice.
Wilder entered politics by way of a special election to the
State Senate in 1969, becoming the state’s first African
American state senator since Reconstruction.
