Wilder, Douglas

▪ American politician

in full  Lawrence Douglas Wilder 

born January 17, 1931, Richmond, Virginia, U.S.

 

 American politician, the first popularly elected African American governor in the United States. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Virginia Union University (1951) and a law degree from Howard University (1959). Wilder pursued a legal and political career in Richmond, Virginia, and served as a director of the Richmond chapter of the National Urban League. In 1969 he became the first African American since Reconstruction (1865–77) to win a seat in the Virginia Senate. Wilder, a Democrat, acquired a reputation as a moderate, and in 1985 he was elected state lieutenant governor, the first African American to win statewide office in Virginia. Nominated by the Democratic Party for governor in 1989, he narrowly defeated the Republican candidate with 50.2 percent of the vote. He declared his candidacy for the 1992 Democratic Party nomination for the presidency of the United States, but he withdrew before the primaries began. Constitutionally barred from running for a second consecutive term as governor, Wilder left office in 1994. In 2004 he was elected mayor of Richmond.

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