The Schoolhouse Door: Segregation’s Last Stand at the University of Alabama

346 Pages·1995·23.47 MB·English

by  E. Culpepper Clark

The Schoolhouse Door
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E. Culpepper Clark
The Schoolhouse Door
Segregation's
Lasf Sfand
of the
University
of Alabama
New York
Oxford
Oxford University Press
1995
Oxford University Press
Oxford New "fork Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
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and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1993,1995 by E. Culpepper Clark
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New "fork 10016
First published as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1995
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, E. Culpepper.
The schoolhouse door : segregation's last stand
at the University of Alabama / E. Culpepper Clark.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-19-507417-3
ISBN 0-19-509658-4 (pbk.)
i. University of Alabama—History.
2. College integration—Alabama—History.
3. Wallace, George C. (George Corley),
I9i9-Views on college integration.
4. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald).
1917—1963—Views on college integration.
5. Civil rights movements-Alabama-History.
I. Title.
LD73-C57 1993 378.76l'84-dc2O
91-48106
123456789
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
. . . dedicated
to Autherine Lucy Foster
and for Mary
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Contents
Introduction ix
1. Beginnings 3
2. The Players 23
3. An Uneasy Calm 53
4. The Mob Is King 71
5. A Gift of Peace 91
6. And Four to Go 115
7. Interlude 135
8. Class of '65 145
9. Final Cast 167
10. Three to Make Ready 189
11. A Moral Issue 213
12. "Ain't forgettin' it" 239
Epilogue 259
Bibliography 261
Notes 271
Index 295
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Introduction
On May 5,1843, one hundred years before this story begins, the University of
Alabama buried Jack, one of its slaves, in a cemetery set aside for students. A
year later, Boysey, a seven-year-old boy owned by President Basil Manly, died
of whooping cough and also found his resting place in the student plot. Thus
did two slaves come to occupy melancholy ground on the university campus,
buried alongside two students whose deaths far from home abandoned them
to lonely graves, a common resting place for master and slave that spoke
worlds about their separation in life.
This is the story of how the University of Alabama experienced the end of
segregation and how events on that campus influenced both the civil rights
movement and massive resistance to the changes it promised. It is the story of
two confrontations, the Autherine Lucy episode and the stand in the school-
house door, 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 and reactionary trustees, lawyers and
judges, of cautious university officials, fist-shaking demonstrators and fiery
crosses; of brave, bewildered students and their worried parents; of powerful
men and their low cunning, also of high-minded men and women struggling
almost without hope; and, in the end, of George Wallace, whose confronta-
tion with the Kennedys changed America's political landscape. For all its
drama, no one dies in this story. Behind these scenes violence simmers, but no
one dies.
A perspective on violence
It is plausible to attribute America's success, at least in part, to a relative
absence of violence, or certainly the absence of killing on a scale experienced
in other parts of the world. Thus, the success of our revolution and the
comparative failure of others, the French and the Russian, for example,
IX