The Schoolhouse Door

Some of the most important battles of the civil rights era were fought in Alabama: Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma and Tuscaloosa. Indeed, Alabama was to the civil rights movement what Virginia was to the Civil War. This is the story of how the University of Alabama experienced the end of segregation and how events on that campus influenced the civil rights movement and exposed the massive resistance to the changes it promised. It is the story of two dramatic confrontations, the Autherine Lucy episode in 1956 (Lucy was the first person of colour to be admitted to the University and was promptly expelled after mass demonstrations) and George Wallace's 1963 stand in the schoolhouse door (trying to bar the entry of Vivian Malone and James Hood) - confrontations that transformed Tuscaloosa into an international dateline and gave the nation symbols for an age of moral struggle. It is the story of courageous black applicants, reactionary university trustees, lawyers and judges, cautious university officials, fist-shaking demonstrators, fiery crosses, brave and bewildered students, powerful people and their low cunning, also men and women of high purpose struggling almost without hope, and, in the end, it is the story of George Wallace, whose confrontation with the Kennedy's changed America's political landscape. The author has written a powerful narrative history that gives insight into an important era of American history, a local history that sheds light on larger national issues.