The schoolhouse door : segregation's last stand at the University of Alabama / E. Culpepper Clark.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clark, E. Culpepper.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

University of Alabama--History.

University of Alabama.

College integration--Alabama--History.

College integration.

Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998.

Wallace, George C.

Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963.

Kennedy, John F.

Civil rights movements--Alabama--History.

Civil rights movements.

History.

Alabama.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 305 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, N.Y. : Oxford University Press, 1993.

Summary:

On June 11, 1963, in a dramatic gesture that caught the nation's attention, Governor George Wallace physically blocked the entrance to Foster Auditorium on the University of Alabama's campus. His intent was to defy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, sent on behalf of the Kennedy administration to force Alabama to accept court-ordered desegregation. After a tense confrontation, President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and Wallace backed down, allowing Vivian Malone and James Hood to become the first African Americans to enroll successfully at their state's flagship university. That night, John F. Kennedy went on television to declare civil rights a "moral issue" and to commit his administration to this cause. That same night, Medgar Evers was shot dead. In The Schoolhouse Door, E. Culpepper Clark provides a riveting account of the events that led to Wallace's historic stand, tracing a tangle of intrigue and resistance that stretched from the 1940s, when the university rejected black applicants outright, to the post-Brown v. Board of Education era. In these pages, full of courageous black applicants, fist-shaking demonstrators, and powerful politicians, Clark captures the dramatic confrontations that transformed the University of Alabama into a proving ground for the civil rights movement and gave the nation unforgettable symbols for its struggle to achieve racial justice.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0195074173

OCLC:

25095349