George Wallace at the Schoolhouse Door, June Eleven, Nineteen Sixty-Three

On the morning of June eleventh, nineteen sixty-three, two Black students arrived at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to complete their enrollment under a federal court order. Their names were Vivian Malone and James Hood. Governor George Wallace was already there, standing in the entrance doorway.

Wallace had campaigned for governor on a platform of segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. He had promised his white Alabama constituents exactly this moment. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach was also there, representing the Kennedy administration, and he read the governor a proclamation ordering him to step aside. Wallace responded with a prepared statement about states' rights and federal usurpation and declined to move.

President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard. General Henry Graham, commanding the Guard, arrived at Foster Auditorium that afternoon and told the governor he was there to ask him to step aside. Wallace delivered another statement. Then he stepped aside.

Malone and Hood completed their registration. The University of Alabama was desegregated.

What Wallace did that morning was theater, carefully choreographed to signal maximum defiance to white Alabama voters while stopping short of the direct violent confrontation that would have triggered federal military force. He knew he could not prevent the enrollment. The performance was for the audience at home, not for Katzenbach.

It worked politically. Wallace ran for president three times. He won five states in nineteen sixty-eight.

Vivian Malone graduated from the University of Alabama in nineteen sixty-five, the first Black graduate in the school's history. James Hood later earned a doctorate from the same institution. Wallace, before his death in nineteen ninety-eight, met with civil rights leaders and apologized. Some of them accepted.