MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – Former state Attorney General Richmond Flowers, a moderate on racial issues who challenged the dominance of segregationist Gov. George Wallace in the 1960s but saw his political career end in an extortion case, has died. He was 88.

Flowers died from Parkinson’s disease at his home in Dothan on Thursday, his son, Richmond Flowers Jr., said Friday.

Flowers was elected attorney general in 1962, the year Wallace won his first term as governor, and Flowers soon took socially progressive actions in contrast to Wallace’s call for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Flowers was one of the first “New South politicians” who realized the 1965 Voting Rights Acts would change the political landscape of the South by registering thousands of blacks to vote, said Wayne Flynt, a retired history professor from Auburn University.

Some people considered Flowers a political opportunist who sought to take advantage of changing times, while others looked at him as a courageous fighter willing to anger white voters during the tumultuous ’60s, Flynt said.

“There’s probably a touch of both in him,” Flynt said.

As attorney general, Flowers took over for local prosecutors in 1965 in the slaying of Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights worker from Detroit who was fatally shot from a car of Ku Klux Klan nightriders as she transported protesters after the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march.

But the defendant was acquitted by an all-white jury.

Flowers ran in the Democratic primary for governor in 1966 when Wallace’s wife, Lurleen, was her husband’s stand-in because Alabama law at the time barred governors from running for a second term.

Among Flowers’ campaign pledges were to improve the school system and to fly the American flag from the state Capitol dome, where only the state and Confederate flags flew at the time. He called that “a gesture of defiance that must be put behind us.”

“He thought it was time to ‘return to the union,’ as he put it,” Bob Ingram, a longtime political reporter and columnist in Montgomery, said Friday.

“It didn’t play well with Wallace, and they never made up,” Ingram said.

Lurleen Wallace trounced the field and became governor, later dying in office. Meanwhile, her husband launched a campaign for president.

In 1968, Flowers was accused with two others on federal charges of extorting payments from life insurance companies in return for being allowed to do business in the state when Flowers was attorney general. All three defendants were convicted in federal court in 1969.

Flowers was sentenced to eight years in prison and served about 11/2 years before he was paroled. President Jimmy Carter pardoned him in 1978.

Flowers always contended politics was behind the extortion investigation, but appeals courts ruled against him.

“He didn’t have a case there,” said Ingram, who covered Flowers’ years as attorney general.

Flowers, a World War II veteran, was elected to the state Senate in 1954 and became an ally of Gov. James E. “Big Jim” Folsom, also a racial moderate.

Flowers was the subject of a 1989 television movie, “Unconquered,” focusing on the racial turmoil in the 1960s.

Survivors include his wife, Mary Russell Flowers, two sons, a daughter, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His son Richmond Jr. and grandson Richmond III both became football stars.

AP-ES-08-10-07 1719EDT